A trailblazing force in psycho-acoustic music, avant-garde composer and performer Alvin Lucier was born in Nashua, New Hampshire in 1931; educated at Yale and Brandeis, he also spent two years in Rome on a Fulbright Scholarship before returning to Brandeis in 1962 to teach and conduct the university's chamber chorus. His breakthrough... [+] Read More

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American experimental music's foremost performer, pianist David Tudor remains as inextricably linked to many of the most groundbreaking pieces in the modern canon as their respective composers; long John Cage's most intimate associate, he also delivered virtuoso early performances of landmark works by Pierre Boulez, Earle Brown, Sylvano... [+] Read More

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American modern composer George Crumb is known for his innovative means of composition, including his use of numerology and new playing techniques to generate keyboard and orchestral pieces like Ancient Voices of Children (1970). Other works of note include his madrigals, as well as his composition Vox Balaenae for flute, cello and piano. Crumb... [+] Read More

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Harry Partch grew up in Tombstone, AZ, and was taught by his family to play the clarinet, harmonica, reed organ, guitar. A self-taught composer, he rode the rails during the early Depression years. Partch was an original theorist on tuning systems, wrote the extraordinary book Genesis of a Music (1949), and an instrument designer and builder... [+] Read More

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While John Cale is one of the most famous and, in his own way, influential underground rock musicians, he is also one of the hardest to pin down stylistically. Much has been made of his schooling in classical and avant-garde music, yet much of what he's recorded has been decidedly song-oriented, dovetailing close to the mainstream at times.... [+] Read More

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Avant-garde composer Pauline Oliveros pioneered the concept of Deep Listening, an aesthetic based upon principles of improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching and meditation designed to inspire both trained and untrained performers to practice the art of listening and responding to environmental conditions in solo and ensemble... [+] Read More

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Philip Glass was unquestionably among the most innovative and influential composers of the 20th century. Postmodern music's most celebrated and high-profile proponent, his myriad orchestral works, operas, film scores, and dance pieces proved essential to the development of ambient and new age sounds, and his fusions of Western and world musics... [+] Read More

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Following in the footsteps of La Monte Young and Terry Riley, composer Steve Reich is widely considered the third major pioneer of minimalism; credited as the innovator behind phasing -- a process whereby two tape loops lined up in unison gradually move out of phase with each other, ultimately coming back into sync -- his early experiments in... [+] Read More

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