Ivan Moody was born in London in 1964. He studied composition with Brian Dennis at London University (winning the Royal Holloway Prize in 1984 for his Three Poems of Anna Akhmatova), and privately with Sir John Tavener. He later studied Orthodox theology through the continuing education centre of the University of Joensuu, Finland, and is currently pursuing postgraduate compositional work with William Brooks at the University of York. He lives at present in Estoril, Portugal, with his wife, the singer Susana Diniz Moody, and two children, Sebastian and Sofia.

Eastern liturgical chant has had a profound influence on his music, as has the spirituality of the Orthodox Church, to which he belongs. His music has been performed and broadcast all over Europe, both East and West, as well as in Japan, the USA and South America. Following the enormous success of Canticum Canticorum I, written for the Hilliard Ensemble and performed by them all over the world, in 1990 he won the Arts for the Earth Festival Prize for Prayer for the Forests, which was subsequently premièred by the renowned Tapiola Choir in Finland. One of his most important works to date is the oratorio Passion and Resurrection (1992), based on Orthodox liturgical texts, which was premièred in June 1993 by Red Byrd and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir under Tõnu Kaljuste at the Tampere Festival and recorded by Finnish Radio. It was subsequently repeated and broadcast to great acclaim in the Netherlands, the USA and Great Britain, and has been recorded on CD by Hyperion. The work was toured in the USA (Portland, Seattle, Irvine and Los Angeles) in October 2002 by Cappella Romana, under the composer