William Allaudin Mathieu, a classically trained pianist, composed and arranged on the staff of the Stan Kenton Orchestra at age 21 and was a co-founding member of the Second City Theater at 22. He studied with William Russo, Easley Blackwood, Pandit Pran Nath, and Hamza El Din and taught on the full-time faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Mills College. A former columnist for Downbeat and Piano Today, he is the author of five books, including The Listening Book and Harmonic Experience, and has released over thirty albums comprising an astonishing range of music. Since the late 1970s he has lived surrounded by woods, pastures, deer, and birds outside of Sebastopol, California, composing, playing the piano, teaching, and being grateful breath by breath for these golden years with Devi.