Japanese Composer Yasunao Tone Dies at 90

Yasunao Tone , the avant-garde composer and artist who was a key player in the Japanese wing of the Fluxus movement, died in a New York hospital on Monday, May 12, The New York Times reports. Tone co-founded the influential music and art outfits Group Ongaku and Team Random in Tokyo, before moving to New York in the early 1970s and expanding his glitch music and multimedia art practice alongside contemporaries such as Yoko Ono. He was 90 years old.

Tone specialized in dadaist and surrealist literature at Tokyo’s Chiba University. Alongside his studies, he played saxophone in experimental bands and, shortly after graduating, formed Group Ongaku with collaborators including Mieko Shiomi and the late Takehisa Kosugi . In New York, he collaborated with the Merce Cunningham Dance Compan