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Walter Marchetti (21 July 1931 – 12 May 2015) was an Italian composer, avant-garde musician, installation artist, and co-founder of the performance art group ZAJ, which operated from 1964 to 1993. He is recognized as a pioneer of musique concrète and interactive music, having released over ten LP/CD albums from 1974 to 1989 and after 1998. His works ranged from solo compositions for piano and acoustic instruments to field recordings and electro-acoustic soundscapes. Marchetti began his musical journey in his mid-20s after attending composition masterclasses in Milan in 1956, where he befriended Spanish composer Juan Hidalgo, who became his lifelong collaborator. In 1957, he attended the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music but became disillusioned with the formalistic approaches of dodecaphony and serialism. A significant turning point in his career occurred when he met John Cage, whose aleatoric music and emphasis on silence captivated Marchetti. He participated in one of Italy's first international concerts of "random music," Noises at Rotonda, in January 1959, alongside Cage and others. In 1960, Marchetti moved to Spain and joined the Música Abierta society in Barcelona, founded by Hidalgo and other composers. By 1964, he had relocated to Madrid to establish ZAJ, influenced by Fluxus. He and Hidalgo collaborated with various contemporary Spanish thinkers

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