The influential experimental US composer ‘celebrated and dignified’ his ‘fourth world’ sources and contributed to albums by Brian Eno and Talking Heads
• Jon Hassell, avant garde US composer, dies aged 84
By the time Jon Hassell became a revered figure – the kind of determinedly non-commercial, avant-garde artist whose ideas are so strong and so forward-thinking they end up influencing the mainstream regardless – he was already middle-aged, but had crammed a lifetime’s worth of musical experience into his 40 years.
He had begun his career as a trumpet player in the swing era – tellingly, his own tastes leaned towards Stan Kenton, among the most progressive and experimental of the big band leaders – before becoming immersed in the cutting edge of modern classical music and moving to Cologne to study under Karlheinz Stockhausen: his fellow pupils included Irmin Schmidt and Holger Czukay, both later of Can. In an early example of his lifelong desire to meld differing musical forms, he began attempting to apply Stockhausen’s tape experiments to recordings of jazz vocal quartet the Hi-Los.
