John Buckley (born 19 December 1951) is an Irish composer and pedagogue, a co-founder of the Ennis Summer School and a member of Aosdána.
He grew up in a rural environment and was introduced to traditional music learning the button accordion from the local player Liam Moloney when he was 9 years of age.
In 1983, Buckley was the co-founder, with James Wilson, of the annual Ennis Summer School for composition, which became an influential training ground for aspiring young Irish composers; pupils included Michael Alcorn, Rhona Clarke, and Gráinne Mulvey.
Apart from membership in Aosdána, Buckley was honoured with the Varming Prize (1976), the Macaulay Fellowship (1978), the Arts Council's Composers' Bursary (1982) and the Marten Toonder Award (1991).
His harmonic approach is freely atonal; structurally, there is frequently a gradual build-up from initially very limited pitch material to large formal constructions.
[4] O'Leary (2013) described his style as "characterised by a broad harmonic idiom, contrasting consonance and dissonance in a non-tonal but strongly coloured soundworld".