Joseph Dillon Ford

Although he focused on keyboard performance during his college years, Ford completed his training at Harvard as a Variell Scholar specializing in historical musicology.

He studied twentieth-century composers and compositional techniques with Ivan Tcherepnin, the works of Bach and Handel with Christoph Wolff, Dowland and the English lutenists with John Ward, and the music of medieval Aquitaine with David Hughes.

Keenly interested in emergent music and telecommunications technologies and the rich potential they offer for international creative collaborations, he also conceived and brought to fruition numerous large-scale projects in which his interdisciplinary artistic background proved to be an especially useful asset.

These include the world's largest sound sculpture, an ongoing Web-based work that commemorates the monumental "Standing Buddhas of Bamiyan" demolished by the Taliban in 2001; the "Westron Wynde" Project (begun in 2004), for which composers in the US, Canada, and the UK each contributed music for James J. Pellerite (former principal flutist of the Philadelphia Orchestra); the Delian Suites Nos.

Ford was the founder of the Delian Society, whose efforts to reinvigorate tonal music attracted many composers and performers on six continents and drew attention to the accomplishments of other outstanding artists.