He was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa on July 6, 1949, and even though he has spent most of his life outside his native country, is the best known South African composer active today. In 1972, he graduated from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg with a Bachelors of Music degree, followed by post-graduate education at the University of Aberdeen. From 1973 to 1981 he lived in Cologne, where he studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen at the Musikhochschule. He later became Stockhausen's teaching assistant. During this period of time, along with his contemporaries Walter Zimmermann and Clarence Barlow, he became associated with the musical movement called the "New Simplicity" that would later influence post-minimalist composition.