wrote and performed some music, and developed a rapport with a group of poets who had come under Cage's influence. I studied electronic music with Richard Maxfield at The New School. Mostly though, I looked and listened and marveled. Unlike many of Cage's disciples who had the money to pursue their art... I had to work full time to survive. While in New York, Byrd worked between 1961 and 1963 as an assistant to composer and music critic Virgil Thomson. He continued composing, and earned some international interest for his use of vocal and instrumental sound in early minimal music compositions. Byrd's 1962 Carnegie Hall recital was reviewed in prominent publications including The New York Times, which described the concert as a "thimbleful of tiny sounds" that were "generally just this side of the threshold of inaudibility." Recent recordings of Byrd's work written in the early 1960s, performed by the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (including pianist Timothy Andres, violinists Caroline Shaw and Caleb Burhans, and violist Nadia Sirota) were released by New World Records in 2004. They include Animals (written for prepared piano and other instruments), Loops & Sequences (written for Charlotte Moorman to perform on cello), Four Sound*Poems (verses written by Byrd and dedicated to four experimental women artists), Water Music (commissioned by and dedicated to percussionist Max Neuhaus), and Prelude to 'The Mystery Cheese-Ball, a piece originally performed by Byrd in 1961 with Young, Mac Low, Ono, David Tudor, and Diane Wakoski. The liner notes by Eric Smigel state:Crafted with technical precision, all of the works were designed to explore the "singularity of sound" that was central to Byrd's lessons with Feldman. Byrd remains sensitive to the vertical qualities of any given pitch collection, but rather than presenting static drones or sequences of isolated chords, he frequently animates the relationship among the materials through indeterminate procedures and shifting cycles.... In other words, he mobilizes the rhythmic arrangements of the independent components, which creates a sophisticated brand of variable polyphony, similar to the ever-changing spatial arrangements of a Calder mobile. Virgil Thomson recommended Byrd to Time-Life Records as an arranger on a project to record music from the Civil War. There, he met Dorothy Moskowitz, a recent graduate of Barnard College, and they established a personal relationship. Byrd started work as a staff arranger and producer for Capitol Records, which worked on projects for Time-Life, and he and Moskowitz