Christian Wolff

Christian Wolff (born in Nice, France, lived mostly in the U.S. since 1941) is a composer, teacher and sometime performer. He studied piano with Grete Sultan and composition briefly with John Cage, in whose company, along with Morton Feldman, then David Tudor and Earle Brown, his work found encouragement and inspiration, as it did subsequently with Frederic Rzewski and Cornelius Cardew. He has also had a long association with Merce Cunningham and his dance company. As an improvisor he has played with the English group AMM, Christian Marclay, Takehisa Kosugi, Keith Rowe, Steve Lacy, Ikue Mori, Robyn Schulkowsky, Michael Pisaro, Larry Polansky and Kui Dong.
His work list currently (2017) has over 230 items, published by C.F. Peters, many of which are on some 70 CDs. A new book of his writings and interviews, Occasional Pieces, appeared in 2017.
Academically trained as a classicist, he has taught at Harvard, then from 1971 to 1999, in music, comparative literature and classics, at Dartmouth College.