John Charles Eaton (1935-2015) was a famous composer of large-scale operas, restrained pocket operas, and a pioneer of electronic synthesizer music and unique musical productions. Born in Bryn Mawr, PA, Eaton attended Princeton University, where he earned a bachelor’s and master's degree in the late 1950s. At Princeton, he led a student jazz group named “The Princetonians,” who had two albums released by Columbia Records. Eaton spent a decade in Rome, having won three Prix de Rome fellowships, while also taking part in concert tours with an American jazz quartet. In Rome he performed some of the first live performances using synthesizers. He taught at Indiana University for 20 years, inaugurating their Musical Arts Center and directing their center for electronic and computer music. In 1990 he was awarded the MacArthur Genius Grant, and in 1992 become a professor of composition at the University of Chicago, retiring in 2001. Eaton invented the “Synket,” a type of synthesizer, and embraced electronic music in his experimental productions. His operas were on a large scale but written microtonally, using quarter-tone intervals between the 12 semitones of the western octave. Eaton worked for 20 years with Robert Moog, inventor of Moog synthesizer, together creating the Eaton-Moog Multiple-Touch-Sensitive keyboard. Eaton believed operas should challenge audiences, with is music shunned by major operas as being formidable and inaccessible impenetrable. His technically impressive music found an audience in universities and experimental settings. He died in 2015 after falling on his way to a performance.