Willyn Whiting (b.1993) is a Canadian composer of acoustic, electronic and mixed music.
Willyn Whiting (he/him) is a Canadian composer of acoustic, electronic and mixed music. His interests include Spectralism, microtonality and algorithmic design.
Over the years he has written for ensembles including the Bozzini Quartet, Del Sol String Quartet, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, and RE: duo. Important recent collaborators include Elsie Bae Han (viola), Robin Meiksins (flute), Alessandra Hollowell (clarinet) and Émilie Versailles (soprano). His has music been been presented at the International Computer Music Conference, Winnipeg New Music Festival (CA), the annual conference of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (US) and others.
Willyn Whiting (he/him) is a Canadian composer of both acoustic and electro-acoustic music. His current research looks at contemporary classical music through the lens of analytic philosophy. He is interested in Spectralism and algorithmic music. Many of his more recent pieces explore metaphor and musical quotation.
His acoustic works have been performed by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Fort-Worth Symphony Orchestra, Bozzini String Quartet, RE:duo and Del Sol String Quartet. In 2023 and 2024 he was the recipient of multiple SOCAN Young Composer Awards, including the grand prize in 2024 for his work CHIRP.
His electro-acoustic works have been featured in the International Computer Music Conference (2025), the annual conference for the Society of Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (2021 & 2024), the Electronic Music Midwest Festival (2023 & 2026), the Performing Media Festival (2023), the Napoleon Electronic Media Festival (2024) and the Electric LaTex Festival (2022) in America, as well as the Resilience Festival (2022) in Italy. In Canada his first essay in fixed media, for Dancer and Projection (2020), was a finalist in GroundSwell’s Emerging Composer Competition (2020).
Willyn has participated in composer workshops including the Creative Music Intensive (2022), Orford Academy Composition Internship (2017 & 2018), Domaine Forget Composition Workshop (2018), and the SPLICE Institute (2022 & 2023). Through these opportunities he has had the privilege of working with conductor Véronique Lacroix, and composers Javier Torres Maldonado, Laurie Radford, João Pedro Oliveira, Ana Sokolović, and Jean Lesage.
Before University Willyn had the opportunity of studying composition privately with Vincent Ho. Since then he has completed a Bachelor of Music with honors at the University of Toronto, a Master of Music at the University of Western Ontario, and a PhD in composition at the University of North Texas. He has studied with composers Chan Ka Nin, Larysa Kuzmenko, James Rolfe, Gary Kulesha, Paul Frehner, Joseph Klein, Kirsten Soriano, Jon Nelson and Panayiotis Kokoras.
Since completing his doctorate Willyn has become interested in grouping his work into cycles. And he prefers to work in close collaboration with soloists and small ensembles.