Joe Jones

Born in New York City in 1934, he grew up in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and received classical musical training at Hartnett Music School before a short career as a jazz drummer. Around 1960 he began studying avant-garde composition, first briefly with John Cage and then Earle Brown, forming alliances with Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, and La Monte Young. From 1962 he built motorised music machines, including solar-powered orchestras that performed automatically from sunrise to sunset. In 1969 he opened a Music-Store at 18 N. Moore Street in New York where anyone could activate his machine music from the street. Yoko Ono and John Lennon were among the performers who participated. He died in 1993.