Biography

John Campbell Easton 1866 – 1936

John Campbell Easton was among the most widely published composers of early Dunedin. He was born in Lanarkshire, Scotland in 1866, the son of an iron miner. He arrived in New Zealand in 1882, while still in his teens, and studied music under Alfred Sims and A.J. Barth. By 1893 Easton was a teacher himself, and he later had a studio in the Regent Chambers in the Octagon. He was pianist to the Dunedin Liedertafel (now the Royal Dunedin Male Choir) and a vice president of the Otago Society of Musicians. He was also a prominent freemason and organist to his lodge (Otago No. 7). He was said to be of a ‘retiring, unassuming disposition’. Easton’s compositions appeared from the 1890s through to the 1930s and included many piano works, as well as songs and a choral anthem sung in many Dunedin churches. One series of piano sketches was entitled In a New Zealand Forest. Easton’s works were published here in Dunedin, as well as in Australia, London, and the United States. He died at his home in Elm Row in 1936, at the age of 70, survived by a widow and one daughter.