Paul Joseph Dresher (born January 8, 1951, in

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

) is an American

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and def ...

. Paul Dresher was born and raised in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles. From an early age, he was surrounded by music, deeply influenced by the sounds of Elvis Presley, as well as the folk and blues revivals that defined the 1960s. Rock and roll was an integral part of his formative years, and he began immersing himself in music in 1965–1966. Dresher's musical upbringing was diverse. In addition to popular music, he was exposed to classical and contemporary classical music. His father, a mathematics professor at UCLA, was a passionate music enthusiast who often took his son to concerts and operas in Los Angeles, particularly at Schoenberg Concert Hall. Classically trained in piano from a young age, Dresher later developed a keen interest in world music during his teenage years. He began studying Indian music and listening extensively to music from Indonesia and other global traditions. Concurrently, he explored the technical side of music by experimenting with home tape recorders—reversing tape, overdubbing, manipulating speeds—and later delved into feedback after being influenced by Jimi Hendrix. These explorations marked the beginning of his interest in electronic music and manipulating sound beyond conventional performance techniques. During his high school years, Dresher made a significant shift in focus, abandoning math classes to pursue woodworking. In 1968, he built his first musical instrument, crafting psychedelic guitars and sitars. This marked the start of his lifelong interest in instrument-building, later inspired by figures such as Harry Partch and Lou Harrison, as well as global musical traditions. Dresher's intellectual curiosity extended into avant-garde and experimental music. He became aware of composer John Cage during his teenage years but did not develop a strong interest in Cage’s work until the age of 18, after reading Silence, Cage’s influential collection of writings. While the book had a profound impact on him, it also posed intellectual challenges, particularly concerning intentionality and harmonic preference. It took several years for Dresher to navigate Cage’s ideas and establish his own artistic perspective. Though his early musical path did not include opera or music theater, these would later become central to his career. Dresher credits his involvement in opera and music theater—initially through collaborations with Rinde Eckert—as a key factor in his professional success. Unlike the more limited audiences for concert music, these theatrical forms allowed him to reach broader audiences and sustain a composing career outside the confines of academia. He moved up the Bay Area to Dresher in 1973 to learn from

Terry Riley Terrence Mitchell Riley (born June 24, 1935) is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist music, minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his work became notab ...

Mills College Mills College at Northeastern University in Oakland, California is part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was relocated to Oakland in ...

. He received his B.A. in music from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

and his M.A. in composition from the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Es ...

, where he studied with

Robert Erickson Robert Erickson (March 7, 1917 – April 24, 1997) was an American modernist composer and influential music teacher. He was one of the first American composers to explore the twelve tone technique and to compose tape music. Education Erickson ...

, Roger Reynolds,

Pauline Oliveros Pauline Oliveros (May 30, 1932 – November 24, 2016) was an American composer, accordionist and a central figure in the development of post-war experimental and electronic music. She was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center ...

, and Bernard Rands. He also studied Ghanaian drumming with C. K. and Kobla Ladzekpo, Hindustani classical music with Krishna Bhatt and Nikhil Banerjee, and Balinese and Javanese music. Dresher's music has been variously described as

minimalist In visual arts, music, and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in the post-war era in western art. The movement is often interpreted as a reaction to abstract expressionism and modernism; it anticipated contemporary post-mi ...

and

postminimalist Postminimalism is an art term coined (as post-minimalism) by Robert Pincus-Witten in 1971Chilvers, Ian and Glaves-Smith, John, ''A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art'', second edition (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. ...

. Dresher himself, poking fun at the latter term (which he perceives as fairly meaningless), has referred to himself as a "pre-maximalist," hence the name of his record label, MinMax. Dresher served on the board of directors for the American Music Center from 1994 through 2000. Recordings of Dresher's works are available on the

Lovely Music Lovely Music (full name: Lovely Music Ltd.) is an American record label devoted to new American music. Based in New York City, the label was founded in 1978 by Mimi Johnson, an outgrowth of her nonprofit production company Performing Artservices In ...

New World The term "New World" is used to describe the majority of lands of Earth's Western Hemisphere, particularly the Americas, and sometimes Oceania."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: ...

, CRI, Music and Arts, O.O. Discs, BMG/Catalyst, MinMax, Starkland, and New Albion labels. He was the recipient of a 2006

Guggenheim fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

. With his Paul Dresher Ensemble, Dresher plays such newly built instruments as the Quadrachord (2000) and Hurdy Grande (2008).

References

External links

Paul Dresher biography
from The Paul Dresher Ensemble site
The Paul Dresher Ensemble
*Golden, Barbara. “Conversation with Paul Dresher.�

(April 2010). Montréal: CEC. {{DEFAULTSORT:Dresher, Paul 1951 births Living people 20th-century American classical composers 20th-century American male musicians 21st-century American classical composers 21st-century American male musicians American male classical composers Gamelan musicians University of California, San Diego alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni Pupils of Robert Erickson Pupils of Roger Reynolds Pupils of Pauline Oliveros Jewish American classical composers