Jon Hassell, the influential American avant garde composer who invented the global-minded “fourth world” musical aesthetic, has died aged 84.
And those less developed countries were places where tradition was still alive and spirituality was inherent in their musical output, for lack of a better term.
He studied at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester and moved to Cologne to study under Karlheinz Stockhausen, inspired by the German composer’s early electronic piece, Gesang der Jünglinge.
Hassell met the minimalist composer Terry Riley while a fellow at State University of New York Buffalo Center for Creative and Performing Arts.
“This American experience being around Terry and later La Monte Young was a great antidote to the European experience with Stockhausen,” he told Perfect Sound Forever in 1997.
In Buffalo, Hassell befriended the synth pioneer Robert Moog, worked with Young and studied in India under the classical singer Pandit Pran Nath, learning the raga form on the trumpet.
The traditional music style, which he once likened to “sonic calligraphy”, influenced his fourth world approach.
Hassell performed at the first Womad music festival in 1982.
He intended to collaborate with Eno and David Byrne on the album that became My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.
His last album was 2020’s Seeing Through Sound, the second part of his 2018 album Listening to Pictures.
In interviews from last year, Hassell said he was writing a book called The North and South of You.
Hassell’s family said he had left behind “many gifts” that they would share with fans in time to “support his enduring legacy”.
The family said: “As Jon is now free of a constricting body, he is liberated to be in his musical soul and will continue to play in the fourth world.