An-Lun Huang was born in China in 1949, and studied piano at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. The Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1960s forced him to abandon his formal studies, but he continued to study independently, and was appointed resident composer and assistant conductor at the Central Opera House of China in Beijing in 1976. He immigrated to Canada in 1980 to study composition at the University of Toronto before continuing his composition studies at Trinity College in London, England, and eventually at Yale University. In 1986, he returned to Ontario where he currently resides.