Music Downtown

A collection of the best essays by Kyle Gann, the music critic of the Village Voice, who has specialized in writing about new music for the past 18 years.

Preface: New Music and the Village Voice

xiii

introduction: the importance of being downtown

1

(16)

interviews

17

(56)

Shouting at the Dead: Robert Ashley's Neoplatonist TV Operas

17

(6)

The Part That Doesn't Fit Is Me: Yoko Ono, the Inventor of Downtown

23

(5)

Midtown Avant-Gardist: Philip Glass Sails Columbus into a Clash of Keys and Cultures

28

(5)

Trimpin's Machine Age: A Revolutionary Tinker Revives the Dream of Infinitely Fluid Music

33

(5)

Dancing with the Audience: Carman Moore's Mass Attempts to Heal the World

38

(4)

Harps from Heaven: Glenn Branca Reemerges from the Thick of Theory

42

(8)

Shadowing Capote: Mikel Rouse

50

(5)

The Dance Between: David First

55

(4)

Raising Ghosts: Leroy Jenkins Brings the African Burial Ground to Life

59

(4)

Opera Meets Oprah: Mikel Rouse Hawks Salvation in an Opera for Real People

63

(3)

A Difficult Woman: A Cosmic Piano Concerto from the Outspoken Composer of Vagina

66

(3)

Monkey Business: Fred Ho De-Europeanizes Opera with Martial Arts

69

(4)

music and/versus society

73

(37)

Plundering for Art: Sampling

73

(4)

Mozarts Live! ``Performing Mozart's Music''

77

(2)

Killers in the Audience

79

(2)

Letting Euro Go

81

(3)

What Normal People Hear: Rose Rosengard Subotnik

84

(2)

Dysfunctional Harmony: Repealing the Suppression of Creativity

86

(2)

Don't Touch That Dahl: Classical Radio

88

(2)

Spin It Around: New Music in the Public's Hands

90

(3)

Paradise at Our Fingertips: Voltaire's Bastards

93

(2)

What's Your AQ?

95

(2)

Dump the Multicult

97

(3)

No More Heroes

100

(2)

Music of the Excluded Middle

102

(2)

Medicine Music: The Uses of Art

104

(2)

Who Killed Classical Music? Forget It, Jake---It's Uptown

106

(4)

musical politics

110

(37)

Paradigms Lost: Rhys Chatham/John Zorn

110

(4)

Blurred Out: On Language

114

(2)

Rock Rules: Bandwagonism

116

(4)

Pulitzer Hacks: Amateur Composers versus the Professionals

120

(3)

Composer's Clearinghouse: The Pulitzer Prize

123

(2)

Obitchuaries: Critics Take Their Final Potshots at John Cage

125

(2)

Totally Ismic: Totalism

127

(3)

The Last Barbarian: John Cage

130

(2)

Berlitz's Downtown for Musicians: New-Music Performance

132

(2)

What Are We, Chopped Liver? The New Generation

134

(2)

The Great Divide: Uptown Composers Are Stuck in the Past

136

(4)

Y Not 2K? Nostalgia for Modernism as the Millennium Ends

140

(4)

Ding! Dong! The Witch Is Dead: Modernism Loses Its Grip as the Odometer Turns Over

144

(3)

aesthetics

147

(35)

Let X = X: Minimalism versus Serialism

147

(2)

A Tale of Two Sohos: Plato/Aristotle

149

(2)

A Secret Manifesto: Fred Lerdahl

151

(5)

The Modernist Dance: War in the Brain

156

(4)

It's Only as Good as It Sounds: Richard Rorty

160

(4)

Noises of Fate: You Don't Need a Sampler to Recontextualize

164

(4)

Sounding the Image

168

(2)

Waiting for Monteverdi: Minimalism

170

(2)

Dads versus Shadows: James Hillman

172

(2)

Vexing the Purists: Vexations

174

(3)

Musical Amnesia Cured! Imagism

177

(2)

End of the Paper Trail: Scores

179

(3)

reflections on books, figures, and events

182

(28)

No Shortcuts: John Cage

182

(4)

E.T., Go Home: Tuning

186

(2)

Composing the Lingo: Harry Partch, American Inventor

188

(4)

Morton Feldman's Abstract Expressions

192

(4)

One-Note Wonder: A New York Retrospective for Italy's Saintly Mystic, Giacinto Scelsi

196

(3)

Father of Us All: The Critic as Composer

199

(4)

Minimalism Isn't Pretty: Tony Conrad Makes a Truculent Comeback

203

(4)

Grand Old Youngster: Turning the Century at Lincoln Center

207

(3)

concert reviews

210

(76)

Maximal Spirit: La Monte Young

210

(4)

Big Machines, Little Issues: The 1987 International Computer Music Conference

214

(4)

First Flight: John Adams

218

(2)

Admiring the Waterfall: David Garland

220

(2)

Yawn: R.I.P. Hayman

222

(2)

Searching for the Plague: Diamanda Galas

224

(4)

Oceans without Walls: Laurie Anderson

228

(4)

Insiders, Outsiders, and Old Boys: New Music America '89

232

(4)

Dark Stormy Night: Nicolas Collins

236

(2)

Let There Be Noise: David Rosenboom/Trichy Sankaran

238

(2)

Music in Time of War: The Composer-to-Composer Symposium

240

(4)

Don't Worry, Be Hopi

244

(3)

Enough of Nothing: Postminimalism

247

(4)

Voltage High: Ron Kuivila

251

(2)

Isn't That Spatial? Henry Brant

253

(2)

The Limits of Craft: Frederic Rzewski/Philip Glass

255

(2)

Opera Is Relative: Einstein on the Beach

257

(3)

Well-Tuned Blues: The Forever Bad Blues Band

260

(2)

Voice of the Unutterable: The S.E.M. Ensemble

262

(2)

How Peculiar? The American Eccentrics

264

(2)

Flutes and Flying Branches: The Taos Pueblo Powwow

266

(3)

The Tingle of p x mn -- 1: La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela

269

(2)

The British Don't Have Oral Sex: Now Eleanor's Idea

271

(2)

View from the Gap: Emerging Voices

273

(2)

Bang! Crunch! Who's on First? Twisted Tutu

275

(3)

Regarding Henry: The World's First Multicultural Modernist Conservative Patron Saint of Outsiders

278

(3)

What Our Pulses Say: David Garland

281

(3)

Mistaken Memories: Tony Conrad: One-Idea Composer or Late Bloomer?

284

(2)

passings

286

(13)

Legacy of the Quiet Touch: Morton Feldman, 1926--1987

286

(2)

The Antidote to Publicity: Virgil Thomson, 1896--1989

288

(1)

That Which Is Fundamental: Julius Eastman, 1940--1990

289

(4)

Philosopher No More: John Cage (1912--1992) Quietly Started a Spiritual Revolution

293

(6)

Index

299

What is included with this book?

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

FREE SHIPPING

Amazon no longer offers textbook rentals. We do!

Summary

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials