Born: 1951

Born in Los Angeles, PAUL DRESHER played rock guitar as a teenager. He received a B.A. in Music from U.C. Berkeley and his M.A. in Composition from U.C. San Diego where he studied with Robert Erickson, Roger Reynolds, Pauline Oliveros, and Bernard Rands. He has had a long time interest in the music of Asia and Africa, studying Ghanaian drumming with C.K. and Kobla Ladzekpo and Hindustani classical music with Nikhil Banerjee, as well as Balinese and Javanese music. Dresher has received commissions from the Library of Congress, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Spoleto Festival USA, the Kronos Quartet, the San Francisco Symphony, the California EAR Unit, and the American Music Theater Festival, among others. As Artistic Director of the Paul Dresher Ensemble, he has guided the creation of the American Trilogy, a set of experimental operatic works that address different facets of American culture, in collaboration with writer/performer Rinde Eckert. The trilogy began with Slow Fire (1985-88), developed with Power Failure (1988-89), and was completed in 1990 with Pioneer, a collaboration that included visual artist Terry Allen, actress Jo Harvey Allen, tenor John Duykers, and director Robert Woodruff.