We lost American avant-garde composer Harold Budd to COVID-19 in December. In this eulogy, arts and music writer, Geeta Dayal, remembers this singular artist.
Budd conceived a unique sonic terrain, in part by eschewing what was cool at the time. While other composers pushed the bounds of 'difficult' avant-garde music, Budd created gentle, lushly romantic ambient works, embracing the piano and melodious, old-fashioned instruments such as the celeste. He admired abstract painters like Mark Rothko, but also derived inspiration from the far less hip Pre-Raphaelite artists of the mid-1800s, especially the painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Budd's dreamy early breakthrough 'Madrigals of the Rose Angel,' which featured a segment titled 'Rossetti Noise,' was deliciously out of step with the hard-edged music of the 1970s.
[H/t Kyra Rehn]
Image: Album art inset
