John Eaton (2)

American pianist and avant-garde composer of operas. Born March 30, 1935 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania Died December 2, 2015. Different from jazz pianist Johnny Eaton Born 1934 (Yale) He composed operas both grandiose and chamber-size and was an early proponent of synthesizer music He began as a swing pianist, leading a student jazz group, the Princetonians, who recorded two albums for Columbia Records, “Johnny Eaton and the Princetonians” and “Far Out, Near In.” Eaton graduated from Princeton University, in 1957 and received Masters two years later. He explored his own ideas about music in all genres, writing microtonally and for electronic synthesizers, the Synket, and the Moog synthesizer. He spent 11 years in Rome at the American Academy. He composed more than 20 operas, some of which required reduced numbers of performers, called pocket operas. He taught at Indiana University and at the University of Chicago. He was the recipient of the Prix de Rome, Guggenheim Fellow, MacArthur Fellow and professor emeritus of composition at the University of Chicago.