Walter Olmo

Template:Short description Walter Olmo (28 November 1938, Alba, Piedmont, Italy – 16 May 2019) was an Italian musician and composer.<ref name="Sadler1999">Template:Cite book</ref> In 1957 he wrote Towards a Conception of Musical Experimentation (Pour un concept d'expérimentation musicale). He advocated avant-garde electronic and contemporary music.<ref name="Gazzetta">Template:Cite news</ref> In his 1975 he published the essay La fine della preistoria musicale (The End of Musical Prehistory).<ref name="Gazzetta"/>

He attended the Milan Conservatory graduating in piano and composition. He then studied under Mauricio Kagel, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Christian Wolff and Iannis Xenakis in Darmstadt.<ref name="Gazzetta"/> Then he moved to Accademia Musicale Chigiana, Siena where he studied with Franco Donatoni and Franco Ferrara.<ref name="Gazzetta"/>

With Piero Simondo, Elena Verrone, Michèle Bernstein, Guy Debord, Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio and Asger Jorn, Olmo founded the Situationist International on July 28, 1957. Following a row with Debord, the Italian Section consisting of Olmo, Simondo and Verrone was expelled in January 1958. However he continued to collaborate with Gallizio, providing his "tereminofono", a musical instrument he had devised by adapting a theremin, for Gallizio's first public exhibition of "Industrial Painting" held at the Notizie Gallery, Turin on 30 May 1958.<ref name="Home">Template:Cite book</ref>

During the 1980s, he was a lecturer at the Licinio Refice Conservatory Frosinone.