Paul Joseph Dresher (born January 8, 1951) is an American minimalist and postminimalist composer and performer from Los Angeles. Raised in Pacific Palisades, Dresher began building musical instruments and experimenting with electronic sound manipulation in the 1960s. He studied at Mills College with Terry Riley and earned a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, followed by an M.A. from the University of California, San Diego. Dresher founded the Paul Dresher Ensemble and developed invented instruments, including the Quadrachord and Hurdy Grande. He collaborated with Rinde Eckert on various opera and music theater projects. Dresher’s discography featured the albums Liquid and Stellar Music / This Same Temple (1981), Opposites Attract (1991), Dark Blue Circumstance (1993), Casa Vecchia (1995), and Cage Machine (2004). He served on the board of the American Music Center and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006.
