Composer, ECU member since 2020Born on 10.04.1960
Paul Beaudoin (b. 1960) is an American composer whose creative practice extends into electroacoustic music, sound installation, experimental video, photography, painting, and writing. Based in Tallinn, Estonia, since 2018, his work explores duration, memory, perception, and the expressive relationships between sound, silence, and visual experience.
Educated at the University of Miami, New England Conservatory of Music, and Brandeis University, where he earned his PhD in music theory and composition, Beaudoin developed his early compositional language through an engagement with serialism, structural complexity, and the American experimental tradition. His subsequent work has increasingly explored sustained sonic environments, reduced musical materials, unconventional temporal structures, and the relationship between sound and attentive listening.
A member of the international Wandelweiser collective, Beaudoin writes instrumental, vocal, and electroacoustic music, as well as works incorporating field recordings, transformed sound, and multimedia elements. His music has been commissioned, performed, and recorded internationally by artists and ensembles including Stephen Drury, the Lydian String Quartet, Fenwick Smith, Ian Pace, and Carson Cooman. In 2024, pianist Stephen Drury premiered brook line(s) as part of Piano Spheres’ celebration of the 150th anniversary of Charles Ives.
Beaudoin’s recordings have appeared on WERGO, Edition Wandelweiser Records, and other international labels. His 2026 album bright shining light, performed by organist Carson Cooman and released by Edition Wandelweiser Records, brings together five compositions exploring the organ’s capacity for resonance, sustained intensity, and acoustic transformation.
His interdisciplinary work has attracted recognition through international exhibitions, residencies, and commissions. In 2026, his audiovisual composition Conditional Questioning received joint second place in the FluxusMuseum Prize for Experimental Video in Paros, Greece. He was an artist in residence at the Alice Boner Institute in Varanasi, India, where he developed works subsequently presented in his 2025 solo exhibition who i talk to when you are not here at Vabaduse Gallery in Tallinn.
A Fulbright Fellow in Estonia in 2015, Beaudoin has maintained a sustained engagement with Estonian artistic and intellectual culture. His scholarly writing encompasses contemporary music, visual art, performance, and interdisciplinary aesthetics. Before concentrating on independent artistic practice, he taught composition, music theory, and art at universities and conservatories in the United States and Estonia.
Beaudoin is a member of the Estonian Composers’ Union, the Estonian Artists’ Union, and Wandelweiser.
Additional information: