A View from Inside: David Tudor at 100 celebrates the life, work, and legacy of David Tudor (1926–1996), a Philadelphia-born pioneer of experimental music and sound art. Tudor transformed the possibilities of sound by merging audio technology, tone generators, signal processors, loudspeakers, and electric circuits into instruments of radical invention.

Tudor first gained prominence in the early 1950s as a virtuoso pianist, championing new works by John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff. By the 1960s, he shifted from performance at the keyboard to creating live electronic compositions. His projects pushed the boundaries of art and technology: Bandoneon! at Experiments in Art and Technology’s 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering (1966); the immersive sound installation for the Pepsi Pavilion at the 1970 Osaka World Expo; and Rainforest IV (1973), a seminal work in which found objects became both sound sources and resonators, realized in collaboration with Composers Inside Electronics. From 1953 until his death, Tudor worked closely with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and in the 1990s he collaborated with engineers at Intel on the Neural Network Synthesizer, a technology that anticipated current AI systems by decades.

Curated by You Nakai and Dustin Hurt.

MORE INFO COMING SOON.

On View: January 15 – March 21, 2026.

Opening Reception: Thursday, January 15, from 5:00-7:30pm

Gallery Hours:
Tuesday – Friday 12 p.m. – 6 p.m.
Saturday 12 p.m. – 5 p.m.

Location:
Pearlstein Gallery
Drexel University
URBN Annex
3401 Filbert Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104

More info about the Pearlstein is available here.