John Young was born in Christchurch (New Zealand) in 1962 to English (father) and Italian (mother) parents. He studied at the University of Canterbury (New Zealand), principally with John Cousins, completing a doctorate on the manipulation of environmental sound sources in electroacoustic music in 1989. That year, with the assistance of the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council of New Zealand (now Creative New Zealand), he travelled to the UK to further his studies of electroacoustic music composition working privately in the studios of the University of East Anglia (Norwich, UK) with Denis Smalley.

He returned to New Zealand in 1990 to take up a position at Victoria University of Wellington where he became a Senior Lecturer and Director of the Electroacoustic Music Studios. In November 2000 he joined the Music, Technology and Innovation Research Centre (now Institute for Sonic Creativity) at De Montfort University in Leicester (UK) where is now Professor of Composition.

His main interest in composition continues to be in acousmatic music, particularly forms based on the interplay between recognizable natural sound sources and computer-based studio transformations, but also combines electroacoustics with instrumental media.

He has a received numerous international awards, notably first prizes in the Stockholm Electronic Arts Award (Sweden, 1996, for Inner), the 34th Bourges International Electroacoustic Music and Sonic Art Competition (France, 2007, for Ricordiamo Forlì), the 6th Klang! International Electroacoustic Composition Competition (Montpellier, France, 2019, for Three Spaces in Mid-Air), the Musica Nova International Competition of Electroacoustic Music (Czech Republic, 2018 for Magnetic Resonance, and 2020 for Abwesenheit), and the Francis Dhomont Jury Prize at the 1st Akousmatique competition (Montréal, Québec, 2022, for Le chant en dehors).

He has been a visiting composer at San Jose State University (USA), Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada), the University of Auckland (New Zealand), the Groupe de recherches musicales (GRM, Paris, France), the iM-PACT Center of the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC, USA), the Royal College of Music (Stockholm), the Sibelius Academy (Helsinki) and, with the assistance of the Swedish Institute, at Elektronmusikstudion (EMS, Stockholm, Sweden). In 2015 he held the Klingler Electroacoustic Residency (KEAR) at Bowling Green State University (USA).

He has also given invited concerts and presentations in many other parts the world, including the BEAST series in Birmingham (UK), the MANTIS series of the University of Manchester (UK), Sound Junction (The University of Sheffield, UK), Electroacoustic Wales (Bangor University, UK), Ionian University (Corfu, Greece), Festival Klang! (Montpellier, France), Rien à voir (Montréal, Québec), Oberlin Conservatory (Ohio, USA), Ohio State University (Ohio, USA), Université de Montréal (Québec), Rewind Festival (Florence, Italy), Vienna Acousmonium (Austria), L’Espace du son (Brussels, Belgium), Conservatoire de Mons (Belgium), Ai-maako festival (Santiago, Chile), and Sonoimágenes (Remedios de Escalada, Buenos Aires, Argentina).

Recent collaborations have been with the German trio Trionys, Distractfold Ensemble (Manchester, UK), pianist Xenia Pestova Bennett, flutist Carla Rees, poet Simon Perril, and photographer Lala Meredith-Vula.

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