Bill Dixon was born on 5 October 1925 in Nantucket, Massachusetts, USA. He was a composer, known for Wealth of a Nation (1966) and Imagine the Sound (1981). He died on 16 June 2010 in North Bennington, Vermont, USA.
In 1968, he began teaching at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont in both dance and music departments. In 1973, he established the Black Music Division, a performance-and-theory curriculum of his own devising.