Child then studied Kamatic music in Madras, India for one year on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. In 1981 he received his Doctor of Philosophy in musical composition from Brandeis University, where his teachers included Arthur Berger, Martin Boykan, and Seymour Shifrin.
He is Professor of Music at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and was a composer in residence with the New England Philharmonic. Child took his first composition lessons at the age of 12 with Bernard Barrell. He began attending Keele University in Staffordshire, England, but transferred to Reed College in Portland, Oregon in 1973 in a junior-year exchange program
He earned his Bachelor in music at Reed in 1975.
Child taught at Brandeis and chaired Massachusetts Institute of Technology"s department of Music and Theater Arts from 1996 to 1999. He was the American Symphony Orchestra League – Meet the "Music Alive" composer in residence with the Albany Symphony Orchestra from 2005 to 2008.
Child wrote five new compositions for that orchestra, including Washington Park, a work inspired by the city"s Washington Park Historic District. From a previous marriage to Sheila Perry Brachfeld-Child, he has two daughters, Madeleine and Rachel.
Child is the recipient of many music awards, including the 1994 Gyorgy Kepes Fellowship Prize awarded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Council for the Arts, the 2001 Music of Changes Award, and the 2004 Levitan Award in the Humanities from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His compositions have earned the 1978 Margaret Grant Memorial Prize from Tanglewood, the 1979 First Prize from East and West Artists, the 1980 Recording Prize from WGBH Radio, the 1983 New Prize from the New England Conservatory, and the 1983 New England s Prize from the League-International Society for Contemporary Music, Boston.
