[Editor's note: We thank Tae Hong Park, a former student and friend of Jon Appleton's and Editorial Consultant for Computer Music Journal, for writing this obituary.]
Jon H. Appleton was a composer, pianist, educator, inventor, and thinker who actively engaged in a musical multiverse of styles spanning avant garde, experimental, folk, popular, computer music, and electroacoustic music. Appleton was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1939 and began to explore music composition with the encouragement of his stepfather Sasha Walden, a double bass player for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. He attended Reed College from 1957 to 1961, primarily composing for fellow student musicians, and continued his graduate studies at the University of Oregon, where his primary teachers were Homer Keller, Henri Lazarof, Felix Salzer, and Robert Trotter. Much of his work at Oregon dealt with serial compositional techniques until he was introduced to electronic music by Keller. This...