Tom Constanten

Known among friends and colleagues as T.C., Tom Constanten wrote orchestral pieces as a teenager while growing up in Las Vegas, Nevada and briefly studied astronomy and music at University of California, Berkeley, where he met future Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh in the summer of 1961. The two became roommates and dropped out; shortly thereafter, they enrolled in a graduate-level course taught by Italian modernist composer Luciano Berio at Mills College. Constanten also studied piano with Mario Feninger. In 1962, he lived in Brussels and Paris, met Umberto Eco, and studied on a scholarship with members of the Darmstadt School, including Berio, Henri Pousseur, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez.\n', '

After briefly rooming with Lesh in Las Vegas and returning to the San Francisco Bay Area, Constanten performed with an improvisational quintet formed by Steve Reich. The group\'s unu…