American composer Earle Brown (1926-2002) was a key member of the "New York School" of composers and introduced the graphic score into Western composition with his December 1952 for piano (1952). Starting out in jazz bands and studying the Schillinger system, Brown sought to find methods to facilitate improvisation strategies for classical ensembles and made his discovery while working with John Cage and David Tudor in the Project for Magnetic Tape in the early '50s, where he created Octet for 8 loudspeakers, the first stereophonic tape composition. Brown also worked extensively in education and held visiting professorships at many prestigious universities.