Harold Budd

Harold Budd (1936-2020) was an American composer, pianist and poet, born in Los Angeles and raised in Victorville on the edge of the Mojave Desert. He began in the 1960s with graphic scores and drone pieces in the line of John Cage and Morton Feldman. From the late 1970s he developed a slow, heavily sustained piano style he called soft pedal, and is best known for his records with Brian Eno, though he disliked being labelled ambient. Harold Budd studied at the University of Southern California under Ingolf Dahl, graduating in 1966, and later taught at CalArts.