Education
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. University of Victoria.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. University of Victoria.
He is currently a professor of music at Simon Fraser University. He has been called a "central figure" in the new music scene on the West Coast, as a flutist, as co-music director of Western Front New Music (1982-1983), as the artistic director (1987–2000) of the Vancouver New Music Society, and as a conductor in Magnetic Band and the Turning Point Ensemble, for which he is also currently the Artistic Company-Director. Underhill studied composition at the University of Victoria with Rudolf Komorous.
He completed his master"s at Stony Brook University under Bülent Arel.
He studied analysis at the Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in 1978, and computer sound synthesis at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979. Underhill was a visiting composer 1976-1977 at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo where he taught from 1977-1981, creating a composition program and founding an electronic music studio.
Since 1981, he has taught at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby.