"Franco Evangelisti (January 21, 1926 - January 28, 1980) was an Italian composer specifically interested in the scientific theories behind sound.

Born in Rome, Evangelisti abandoned engineering studies in order to dedicate himself to musical composition. In 1948 he became a composition student of Daniele Paris in Rome, where he also studied piano with Erich Arndt. In 1952 he moved to Germany, where he pursued advanced composition studies with Harald Genzmer at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg (Ferrari 2001). Starting in 1960 he took part in the Darmstädter Ferienkurse für Neuen Musik, where he had the opportunity of meeting Werner Meyer-Eppler of the University of Bonn, thanks to which he began to be interested in electronic music. At the invitation of Herbert Eimert, in 1956-57 he worked in the electronic studio of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne (Ferrari 2001).

In 1957, the orchestral conductor Hermann Scherchen invited him to work in the Studio of Experimental Electroacoustics of UNESCO in Gravesano, where he became involved with biophysics and explored the possibility of directly translating brain impulses into sonic vibrations.

In 1960, together with other musicians such as Francisco Pennisi and Aldo Clementi, he founded the Nuova Consonanza association and, in 1964, the improvisation group of the same name (Ferrari 2001).

In 1980, after nearly twenty years' work, he finished his book Dal silenzio a un nuovo mondo sonoro (From Silence to a New Sonorous World), which has come to be regarded as "an important record of one of the most radical minds of the Italian postwar avant garde" (Ferrari 2001). He died in Rome on 28 January 1980."

"David Tudor was born in Philadelphia, PA, in 1926. He studied with H. William Hawke (organ, theory), Irma Wolpe Rademacher (piano) and Stephan Wolpe (composition and analysis).His first professional activity was as an organist, and he subsequently became known as one of the leading avante-garde pianists of our time. Tudor gave highly acclaimed first or early performances of worksby contemporary composers Earle Brown, Sylvano Bussotti, Morton Feldman, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Christian Wolff, Stephan Wolpe, and La Monte Young, among others.

Tudor began working with John Cage in the early fifties, as a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and with Cage's Project of Music for Electronic Tape. Tudor gradually ended his active career as a pianist, turning exclusively to the composition of live electronic music.

As a composer, Tudor chose specific electronic components and their interconnections to define both composition and performance drawing upon resources that were both flexible and complex. Tudor was one of four Core Artists who collaborated on the design of the Pepsi Pavilion for Expo '70, Osaka, Japan, a project of Experiments in Art and Technology, Inc. Many of Tudor's compositions have involved collaborative visual forces: light systems, laser projections, dance, theater, television, film. Tudor's last project, Toneburst: Maps and Fragments, was a collaboration with visual artist Sophia Ogielska. Tudor's several collaborations with visual artist Jacqueline Monnier included the development of a kite environment installed at the Whitney Museum (Philip Morris, NYC) in 1986, at the exhibition "Klangraume" in Dusseldorf in 1988, and at the Jack Tilton Gallery in New York City in 1990. Other collaborators have included Lowell Cross, Molly Davies, Viola Farber, Anthony Martin, and Robert Rauschenberg.

Tudor had been affiliated with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) since its inception in the summer of 1953. In 1992, after CageÕs death, Tudor took over as Music Director of MCDC. Merce Cunningham has commissioned numerous works from Tudor, including Rainforest I (1968); Toneburst (1974); Weatherings (1978); Phonemes (1981); Sextet for Seven (1982); Fragments (1984); Webwork (1987), Five Stone Wind (1988), Virtual Focus (1990); Neural Network Plus (1992); and most recently Soundings: Ocean Diary (1994) for what was John Cage's last conception, Ocean.

David Tudor passed away on August 13, 1996 at his home in Tomkins Cove, NY."