Ivan Moody (1964-2024)

Ivan Moody studied music and theology at the Universities of London, Joensuu and York (where he took his Ph.D). He studied composition with Brian Dennis, Sir John Tavener and William Brooks. His music has been performed and broadcast all over the world, and he has been commissioned and performed by many of the world’s most outstanding performers. His greatest works include Passion and Resurrection (1992), The Akathistos Hymn (1998) and Qohelet (2013).

He was a Professor of Church Music at the University of Eastern Finland, a researcher at CESEM – Universidade Nova in Lisbon, Portugal, and Chairman of the International Society for Orthodox Church Music. As a musicologist, he has published widely on the music of the Iberian Peninsula, Russia and the Balkans, contemporary sacred music, and music and theology. His book, Modernism and Orthodox Spirituality in Contemporary Music, was published in 2014, and in 2017 co-edited with Vesna Sara Peno the collective volume “Aspects of Christian Culture in Byzantium and Eastern Christianity. Word, Sound and Image in the Context of Liturgical and Christian Symbolism” (SASA/ISOCM, 2017). He was Editor of the Journal of the International Society for Orthodox Church Music and Co-Editor of the Revista Portuguesa de Musicologia.