Item 7.93-3 - 5 [square root of] 5

Udo Kasemets, composer, pianist and writer, was born in Tallinn, Estonia, November 16, 1919, and emigrated to Canada in 1951, becoming a leader in the experimental avant-garde in music in Toronto. He passed away on January 19, 2014 in Toronto, Ontario.

Kasemets trained at the Tallinn Conservatory and the Stuttgart Academy of Music, as well as the Kranichstein Institute for New Music in Darmstadt, where he encountered Ernst Krenek, Edgard Varèse and Hermann Scherchen. In 1962-1963, Kasemets organized the first new music series in Toronto, "Men, Minds and Music," followed by the establishment of the Isaacs Gallery Mixed Media Concerts in 1965. In 1968, he directed the first Toronto Festival of Arts and Technology entitled "SightSoundSystems." In 1971, he joined the Faculty of the Department of Experimental Art at the Ontario College of Art, where he taught until his retirement in 1987.