Robert Erickson (1917–1997) was a profound and original musical thinker who embraced the expressive possibilities of all music, from the Western classics and moderns of his own early education to Indian and Balinese traditions and all manner of contemporary experimentation, as long as it served a musical purpose. The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) is widely recognized as the premiere orchestra in the United States dedicated exclusively to commissioning, performing, and recording music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.