years, he gained a notable reputation in the local avant-garde community. Budd studied music at California State University, Northridge, under Gerald Strang (a protege of Arnold Schoenberg) and Aurelio de la Vega. He graduated from CSUN, and then went on full scholarship to the University of Southern California, under the tutelage of Ingolf Dahl, graduating in 1966. Budd's work of this period was primarily minimalist drone music influenced by John Cage and Morton Feldman, as well as the abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko, with whom he corresponded. After completing his degree in composition in 1969, Budd took up a teaching position at the California Institute for the Arts. In 1970, he released his first piece, The Oak of the Golden Dreams, which he recorded with an early model Buchla modular synthesizer at the institute. At the encourage of Brian Eno and Marion Brown, he left CalArts for London. Soon afterwards, Budd gave up composition, disgusted by the "academic pyrotechnics" of the avant-garde community. In London, he found his composing community of Eno, Gavin Bryars, Michael Nyman, and the members of the Cocteau Twins. In 2004, Budd and his wife moved to Monument House in Joshua Tree. Composer and recording artist In 1972, while still retaining his teaching career at the California Institute for the Arts, he resurfaced as a composer. Spanning from 1972 to 1975, he created four individual works under the collective title The Pavilion of Dreams. The style of these works was an unusual blend of popular jazz and the avant-garde. His 1972 work Madrigals of the Rose Angel was sent to English composer Gavin Bryars who passed it on to Brian Eno. Eno contacted Budd and brought him to London to record for his Obscure Records label. Budd resigned from the institute in 1976 and began recording his new compositions, produced by Eno. Two years later, Harold Budd's debut album, The Pavilion of Dreams (1978), was released. The first performance of the piece was at a Franciscan church in California conducted by Daniel Lentz." The work with Eno led Budd to shift his focus to studio-led projects, characterised by use of synthesisers and electronic treatments, often collaborating with other musicians. Budd developed a style of piano playing he deemed "soft pedal," which can be described as slow and sustained. While he is often placed in the Ambient category, he emphatically declared that he was not an Ambient