John Eagle is a composer and musician active in a variety of performance, installation, and interdisciplinary contexts. His work often operates within ecological frameworks involving extended instrumental systems. These works explore performance practices such as tuning, microtonal just intonation, physical movement, and other techniques within social and environmental systems.
Eagle has performed and presented work throughout the US and internationally including the LA Phil’s Noon to Midnight festival, the CalArts Experiments in Electronic Sound Festival, EMPAC’s Reembodied Sound 2024, the Sound/Image Festival in London, Int-Act Festival in Bangkok, Heidi Duckler Dance’s Ebb & Flow festival, UC Irvine’s The Art of Performance, Hear Now Music Festival, Thailand New Music and Arts Symposium, Göteborg Art Sounds, Co-Incidence Festival, Live Arts Exchange, and the Dog Star Orchestra festival.
Eagle has worked with conceptual artist Charles Gaines as music director and/or arranger on many of his Manifestos series pieces. He has conducted performances of Manifestos 4: The Dred and Harriet Scott Decision at its premiere in Times Square, as well as at REDCAT in LA and the Art Institute of Chicago. He conducted the premiere of Manifestos 6: Benjamin Patterson at MoMA and will lead the Westcoast premiere at CAP UCLA’s Nimoy Theater in March 2026. He has directed recordings of Gaines’s Manifestos 3, 4, 6, and 7 with producer Mads Falcone.
Other collaborative work includes Sound House, a performance installation developed with Janie Geiser and Cassia Streb. It features a sixteen-channel wireless sound instrument he designed (first versions with Eric Heep). He was a lead artist on two collaborative sound films (Sound House and transient flows) presented by Music for Your Inbox in 2022/23. A recording of his 2023 concert-length solo work for pianist Jack Yarbrough, erosion and growth, is available on Sawyer Editions.
Eagle holds degrees from Bennington College (BA), California Institute of the Arts (MFA), and Cornell University (DMA). He was the Composition Fellow at Bennington College from 2009 – 2011 where he taught and directed music for theater and music productions. From 2024-25, he taught at Cornell University as Teaching Associate and Studio Manager of the Cornell Electroacoustic Music Center. In Fall 2025, he joined Bowling Green State University’s College of Musical Arts as an Assistant Teaching Professor where he teaches composition and music technology. Also active as a French hornist, he performs his own music and other works of experimental music.
