At age 17, he moved to Switzerland and attended the Municipal Conservatory of Music in Zürich and University of Zurich, where he studied with Ferruccio Busoni and Philipp Jarnach, and was also an actor and stage manager for James Joyce's English Players Company.
An October 28, 1952 concert with Vladimir Ussachevsky at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City introduced Fantasy in Space, flute recordings manipulated on magnetic tape, and led to an appearance on The Today Show with Dave Garroway.
His notable students include Chou Wen-chung, Charles Wuorinen, Joan Tower, John Corigliano, Harvey Sollberger, Faye-Ellen Silverman, Dave Soldier, Sol Berkowitz, Elliott Schwartz, Bernard Garfield, Norma Wendelburg, and Karl Korte.
Luening set songs to words by Oscar Wilde, Emily Dickinson, Lord Byron, Walt Whitman, William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Sharpe, Naidu, Hermann Hesse, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
[1] A selection of those recorded include "She walks in Beauty", "Farm Picture", "Little Vagabond", "Young Love", "Wake the serpent not", "Requiescat", "Venilia", "Locations and Times", "Noon Silence", "Visor'd", "Infant Joy", "Good-night", "I faint, I perish", "Transience", "At Christmas time/In Weihnachtszeiten", "Ach!