Table of The Elements

TOTE

Davey Williams – Firing Up The Old Sikorsky / Requiem For Bosnia A Firing Up The Old Sikorsky Other [Electric Screwdriver], Guitar – Davey Williams Recorded By – Gaston Nichols Other [Electric Screwdriver], Guitar – Davey Williams Recorded By – Gaston Nichols B Requiem For Bosnia Electric Guitar [Solo] – Davey William Design, Art Direction – Jon Malic Edited By [Digital Editing] – Gaston Nichols Limited edition of less than 1000 on white vinyl. Numbers stamped with silver ink on inner sleeve. A recorded at Boutwell Studios, Birmingham, Alabama, 5 September 1993. B recorded at Ping Pong Studio, London, England, March 1993. © Davey Williams 1993. Vinyl processing company derived from runouts.

Table Of The Elements – 6 C Guitar Series Vol. 1 American free improvisation and avant-garde guitarist, born 1952. Died April 5, 2019

Thurston Moore – Starfield Wild / Earth/Amp A Starfield Wild B Earth/Amp Design, Art Direction – Jon Malic Electric Guitar [Fender Jazzmaster], Effects [Mutro Wah/Vol, Sovtek Big Muff, Turbo-Rat, Phasetron], Bells – Thurston Moore Recorded By – Butch Vig, John Siket, Sonic Death Edition of approximately 2000 machine-numbered copies. Thurston Moore: Mutro Wah/Vol, Turbo-Rat, Sovtek Big Muff, Phasetron, Fender Jazzmaster, Peavey Roadmaster, Dennis Microphone Console, Earth Speaker/Cabinet, Bells. Recorded late 93 NYC. ©&℗ Thurston Moore, MCMXCIII

	Table Of The Elements – 16 S Sulfur, Table Of The Elements – 32.066 Guitar Series Vol. 2 American guitarist and vocalist born on 25 July 1958 in Coral Gables, Florida and raised in Bethel, Connecticut. He lived in New York City for most of his music career and was taught guitar by Glenn Branca. He has since relocated to Stoke Newington, in the United Kingdom. Thurston Moore is best known as the guitarist and vocalist of Sonic Youth which he co-founded in 1981. In 1984 he married Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon. The couple separated in 2011 and divorced in 2013. In addition to performing music, he also runs the Ecstatic Peace! label.

	Gate – The Dew Line 1 Millions 4:14 2 Needed All Words 11:01 3 Have Not 12:44 4 Autolevel 10:15 5 Venerable Clouds 9:33 6 Dew Line 3:35 7 Triphammer Design, Art Direction – Jon Malic Released in a jewel case, with 4-page booklet. No printed track durations. ℗ & © Gate 1994
	Gate is an alias used by Michael Morley the guitar player of The Dead C.
	Table Of The Elements – 22 Ti, Precious Metal – PM23

Derek Bailey With Min Tanaka – Music And Dance A Rain Dance 27:35 B Saturday Dance Guitar – Derek Bailey Performer [Dance] – Min Tanaka

Table Of The Elements – 40 Zr Born: January, 29th, 1930 (Sheffield). Dead: December, 25th, 2005 (London). Derek Bailey was one of the most influential and adventurous experimental guitarist to come from England, evolving out of the trad-jazz scene of the fifties into the avant/jazz scene in '60s London. By the late sixties he was a member of the Joseph Holbrooke Trio, Spontaneous Music Ensemble and Music Improvisation Company which later became the amorphous Company under his leadership. These groups were at the birth and center of the British free-jazz scene. Derek Bailey and Evan Parker started their own record label called Incus Records in the early seventies, one of the first artist-run outfits. Although Derek played with the best members of the British free/jazz scene, he also forged relationships with a number of European players like Han Bennink & Peter Brötzmann, Japanese free players like Abe Kaoru, Toshinori Kondo, as well as American improvisers like Anthony Braxton, George Lewis and John Zorn to name a few. Derek organized an annual festival called Company Week in the 80's & 90's, which brought together a unique group of international improvisers from varied backgrounds.

Tony Conrad – Four Violins (1964) Composed By, Liner Notes [Texts] – Tony Conrad Design, Art Direction – Jeff Hunt Photography By [1965] – Frederick Eberstad Recorded: 19 December 1964. © ℗ Tony Conrad 1964/1996. Gatefold. First pressing comes with a poster of a Chicago performance: Festival No. 2 "Yttrium", Nov 1996

Table Of The Elements – 17 Cl

American avant-garde video artist, experimental filmmaker, composer, sound artist and violinist born in 1940 in Concord, New Hampshire; died 9 April 2016. One of the pioneers of the minimalist and drone music, he is well-known for his concept and execution of "Eternal Music".

Anthony Schmalz Conrad (March 7, 1940 – April 9, 2016) was an American video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician, composer, sound artist, teacher, and writer. Active in a variety of media since the early 1960s, he was a pioneer of both drone music and structural film.^[2] As a musician, he was an important figure in the New York minimalist scene of the early 1960s, during which time he performed as part of the Theatre of Eternal Music (along with John Cale, La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, and others).^[3] He became recognized as a filmmaker for his 1966 film The Flicker. He performed and collaborated with a wide range of artists over the course of his career.

Biography

Early life

Conrad was born in Concord, New Hampshire, to Mary Elizabeth Parfitt and Arthur Emil Conrad, and raised in Baldwin, Maryland and Northern Virginia.^[1] His father worked with Everett Warner during World War II in designing dazzle camouflage for the United States Navy.^[4] Conrad's high school violin lessons with symphony violist Ronald Knudsen introduced him to just intonation and double stop playing.^[5] After briefly studying violin at Baltimore's Peabody Conservatory, Conrad graduated from Harvard University in 1962 with a degree in mathematics.^[1][6] While studying at Harvard, Conrad was exposed to the ideas of experimental composers John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen. After working as a computer programmer, Conrad became involved in New York City's avant-garde arts scene.^[1]

1960s[edit]

After moving to New York, Conrad became an early member of La Monte Young's Theatre of Eternal Music alongside John Cale, Angus MacLise, and Marian Zazeela.^[7] The Theatre of Eternal Music utilized just intonation and drones to produce what the group called "dream music"; Conrad's mathematical knowledge contributed to the Theatre's systematization of just intervals, and he also encouraged the ensemble to adopt electronic amplification.^[1][8] Conrad would later leave the Theatre in a dispute over Young's attempt to assert more deliberate compositional influence over their performances and refusal to grant him or Cale shared credit for the ensemble's music or access to its recordings, and in 1990 protested a concert by his former bandleader with a manifesto titled "Composer La Monte Young Does Not Understand 'His' Work" outlining his grievances and accusing Young of "orientalism and [a] romanticized personality cult mark[ing] him among the most regressive of contemporary artists."^[9]

In 1963, he joined his former Harvard classmate and Fluxus associate Henry Flynt in his anti-art demonstrations against "elitist" New York cultural institutions.^[10]

In 1964, Conrad and Cale were recruited by Pickwick Records to serve as a backing band, The Primitives, to perform the Lou Reed-penned single "The Ostrich"/"Sneaky Pete". Conrad and Cale played guitar and bass, Walter de Maria played percussion, and Reed sang. Conrad and Cale's instruments were tuned to Reed's "Ostrich tuning", with every string the same pitch class. After the Primitives disbanded, Cale and Reed formed The Velvet Underground.^[11] Conrad was indirectly responsible for the name of The Velvet Underground, although he was never a member of the group; after moving into Conrad's old apartment on Ludlow Street in New York City, Reed and Cale found a copy of The Velvet Underground which Conrad had left in the apartment, and took its name for the band.^[12]

1970s

Conrad's first musical release under his own name was a collaboration with Faust, Outside the Dream Syndicate, released by Caroline in 1973. This remains his best known musical work and is considered a classic of minimalist music and drone music.^[1][13]

One of Conrad's early films was Coming Attractions, which was released in 1970. This film led indirectly to the founding of Syntonic Research and the Environments series of natural sound recordings.^[1]

Yellow Movies was a project of Conrad's in 1973 of twenty "movies" consisting of rectangular borders painted in black house paint on large pieces of photographic paper, effectively framing each sizable expanse of emulsion whereby the physical aging and transformation of the emulsion itself would constitute a definitively slow-motion moving picture over such an extended period of time.^[14]

Conrad began to work in video and performance in the 1970s as a professor at Antioch College, where he replaced the filmmaker Paul Sharits. In 1976, Conrad joined the faculty at the Center for Media Studies at the University at Buffalo.^[15] While in Buffalo, Conrad was part of a scene that included Sharits, as well as Hollis Frampton, Steina and Woody Vasulka, Peter Weibel, James Blue, Cathy Steffan and Gerald O'Grady. Their practices in film, video, performance, and other forms were documented in the 2008 book Buffalo Heads: Media Study, Media Practice, Media Pioneers, 1973–1990, edited by Vasulka and Weibel.^[16]

In the mid-1970s, Conrad began performing film. With Sukiyaki Film he decided that the film should be prepared immediately before viewing. Sukiyaki was chosen as the paradigm for the work because it is a dish often cooked immediately before eating, in front of the diners. Conrad cooked sukiyaki in front of an audience: egg, meat, vegetables, and 16mm film; and literally "projected" onto the screen behind him.^[17]

Later life[edit]

Table of the Elements released a number of Conrad's archival recordings in the 1990s and 2000s, including Four Violins (1964),^[1] Fantastic Glissando, and Joan of Arc.^[18] Slapping Pythagoras, an album of new music commissioned by Table of the Elements, was recorded with Jim O'Rourke and Steve Albini at Electrical Audio and released in 1995.^[19] Early Minimalism, Vol. 1, released in 1997, was an attempt to reconstruct the sound of Theatre of Eternal Music recordings withheld by La Monte Young.^[20] He also issued two archival CDs featuring the work of late New York filmmaker Jack Smith, with whom he was associated in the 1960s.^[21]

Conrad collaborated with artists such as Charlemagne Palestine,^[22] Genesis P-Orridge, Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke, David Grubbs, C Spencer Yeh, Tovah Olson, MV Carbon, and numerous others.^[23] Conrad was chosen by Animal Collective to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival that they curated in May 2011.^[24] In 2012 Conrad was part of the line-up of the touring avant-garde festival Sonic Protest that took place in five cities in France.^[25] In 2013 Conrad visited Genoa to open his first solo exhibition in Italy.^[26]

Conrad's work has been shown at many museums including the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA PS1, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; the Louvre in Paris; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles; and many others.^[27] Specifically, his film The Flicker was included in the Whitney Museum of American Art's exhibition, The American Century; he participated in the 2006 Whitney Biennial; and one of his Yellow Paintings was featured in the museum's 2015–2016 exhibition "Collected by Thea Westreich Wagner and Ethan Wagner."^[28]

Conrad's artwork is represented by Greene Naftali Gallery in New York City,^[29] and by Galerie Buchholz in Germany.^[30]

Conrad had been a faculty member in the State University of New York at Buffalo since 1976, and continued to teach there in the Department of Media Study until his death.^[6][31] Several of his students at Buffalo formed the indie rock band Mercury Rev in 1989.^[32]

Death

Conrad died at a hospice in Cheektowaga, New York, on April 9, 2016, after fighting prostate cancer.^[6][33]

Partial discography

• Outside the Dream Syndicate (with Faust) (Caroline, 1973)
• Slapping Pythagoras (Table of the Elements, 1995)
• The Japanese Room at La Pagode / May (split with Gastr del Sol) (Table of the Elements, 1995)
• Four Violins (1964) (Table of the Elements, 1996)
• Early Minimalism Volume One (Table of the Elements, 1997)
• Inside the Dream Syndicate Volume I: Day of Niagara (with John Cale, Angus MacLise, La Monte Young, and Marian Zazeela) (Table of the Elements, [Recorded 1965] 2000)
• Fantastic Glissando (Table of the Elements, 2003)
• Joan of Arc (Table of the Elements, [Recorded 1968] 2006)
• An Aural Symbiotic Mystery (with Charlemagne Palestine) (Sub Rosa, 2006)
• Taking Issue (with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge) (Dais Records, 2009)
• XXX Macarena (with Jutta Koether and John Miller) (From the Nursery and Primary Information, 2010)
• Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain (Superior Viaduct, 2017)^[34]

References

Keiji Haino - Guitar Works I-VIII Label:Table Of The Elements - 12 Mg, Table Of The Elements - TOE-SS-12 Series:Guitar Series Vol. 2 - Format:Vinyl, 7", 45 RPM, Limited Edition Country:US Released:1944 Genre:Electronic Style:Experimental Tracklist A1 I A2 II A3 III A4 IV B1 V B2 VI B3 VII B4 VIII Credits Design, Art Direction- Jon Malic Guitar- Keiji Haino Notes Recorded January 1994, Tokyo, Japan. Limited edition of less than 1000 copies. Born 1952 in Chiba, Japan and currently residing in Tokyo, is a Japanese musician and singer-songwriter whose work has included rock, free improvisation, noise music, percussion, psychedelic music, minimalism and drone music. He has been active since the 1970s and continues to record regularly and in new styles.

RLW - Pullover Label:Table Of The Elements - 32 Ge Format:CD, Album Country:US Released:1996 Genre:Electronic Style:Abstract, Experimental Tracklist 1 Atmosphere Voice [Sound Material] - Stefan E. Schmidt 6:50 2 Beziehung Voice [Sound Material] - David Grubbs, Jim O'Rourke, Johann Simon Schmid-Paede, Stefan E. Schmidt 4:03 3 Autos Voice [Sound Material] - Markus Caspers, Ralf Wehowsky 3:33 4 Atmosphare Voice [Sound Material] - Danielle Sklar, Karla Borecky, Rudolf Ebner* 5:30 5 Travel Voice [Sound Material] - Francisco Lopez*, Ralf Wehowsky 9:04 6 Reise Voice [Sound Material] - Christian Renou, Kimihide Kusafuka, Markus Caspers 4:13 7 Relation Voice [Sound Material] - Anne-Julie Rollet, Johann Simon Schmid-Paede, Jerome Noetinger*, Karla Borecky, Scott Foust 5:42 8 Cars Voice [Sound Material] - Dorothea Conradi, Johann Simon Schmid-Paede 5:18 Credits Composed By- Ralf Wehowsky Design [Cd Design]- Jeff Hunt Liner Notes [English Translation By]- David Grubbs, Markus Caspers Producer [Post-production]- Bernhard Gunter, Ralf Wehowsky Text By [Texts]- Markus Caspers Notes All Texts (1993-95) by Markus Casper, all compositions c. and p. Ralf Wehowsky 1995. The texts were sent to artists all over the globe to record interpretations. All recordings were to be in German, independent from the interpreter's native language. These recordings were used by Ralf Wehowsky to compose this CD's track. All texts are presented both in a semantic and an abstract version. The participants' voices -- in their recording situation -- were the only sound sources to be used.

Ralf Wehowsky is one in a growing group of non-academic sound artists whose work is abstract, but very focused on the possibilities of sound and very rewarding over repeated listenings and different works. Although he started his musical career in the post-industrial scene, his musical output in the '90s resists categorization as well as casual listening. His sonic interests are wide, but it is perhaps his pursuit of the transformation of simple materials that distinguishes him from his colleagues. On one of his albums, When Freezing Air Stings Like Ice, a common set of parameters is the foundation for all seven pieces, but the parameters that create the pitch curve for one track create the volume curve for another, and so forth. Thus, a common foundation becomes the generative force for a vastly different collection of pieces. His album Tulpas took the concept of transformation even further by inviting several other sound artists to participate in the process, creating a reflection and commentary on his own work unparalleled in contemporary music.

Wehowsky was born in 1959 in Mainz, Germany. In the '70s, his musical interests ranged from hard rock (the Stooges, Black Sabbath) to prog rock (Henry Cow, Faust), and free jazz (Ornette Coleman, Peter Brötzmann) to new music (Stockhausen, Pierre Henry). He became disillusioned with rock because it stopped being challenging and was too much entertainment, but shared a brief interest with punk because of its revolt against mainstream art. His earliest recorded work was with the post-industrial group Permutative Distortion (later called P.D. and finally recording as P16.D4), and in 1981, Wehowsky and his colleagues formed the collective Selektion, whose members worked in both acoustic and optical arenas. The culmination of P16.D4's recording career was a double LP, entitled Nichts Niemand Nirgends Nie!, released in 1986. This album already shows Wehowsky's interest in repeated transformations of a given set of material. It included two studio sides (one by P16.D4 and the other by many of the same musicians in a different project, S.B.O.T.H.I.), a side of live presentation of the same material, and a final side of specific transformations of the previous three sides. Although this album has not been specifically reissued, it has been used as source material for two CDs in the '90s, and has even been used on a collaborative CD released in 1999.

In 1992, Wehowsky released his first solo album under the name RLW. Most of his output in the '90s was collaborative, but he did release four additional solos (see discography below). His work in the '90s culminated in a five-CD set, Tulpas, where he invited several leading sound artists from all over the world to participate in a transformative process that took two years to complete. The participants themselves chose how to proceed, whether to use a structural approach or an emotive affect, or simply to do a remix. He sometimes transformed the pieces even after delivery in order to create a more perfect whole. Far more than a simple remix project, Tulpas is a model of collaborative transformation as well as a complex overarching vision.

Short discographic essay
Ralf Wehowsky has released the solo works Acht (1992), the manifesto of his electronic and computer music, 14 (1992), that collects unreleased material of the last decade, Revu et Corrige` (Trente Oiseaux, 1995), When Freezing Air Stings Like Ice I Shall Breathe Again (Streamline, 1995), and the mini-album Nameless Victims (Metamkine, 1996). They explore the technique of having musicians exchange sound material and re-composing it. By pushing the concept to the extreme, the monumental Tulpas (Selektion, 1997) is virtually an essay on his work compiled by other musicians. Pullover (Table of the Elements, 1998), which uses voice as its source material, L'Oeil Retourne/Vier Vorspiele (Selektion, 1998), with Walter Marchetti, Yang-Tul (Anomalous, 1999), with Andrew Chalk, Cases (Selektion, 2001), with Kevin Drumm, simply refined the technique taking advantage of computers

Bernhard Gunter - Details Agrandis Label:Table Of The Elements - 34 Se Format:CD, Album, Reissue Country:US Released:1998 Genre:Electronic Style:Musique Concrete, Minimal Tracklist 1 Four Grey Paintings 23:02 2 Stone Circles 21:29 3 Ecriture Automatique 21:34 Credits Composed By- Bernhard Gunter Notes Four Grey Paintings (for Jim O'Rourke) Stone Circles (for Richard Long) Ecriture Automatique (for Giancarlo Toniutti) Originally released in 1994 by Selektion as SCD 018 Other Versions (Showing 3 of 3) Title, Format Label Cat# Country Year Details Agrandis -(CD, Album) Selektion SCD 018 Germany 1994 Details Agrandis -(3xFile, FLAC, Album, RE, RM) Trente Oiseaux TOC086 2008 Details Agrandis -(CDr, Album, RE, RM)

Born 1957, in Neuwied, Germany, Bernhard Günter began playing drums at 12, switching mostly to the electric guitar at 17. In 1980, he moved to Paris to study contemporary compositional techniques at RCAM and College de France and work in the libraries of IRCAM and Centre Pompidou. While he lived in Pairs, he would work with the Ensemble Choreographique de Vitry several times, providing music for performances. In 1986 he returned to germany where, in 1987, he began to work on his first compositions for computer music, releasing his first cd, "un peu de neige salie," in 1992, after 4 years of preparation and one year of work, releasing a second cd, "détails agrandis"shortly after. In 1995 he founded the label Trente Oiseaux to release his own work and that of similar artists.
Since the mid 90s, he has played concerts all over the world. His music is regularly played (in absentia of the composer) at the Futura Festival de musique acousmatique in Crest, France, and "the ant moves / the black and yellow carcass / a little closer" has received one of twelve Honorable Mentions at the 1999 Prix Ars Electronica.

Bernhard remains active as a performer and recording artist, largely switching from composing to improvising. After briefly working with the trio +minus and the duo Klangstaub, he now performs with the duo brachklang and as a solo improviser, mainly on soprano and alto saxophone, alto clarinet and electric guitar, all combined with live electronics.

An updated biography and a full discography can be found on his website.

John Fahey - Womblife Label:Table Of The Elements - 37 Rb Format:CD, Album Country:US US Released:1997 Genre:Rock Style:Acoustic, Avantgarde Tracklist 1 Sharks 9:20 2 Planaria 9:54 3 Eels 6:13 4 Coelacanths 7:28 5 Juana 12:34 Companies etc Recorded At- Steam Room Credits Composed By- John Fahey Design, Art Direction [Direction]- Jeff Hunt Guitar- John Fahey Layout- Susan Archie Other [Strings Provided By]- John Pearse Photography By- Bettina Herzner Producer, Recorded By- Jim O'Rourke Notes Recording and production: Steam Room, Chicago November 1996

 Born on February 28 1939 in Takoma Park, Maryland, USA, John Fahey was an acoustic guitar pioneer, who studied folklore and the techniques of the bluesmen. He is the man who introduced stream of consciousness into folk music and turned folk into classical music, and then made it cross the boundaries of Western and Eastern music. The spiritual father of the "American primitive guitar", Fahey turned the guitar solo into a metaphysical exercise. He set up Takoma Records in 1959 to release not only his own albums but also Leo Kottke's "6 & 12 String Guitar" (1971), an artist with whom he later also collaborated.
Fahey contracted the debilitating Epstein-Barr virus in 1986, which severely hampered his career for over 5 years. During this low period, he was championed by alternative artists such as Sonic Youth and Jim O'Rourke, and 'Spin' magazine included a large article on him by Byron Coley in 1994. The albums "City of Refuge" (Tim Kerr, 1997) and "Womblife" (Table Of Elements, 1997) marked his return to recording, showcasing a move into avant-garde, experimental, dissonant electric guitar music, far from his previous progressive-folk style.


John Aloysius Fahey (/ˈfeɪhi/ FAY-hee;^[1] February 28, 1939 – February 22, 2001) was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who played the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been enormously influential and has been described as the foundation of the genre of American primitive guitar, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the self-taught nature of the music and its minimalist style. Fahey borrowed from the folk and blues traditions in American roots music, having compiled many forgotten early recordings in these genres. He would later incorporate 20th-century classical, Portuguese, Brazilian, and Indian influences into his work.^[2]

Fahey spent many of his later years in poverty and poor health, but enjoyed a minor career resurgence in the late 1990s, with a turn towards the avant-garde. He also created a series of abstract paintings in his final years. Fahey died in 2001 from complications from heart surgery. In 2003, he was ranked 35th on Rolling Stone magazine's "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" list.^[3] In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked Fahey as 40th greatest guitarist of all time.^[4]

Life and career

Early years: 1939–1959

Fahey was born into a musical household in Washington, D.C. in 1939.^[5] Both his father, Aloysius John Fahey, and his mother, Jane (née Cooper), played the piano. In 1945, the family moved to the Washington suburb of Takoma Park, Maryland, where his father lived until his death in 1994. On weekends, the family attended performances of the top country and bluegrass acts of the day, but it was hearing Bill Monroe's version of Jimmie Rodgers' "Blue Yodel No. 7" on the radio that ignited the young Fahey's passion for music.^[6]

In 1952, after being impressed by guitarist Frank Hovington, whom he met while on a fishing trip, he purchased his first guitar for $17 from a Sears, Roebuck Catalog. Along with his budding interest in the guitar, Fahey was attracted to record-collecting. While his tastes ran mainly in the bluegrass and country vein, Fahey discovered his love of early blues upon hearing Blind Willie Johnson's "Praise God I'm Satisfied" on a record-collecting trip to Baltimore with his friend and mentor, the musicologist Richard K. Spottswood. Much later, Fahey compared the experience to a religious conversion; he remained a devout disciple of the blues for the rest of his life.^[6]

As his guitar-playing and composing progressed, Fahey developed a style that blended the picking patterns he discovered on old blues 78s with the dissonance of 20th-century classical composers he loved, such as Charles Ives and Béla Bartók. In 1958, Fahey made his first recordings. These were for his friend Joe Bussard's amateur Fonotone label and were recorded under both the pseudonym "Blind Thomas" and under his own name. These recordings, individually pressed in very small runs, were reissued in 2011 as a box set under the title Your Past Comes Back To Haunt You: The Fonotone Years 1958–1965.^[7]

In 1959, Fahey recorded at St. Michaels and All Angels Church in Adelphi, Maryland, and that material would become the first Takoma record. Having no idea how to approach professional record companies and being convinced they would be uninterested, Fahey decided to issue his first album himself, using some cash saved from his gas station attendant job at Martin's Esso and some borrowed from Donald W. Seaton, an Episcopal priest at St. Michaels and All Angels. Thus was born Takoma Records, named in honor of his hometown.^[8] One hundred copies of this first album were pressed.^[9] On one side of the sleeve was the name "John Fahey"; on the other, "Blind Joe Death"—a humorous nickname given to him by his fellow blues fans. He attempted to sell these albums himself. Some he gave away, some he snuck into thrift stores and blues sections of local record shops, and some he sent to folk music scholars, a few of whom were fooled into thinking that there really was a living old blues singer called Blind Joe Death. It took three years for Fahey to sell the remainder of the records.^{[citation needed]}

After graduating from American University with a degree in philosophy and religion, Fahey moved to California in 1963 to study philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. Arriving on campus, Fahey, ever the outsider, began to feel dissatisfied with the program's curriculum. He later suggested that studying philosophy had been a mistake and that what he had wanted to understand was really psychology. He was equally unimpressed with Berkeley's post-Beat Generation, proto-hippie music scene, loathing in particular the Pete Seeger–inspired folk-music revivalists he found himself classed with. Eventually, Fahey moved south to Los Angeles to join UCLA's folklore master's program at the invitation of department head D. K. Wilgus, and received an M.A. in folklore in 1966. Fahey's master's thesis on the music of Charley Patton was later published by Studio Vista in 1970.^[2][7] He completed it with the musicological assistance of his friend Alan Wilson, who later joined Canned Heat.^[10]

1960s and early 1970s

While Fahey lived in Berkeley, Takoma Records was reborn through a collaboration with Maryland friend ED Denson. Fahey decided to track down blues legend Bukka White by sending a postcard to Aberdeen, Mississippi; White had sung that Aberdeen was his hometown, and Mississippi John Hurt had been rediscovered using a similar method. When White responded, Fahey and ED Denson decided to travel to Memphis and record White. These recordings became the first non-Fahey Takoma release. Fahey released a second album on the label in late 1963, Death Chants, Breakdowns and Military Waltzes. To the duo's surprise, the Fahey release sold better than White's, and Fahey had the beginnings of a career.^{[citation needed]}

His releases during the mid-1960s employed odd guitar tunings and sudden shifts in style firmly rooted in the old-time and blues stylings of the 1920s. But he was not simply a copyist, as compositions such as "When the Catfish Is in Bloom" or "Stomping Tonight on the Pennsylvania/Alabama Border" demonstrate. Fahey described the latter piece as follows:

The opening chords are from the last movement of Vaughan Williams' Sixth Symphony. It goes from there to a Skip James motif. Following that it moves to a Gregorian chant, "Dies Irae". It's the most scary one in the Episcopal hymn books, it's all about the day of judgment. Then it returns to the Vaughan Williams chords, followed by a blues run of undetermined origin, then back to Skip James and so forth.

A hallmark of his classic releases was the inclusion of lengthy liner notes, parodying those found on blues releases.^{[citation needed]}

In the later half of the 1960s, Fahey continued to issue material through Takoma as well as Vanguard Records, which had signed him along with similar instrumental folk guitarists Sandy Bull and Peter Walker. Albums from this period, such as Days Have Gone By, The Voice of the Turtle, Requia, and The Yellow Princess, found Fahey making sound collages from such elements as gamelan music, Tibetan chanting, animal and bird cries and singing bridges. In 1967, Fahey recorded with Texas psych-rock trio The Red Crayola at the 1967 Berkeley Folk Festival, music that resurfaced on the 1998 Drag City release The Red Krayola: Live 1967. The Red Crayola subsequently recorded an entire studio album with Fahey, but the Red Crayola's label demanded possession of the tapes and recorded documentation of those sessions has been missing ever since.^{[citation needed]}

He married his first wife Jan in 1969, traveling back to Maryland for his nuptials. During the spring of 1969, Fahey performed several East Coast shows, including several nights at the world renowned Cellar Door in Georgetown. In the summer, he toured the South and appeared at the Memphis Country Blues Festival on June 6 and 7th.

In addition to his own creative output, Fahey expanded the Takoma label, discovering fellow guitarists Leo Kottke, Robbie Basho, Bola Sete^[12] and Peter Lang, as well as an emerging pianist in George Winston. Kottke's debut release on the label, 6- and 12-String Guitar, ultimately proved to be the most successful of the crop, selling more than 500,000 copies. Other artists with albums on the label included Mike Bloomfield, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Maria Muldaur, Michael Gulezian, and Canned Heat. In 1979, Fahey sold Takoma to Chrysalis Records.^[2] Jon Monday, who had been the general manager of the label since 1970, was the only employee to go with the new company. Chrysalis eventually sold the rights to the albums, and Takoma was in limbo until bought by Fantasy Records in 1995.^[8]

Later years

By the mid-1970s, Fahey's output had abated and he had begun to suffer from a drinking problem. He lost his home in the dissolution of his first marriage, remarried, divorced again, and moved to Salem, Oregon, in 1981 to live with his third wife, Melody. He soon met Portland guitarist Terry Robb who would serve as his producer, arranger and accompanist on several albums for Varrick, a subsidiary of Rounder Records.^[13] In 1986, Fahey contracted Epstein-Barr syndrome, a long-lasting viral infection, which exacerbated his diabetes and other health problems.^[14][15] He continued to perform in and around the Salem area, and was managed by friends David Finke and his wife Pam. The trio attempted to keep Fahey's career afloat through radio appearances and performances at small venues. Fahey broke up with his third wife, and his life began to spiral downward. He made what appeared to be his last album in 1990. Although he had recovered from Epstein-Barr syndrome after five years, he would spend much of the early 1990s living in poverty, mostly in cheap motels. Gigs had dried up because of his health problems. He paid his rent by pawning guitars and reselling rare records he found in thrift stores.^[14][15]

Following a 1994 entry on Fahey in Spin magazine's spin-off Alternative Record Guide, Fahey learned that he now had a whole new audience, which included the alternative bands Sonic Youth and Cul de Sac and the avant-garde musician Jim O'Rourke. A lengthy article in Spin magazine by Byron Coley, "The Persecutions and Resurrections of Blind Joe Death",^[16] combined with a two-disc retrospective, The Return of the Repressed, revived Fahey's career. New releases started to appear rapidly, alongside reissues, by Fantasy Records, of all the early Takoma releases.^[7][15] O'Rourke went on to produce a Fahey album, Womblife, in 1997. That same year, Fahey recorded an album with Cul de Sac, The Epiphany of Glenn Jones, named for the band's lead guitarist.

Fahey's passion for traditional folklore did not subside. After the death of his father in 1995, Fahey used his inheritance to form another label, Revenant Records, to focus on reissuing obscure recordings of early blues, old-time music, and anything else that took his fancy.^[6] In 1997, Revenant issued its first crop of releases, including albums by the British guitarist Derek Bailey, the American pianist Cecil Taylor, Jim O'Rourke, bluegrass pioneers The Stanley Brothers, old-time banjo legend Dock Boggs, Rick Bishop of Sun City Girls, and the slide guitarist Jenks "Tex" Carman. The label's most famous release would prove to be Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton, a seven-disc retrospective of Charley Patton and his contemporaries. It won three Grammy awards in 2003. Fahey, for his part, won a Grammy in 1997 for his contributions to the liner notes of Revenant's Anthology of American Folk Music, Vol. 4.^[17]

In February 2001, six days before his 62nd birthday, Fahey died at Salem Hospital after undergoing a sextuple coronary bypass.^[18] In 2006, no fewer than four Fahey tribute albums were released as a testament to his reputation as a "giant of 20th century American music".^[19]

Paintings

During the later years of his life, Fahey painted a series of abstract paintings. Many of these were exhibited from July 10 to September 12, 2010, at The East Village, New York, presented by John Andrew and Audio Visual Arts (AVA).^[20] The exhibit featured 55 paintings, ranging in size from 6.75" by 9" to 22" by 29". The "sale sheet" for the exhibit listed prices from $750 for smaller works to $3,000 for the large paintings. The paintings were either framed or unframed. AVA described Fahey's paintings as follows:

Pulling inspiration from the 'French Primitive', untutored painters, Fahey often referred to his music as 'American Primitive'. The same alluring, raw, roots, mysterious, power, grit, obscure, industrial, ambient, epic, and tranquilizing aesthetics that one finds in Faheys music and his writings are equally present in his paintings. The 90s proved to be a decade of regeneration for Fahey. Though he struggled with certain health problems, he was brimming with experimentation. Collaborating with noise artists and improvisational performers of the alternative movement, Fahey began to channel a new outlet for experimentation which included his return to painting; a hobby he abandoned when he took up the guitar. Fahey's works are evocative of action painters and abstract expressionists. He painted on found poster board and discarded spiral notebook paper. His painting studio floated from motel bed to motel bed and eventually ended up on the bed of his rental home in Salem, OR; occasionally painting with anti-freeze in the garage. He worked with tempera, acrylic, spray paint, and magic marker.^[21]

Several of Fahey's paintings were sold on eBay by Michael R. Karn in July 2001. Karn attested,

John brought [these paintings] into the used book store I owned and operated, Balcony Books, located at 108 SW Third Street in Corvallis, Oregon, in December 1998. John had been shopping and trading with me for several years. I originally became acquainted with him several years earlier when I operated a similar store in Salem, Oregon, where John lived at the time. John often brought in books or records he had scouted, and exchanged them for books and records from our stock. He also generously signed several records and posters from my personal collection for me, and even performed a couple of in-store concerts.^{[citation needed]}

Karn said he received several paintings "directly from John in exchange for a large collection of Duke Ellington records which I had recently obtained. He had recently taken up painting as a creative outlet. He was aware the paintings could be sold some day, even though he himself would not sell his paintings, but he understood the nature of the used book and record business, and gave his blessing to me to sell them in the store if I wished. I never did sell a painting in store, but recently [sold several] through auction at ebay."^[22]

Documentaries

Starting work in 2007, filmmaker Marc Minsker produced a 30-minute documentary on Fahey's life entitled John Fahey: The Legacy of Blind Joe Death. It chronicles Fahey's early life in Takoma Park, and his success as a guitarist and record producer in California. It also follows Fahey through his dark days in Salem, and ends with commentary on his contributions to American music. The film premiered at the Takoma Park Film Festival on Friday, May 7, 2010. The screening was accompanied by a live performance and discussion with Fahey's friend, the guitarist Peter Lang.^[23]

A feature-length documentary directed by James Cullingham, In Search of Blind Joe Death: The Saga of John Fahey, was released in 2013.^[24]

Discography

Written works

• Fahey, John (1966). A Textual and Musicological Analysis of the Repertoire of Charley Patton (MA). University of California, Los Angeles. LCCN 67003863. OCLC 1137380.
• Fahey, John (2020) [1970]. Charley Patton. Dover Publications. ISBN 9780486843445. LCCN 70548903. OCLC 1122922310.
• Fahey, John (2000). How bluegrass music destroyed my life : stories. Chicago: Drag City Incorporated. ISBN 9780965618328. LCCN 99075130. OCLC 44903282.
• Fahey, John (2003) [2003]. Vampire vultures. Chicago: Drag City. ISBN 9780965618373. OCLC 56846589.

References

External links

• Official website 
• Blind Joe Death Memorial Site (2013 archive)
• John Fahey at AllMusic
• John Fahey at IMDb
• John Fahey Tribute by Nels Cline
• The Cosmos Club: Turtle sex, chiropractic death, and peyote under the pillow:a year-by-year account of American primitive guitar, by David Dunlap Jr., Washington City Paper
• D. K. Wilgus Folksong Archive (Collection 2002.03) – hosted by the UCLA Digital Library.
• Doan, John. "John Fahey". The Oregon Encyclopedia.
  

Carl Michael Von Hausswolff‎– Basic Label:Table Of The Elements ‎– 42 Mo, Table Of The Elements ‎– TOE-CD-42, Edition . . . ‎– edition . . . ii Format:CD CD, Album Country:US Released:23 Mar 1999 Genre:Electronic Style:Noise, Minimal, Experimental Tracklist 1 Rotterdam Canaries Or A General Attempt To Conquer A Specific Model Of Migration 7:12 2 Kaliningrad Cake Or One Simple Way To Re-Establish A Disfunctional Output By Means Of Pre-Tension And Re-Formation 7:00 3 Hamburg Fatigue Or Tiny Movements Make A Mind Less Static 15:31 4 Stockholm Slumber Or Exchange Of Mental, Physical And Un-Detected Substances Of Known And Un-Known Matter During A Period Of Four Nights 9:24 Notes Packaged in a jewel-case with a series of five transparent, silkscreened mylar cover inserts, and a printed, transparent tray-card. Edition of less than 1000 copies.

Swedish composer, visual artist and curator, born 13 October 1956 in Linköping, Sweden. Ex-husband of Annika Söderholm. Father of Maria Von Hausswolff and Anna von Hausswolff. He lives and works in Stockholm, and had since the end of the 70s worked as a composer using the tape recorder as his main instrument.
He has often collaborated with other artists (such as Erik Pauser, Leif Elggren, Andrew McKenzie, Johan Söderberg, Zbigniew Karkowski, Graham Lewis, David Jackman, Jean-Louis Huhta and Kim Cascone). He devised the concept and is the curator of the Freq_Out sound collective. Hausswolff's audiovisual works have also found outlets in pictorial art.

On the 27th of May 1992 at 12 Noon GMT, alongside Leif Elggren, he proclaimed the Kingdom of Elgaland-Vargaland, a new country established as a work of art.

For the singer, pianist, organist and songwriter, see Anna von Hausswolff

Carl Michael von Hausswolff (born 1956) is a composer, visual artist, and curator based in Stockholm, Sweden. His main tools are recording devices (camera, tape deck, radar, sonar) used in an ongoing investigation of electricity, frequency, architectural space, and paranormal electronic interference. Major exhibitions include Manifesta (1996), documenta X (1997), the Johannesburg Biennial (1997), Sound Art - Sound as Media at ICC in Tokyo (2000), the Venice Biennale (2001, 2003, and 2005), and Portikus, Frankfurt (2004). Von Hausswolff received a Prix Ars Electronica award for Digital Music in 2002.

Von Hausswolff was born in Linköping. He is an expert in the work of Friedrich Jürgenson, an electronic voice phenomenon (EVP) researcher who claimed to have detected voices of the dead hidden in radio static. Von Hausswolff's own sound works are pure, intuitive studies of electricity, frequency, and tone. Collaborators include Erik Pauser, with whom he worked as Phauss (1981-1993), Leif Elggren, and John Duncan (artist). He also collaborates with EVP researcher Michael Esposito, filmmaker Thomas Nordanstad, and with Graham Lewis (Wire) and Jean-Louis Huhta in the band OSCID.

Von Hausswolff is noted for creating sound works that "charge the air with subliminal force" using "drones, radio signals, and sonic frequencies".^[1]

Von Hausswolff is co-monarch (with Elggren) of the conceptual art project The Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland (KREV): all areas of no-man's land, territories between national boundaries on both land and sea, and digital and mental spaces. This nation has its own national anthem, flag, coat of arms, currency, citizens, and ministers.

Recent audio works include "800 000 Seconds in Harar" (Touch), "Matter Transfer" (iDeal), "The Wonderful World of Male Intuition" (Oral), "There Are No Crows Flying Around the Hancock Building" (Lampo), "Rats", "Maggots", and "Bugs" (all three on Laton), "Three Overpopulated Cities ..." (Sub Rosa), "A Lecture on Disturbances in Architecture" (Firework Editions), and "Ström" and "Leech" (both on Raster-Noton).

Other visual works include "Red Pool" (Cities on the Move, Bangkok, 1999), "Red Night" (SITE Santa Fe, 1999), "Red Code" (CCA Kitakyushu, 2001), "Red Empty" (Lampo/WhiteWalls, Chicago, 2003), and "Red Mersey" (Liverpool Biennial, 2004).

He is also the curator and producer of the sound-installation "freq out", shown at Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Henie-Onstad Center (Oslo), Sonambiente (Berlin), and other places.

Around the year 1986, he formed the Swedish independent label Radium 226.05 and in 1990 he formed the label Anckarström.

In 2012, Von Hausswolff was heavily criticized for allegedly using ashes of Holocaust victims from the Majdanek concentration camp in a painting.^[2] As of 12 December 2012, the Martin Bryder Gallery in Lund had pulled the painting from exhibition.^[3]

In 2019, von Hausswolff formed a new musical collaboration with the Icelandic musician Jónsi (Sigur Rós), which they named Dark Morph. On 10 May 2019, they released their first album, also titled Dark Morph. The project "promises to explore the ramifications of ongoing environmental collapse to the oceans and its inhabitants."^[4] The album consists mainly of ambient sounds, often simulating the sounds of animals and nature, and contains very few actual melodies.

Carl Michael is the father of musician/composer Anna von Hausswolff.^[5]

References

External links

• Official website
• INTERRUPTIONS #14. Mattergy — podcast curated by Carl Michael von Hausswolff
• "CM von Hausswolff interviewed by Thomas B.W. Bailey" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 18 January 2013. in Micro Bionic: Radical Electronic Music and Sound Art in The 21st Century (2nd edition)
• "At Venice Biennale, Artists Plant Flag for Their State (of Mind)". New York Times. 9 June 2007.
• "Swedish artist uses 'ashes from Holocaust victims'". BBC News. 6 December 2012.

Pauline Oliveros‎ – Primordial Lift Label:Table Of The Elements ‎– 53 I Format:CD, Album Country:US Released:1999 Genre:Electronic Style:Experimental Tracklist 1 Primordial 14:05 2 Lift 30:31 Companies etc Recorded At– Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center Mixed At– Griffin Mastering Credits Accordion, Electronics, Vocals– Pauline Oliveros Art Direction– Jeff Hunt Cello– Anne Bourne Cello [Electric]– Alexandria Gelencser Design– Henry H. Owings Edited By [Final Editing], Mastered By– Chris Griffin Electronics [Low Frequency Oscillator]– Scott Olson Harmonium– David Grubbs Mixed By [Live Mix]– Chris Borkowski Other [Live Video, Processing]– Andrew Deutsch Other [Project Assistance]– Nancy McGlamery Photography By– David Daniell Violin [Electric]– Tony Conrad Notes Premiere performance: 20 March 1998, Hallwalls, Buffalo Final editing, mastering: Griffin Mastering, Atlanta Thanks: Dan Rigney, Jessie Shefrin, Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University Special thanks: Ed Cardoni, executive director Hallwalls Primodial/Lift was commissioned by the Fromm Foundation for performance at Hallwalls. © 1998 Deep Listening Publications ASCAP © 1999 Table of the Elements The version of this recording is incomplete and has Andrew Deutsch entirely removed from the mix. The full and complete version of this recording was finally issued on CD in 2006 by Deep Listening and Institute For Electronic Arts. Other Versions (Showing 1 of 1) Title, Format Label Cat# Country Year Primordial / Lift ‎(CD, Album) Deep Listening, Institute For Electronic Arts DL 33-2006, IEA 9 US

 Pauline Oliveros (May 30, 1932 – November 24, 2016)^[2] was an American composer, accordionist and a central figure in the development of post-war experimental and electronic music.

She was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the 1960s, and served as its director. She taught music at Mills College, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Oliveros authored books, formulated new music theories, and investigated new ways to focus attention on music including her concepts of "deep listening" and "sonic awareness", drawing on metaphors from cybernetics.^[3][4] She was an Eyebeam resident.

Early life and career

Oliveros was born in Houston, Texas.^[5] She started to play music as early as kindergarten,^[6] and at nine years of age she began to play the accordion, received from her mother, a pianist, because of its popularity in the 1940s.^[6] She later went on to learn violin, piano, tuba and French horn for grade school and college music. At the age of sixteen she resolved to become a composer.^[7]

Oliveros arrived in California and supported herself with a day job, and supplemented this by giving accordion lessons.^[6] From there Oliveros went on to attend Moores School of Music at the University of Houston, studying with Willard A. Palmer, and earned a BFA degree in composition from San Francisco State College, where her teachers included composer Robert Erickson, with whom she had private lessons and who mentored her for six to seven years. This is also where she met artists Terry Riley, Stuart Dempster and Loren Rush.^[6][8]

When Oliveros turned 21, she obtained her first tape recording deck, which led to her creating her own pieces and future projects in this field.^[8] Oliveros was one of the original members of the San Francisco Tape Music Center, which was an important resource for electronic music on the U.S. West Coast during the 1960s.^[9] The Center later moved to Mills College, with Oliveros serving as its first director; it was renamed the Center for Contemporary Music.^[10]

Oliveros often improvised with the Expanded Instrument System, an electronic signal processing system she designed, in her performances and recordings.^[11] Oliveros held Honorary Doctorates in Music from the University of Maryland (Baltimore County), Mills College (Oakland, California), and De Montfort University (Leicester, England, UK).

UCSD

In 1967, Oliveros left Mills to take a faculty music department position at the University of California, San Diego.^[6] There, Oliveros met theoretical physicist and karate master Lester Ingber, with whom she collaborated in defining the attentional process as applied to music listening.^[12] She also studied karate under Ingber, achieving black belt level. In 1973, Oliveros conducted studies at the university's one-year-old Center for Music Experiment; she served as the center's director from 1976 to 1979. In 1981, to escape creative constriction,^[13] she left her tenured position as full Professor of Music at University of California, San Diego^[14] and relocated to upstate New York to become an independent composer, performer, and consultant.^[14]

Deep listening

In 1988, as a result of descending 14 feet into the Dan Harpole underground cistern in Port Townsend, Washington, to make a recording, Oliveros coined the term "deep listening"^[6]—a pun that has blossomed into "an aesthetic based upon principles of improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching and meditation. This aesthetic is designed to inspire both trained and untrained performers to practice the art of listening and responding to environmental conditions in solo and ensemble situations".^[15] Dempster, Oliveros and Panaiotis then formed the Deep Listening Band, and deep listening became a program of the Pauline Oliveros Foundation, founded in 1985. The Deep Listening program includes annual listening retreats in Europe, New Mexico and in upstate New York, as well as apprenticeship and certification programs. The Pauline Oliveros Foundation changed its name to Deep Listening Institute, Ltd., in 2005. The Deep Listening Band, which included Oliveros, David Gamper (1947–2011) and Stuart Dempster, specializes in performing and recording in resonant or reverberant spaces such as caves, cathedrals and huge underground cisterns. They have collaborated with Ellen Fullman and her long-string instrument, as well as countless other musicians, dancers and performers. The Center for Deep Listening at Rensselaer (CDL@RPI), initially under the direction of Tomie Hahn, is now established and is the steward of the former Deep Listening Institute. A celebratory concert was held on March 11, 2015, at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.^[16] Stephanie Loveless is the current director of the CDL@RPI.^[17]

Sonic awareness

Heidi Von Gunden^[18] names a new musical theory developed by Oliveros, "sonic awareness", and describes it as "the ability to consciously focus attention upon environmental and musical sound", requiring "continual alertness and an inclination to be always listening" and which she describes as comparable to John Berger's concept of visual consciousness (as in his Ways of Seeing).^[19] Oliveros discusses this theory in the "Introductions" to her Sonic Meditations and in articles. Von Gunden describes sonic awareness as "a synthesis of the psychology of consciousness, the physiology of the martial arts, and the sociology of the feminist movement",^[20] and describes two ways of processing information, "attention and awareness",^[20] or focal attention and global attention, which may be represented by a dot and circle, respectively, a symbol Oliveros commonly employs in compositions such as Rose Moon (1977) and El Rilicario de los Animales (1979).^[20] (The titles of Oliveros' pieces Rose Moon and Rose Mountain refer to her romantic partner Linda Montano having gone by Rose Mountain at one time.^[21]) Later this representation was expanded, with the symbol quartered and the quarters representing "actively making sound", "actually imagining sound", "listening to present sound" and "remembering past sound", with this model used in Sonic Meditations.^[22] Practice of the theory creates "complex sound masses possessing a strong tonal center".^[23]

Other

Oliveros taught at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Mills College. She was born in Houston, Texas in 1932, and died in 2016 in Kingston, New York.^[5]

While attending the University of Houston, she was a member of the band program and helped form the Tau chapter of Tau Beta Sigma Honorary Band Sorority.

She was openly lesbian.^[24] In 1975 Oliveros met her eventual partner, performance artist Linda Montano.^[25] The titles of Oliveros' pieces Rose Moon and Rose Mountain refer to Montano having gone by Rose Mountain at one time.^[21] In her later years, Oliveros developed a 32-year romantic partnership and creative collaboration with sound artist IONE (Carole Lewis).^[26] The couple worked together on several major musical theatre productions, dance operas, and films.^[27] They were influential figures in their community. Sound artist and experimental turntablist Maria Chavez, a friend and mentee of Pauline, describes Pauline and Ione: "when you saw them together, you saw love."^[28] Annie Sprinkle’s 1992 production The Sluts and Goddesses Video Workshop – Or How To Be A Sex Goddess in 101 Easy Steps, which was co-produced and co-directed with videographer Maria Beatty, featured music by Oliveros.

Oliveros received a 1994 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award.^[29]

In 2007, Oliveros received the Resounding Vision Award from Nameless Sound.

She contributed a chapter to Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture (The MIT Press, 2008) edited by Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky.

She was the 2009 recipient of the William Schuman Award, from Columbia University School of the Arts.

Oliveros was the author of five books, Sounding the Margins: Collected Writings 1992–2009, Initiation Dream, Software for People, The Roots of the Moment, and Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice.

In 2012, Oliveros received the John Cage Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.^[29]

Some of her music was featured in the 2014 French video game NaissanceE.^[30]

Oliveros' work Deep Listening Room was featured in the 2014 Whitney Biennial.^[31]

Oliveros was a member of Avatar Orchestra Metaverse, a global collaboration of composers, artists and musicians that approaches the virtual reality platform Second Life as an instrument itself.^[32]

She was also a patron of Soundart Radio in Dartington, Devon.

Notable works

• Sonic Meditations: "Teach Yourself to Fly", etc.
• Sound Patterns for mixed chorus (1961), awarded the Gaudeamus International Composers Award in 1962, available on Extended Voices (Odyssey 32 16) 0156 and 20th Century Choral Music (Ars Nova AN-1005)
• I of IV, included in the collection New Sounds in Electronic Music, published by Odyssey Records, 1967
• Music for Annie Sprinkle's The Sluts and Goddesses Video Workshop—Or How To Be A Sex Goddess in 101 Easy Steps (1992)
• Theater of Substitution series (1975–?). Oliveros was photographed as different characters, including a Spanish señora, a polyester clad suburban housewife, and a professor in robes. Jackson Mac Low played Oliveros at the New York Philharmonic's "A Celebration of Women composers" concert on November 10, 1975, and Oliveros has played Mac Low (see Mac Low's "being Pauline: narrative of a substitution", Big Deal, Fall 1976). (ibid,^{[clarification needed]} p. 141)
• Crone Music (1989)
• Six for New Time (1999), music score for Sonic Youth
• "the Space Between with Matthew Sperry", (2003) 482Music^[29]

Books

• Oliveros, Pauline (2013). Sam Golter and Lawton Hall (ed.). Anthology of Text Scores by Pauline Oliveros 1971–2013. Kingston, New York: Deep Listening Publications. ISBN 9781889471228.
• — (2010). Lawton Hall (ed.). Sounding the Margins: Collected Writings 1992–2009. Kingston, New York: Deep Listening Publications. ISBN 978-1-889471-16-7.
• — (2005). Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice. New York: iUniverse, Inc. ISBN 978-0-595-34365-2.
• — (1998). Roots of the Moment. New York: Drogue Press. ISBN 978-0-9628456-4-2.
• — (1984). Software for People: Collected Writings 1963–80. Baltimore: Printed Editions. ISBN 978-0-914162-59-9.
• — (1982). Initiation Dream. Los Angeles: Astro Artz. ISBN 978-0-937122-07-5.

Notable students

Films

• 1976 – Music with Roots in the Aether: Opera for Television. Tape 5: Pauline Oliveros. Produced and directed by Robert Ashley. New York: Lovely Music.
• 1993 – The Sensual Nature of Sound: 4 Composers – Laurie Anderson, Tania León, Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros. Directed by Michael Blackwood.
• 2001 – Roulette TV: Pauline Oliveros. Roulette Intermedium Inc.
• 2005 – Unyazi of the Bushveld. Directed by Aryan Kaganof. Produced by African Noise Foundation.
• 2020 – Sisters With Transistors. Directed by Lisa Rovner.

References

Further reading

• Zimmerman, Walter, Desert Plants – Conversations with 23 American Musicians, Berlin: Beginner Press in cooperation with Mode Records, 2020 (originally published in 1976 by A.R.C., Vancouver). The 2020 edition includes a cd featuring the original interview recordings with Larry Austin, Robert Ashley, Jim Burton, John Cage, Philip Corner, Morton Feldman, Philip Glass, Joan La Barbara, Garrett List, Alvin Lucier, John McGuire, Charles Morrow, J.B. Floyd (on Conlon Nancarrow), Pauline Oliveros, Charlemagne Palestine, Ben Johnston (on Harry Partch), Steve Reich, David Rosenboom, Frederic Rzewski, Richard Teitelbaum, James Tenney, Christian Wolff, and La Monte Young.

Rhys Chatham‎ – Two Gongs (1971) Label:Table Of The Elements ‎– 73 Ta Format:CD, Album Country:US Released:2006 Genre:Classical Style:Minimal, Abstract, Drone, Avantgarde, Experimental Tracklist 1 Two Gongs (1971) 61:40 Companies etc Copyright (c)– Rhys Chatham Copyright (c)– Table Of The Elements Phonographic Copyright (p)– Table Of The Elements Phonographic Copyright (p)– Post Minimalist Music Publishing Company Recorded At– Experimental Intermedia Foundation Credits Design [Hue, Tint & Brightness]– Susan Archie Executive-producer, Art Direction– Jeff Hunt Liner Notes– Ethan Covey, Rhys Chatham Musician– Rhys Chatham, Yoshimasa Wada* Other [Editorial Assistance]– Nancy McGlamery Photography By– Isabelle Marteau Recorded By– Phill Niblock Notes Recorded live at Experimental Intermedia Foundation, NYC 15 December 1989. Eat Fuck Kill photo (1989) All selections © 2002/2006 Rhys Chatham Ⓟ 2002/2006 Post Minimalist Music Publishing Company (BMI) This release © Ⓟ 2006 Table of the Elements All Rights Reserved Barcode and Other Identifiers Barcode: 6 00401 07312 4

 Born: September 19, 1952, Manhattan, New York Composer & guitarist.

Rhys Chatham

John Cale / Tony Conrad / Angus MacLise / La Monte Young / Marian Zazeela – Inside The Dream Syndicate Volume I: Day Of Niagara (1965) Inside The Dream Syndicate Volume I: Day Of Niagara (1965) La Monte Young is an American avant-garde artist, composer and musician, generally recognized as the first minimalist composer. His works are cited as notable examples of post-war avant-garde, experimental, and contemporary music. Young is especially known for his exploration of drone music. Born October 14, 1935 in a log cabin in Bern, Idaho, La Monte went to high school in Los Angeles. During this time he played saxophone in a group with Billy Higgins, Dennis Budimir and Don Cherry and with various other musicians. To continue his education, he relocated to Berkeley, where he met life long friend and collaborator Terry Riley. It was also in the Bay Area where he first encountered the work of Angus MacLise, whose poetry he discovered at the City Light book shop. From here Young moved to New York City, where he has lived ever since. Upon his arrival in New York, he curated a series of concerts at Yoko Ono's loft and quickly became a legend in town. He studied electronic music with Richard Maxfield and became associated with many of the Fluxus artists, who took to performing his pieces in their concerts. With Jackson Mac Low, he published An Anthology, which collected printed works by many of the radical artists of that time. Most importantly, La Monte started assembling an ensemble to play his music. The real breakthrough was when Young met Marian Zazeela who was to become his lifelong collaborator and partner. These two were joined by the young Welsh student John Cale, mathematician Tony Conrad, and percussionist and poet Angus MacLise. This core group became known at the Theater of Eternal Music and performed many groundbreaking concerts. This line up was not to last however, and over the decades many other musicians have come and gone in La Monte's ensemble. Going back to the late 1950's and extending to the present day, La Monte has focused his attention on pieces of extended duration, with minimal, often microtonal, change. For this reason, he is known as one of the father's of the minimal music "movement", though remains unique from his followers. In addition to this, Young and Zazeela were disciples of Pandit Pran Nath, and devoted a considerable amount of effort to the perservation and continuance of the Kirana style of Indian classic music.

La Monte Thornton Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American composer, musician, and performance artist recognized as one of the first American minimalist composers and a central figure in Fluxus and post-war avant-garde music.^[1][2][3] He is best known for his exploration of sustained tones, beginning with his 1958 composition Trio for Strings.^[4] His compositions have called into question the nature and definition of music, most prominently in the text scores of his Compositions 1960.^[5] While few of his recordings remain in print, his work has inspired prominent musicians across various genres, including avant-garde, rock, and ambient music.^[6]

Young played jazz saxophone and studied composition in California during the 1950s, and subsequently moved to New York in 1960, where he was a central figure in the downtown music and Fluxus art scenes.^[5] He then became known for his pioneering work in drone music (originally called dream music) with his Theatre of Eternal Music collective, alongside collaborators such as Tony Conrad, John Cale, and his wife, the multimedia artist Marian Zazeela.

Since 1962, he has worked extensively with Zazeela, with whom he developed the Dream House sound and light environment.^[3] In 1964, he began work on his unfinished improvisatory composition The Well-Tuned Piano, iterations of which he has performed throughout subsequent decades.^[7] Beginning in 1970, he and Zazeela studied under Hindustani singer Pandit Pran Nath. In 2002, Young and Zazeela formed the Just Alap Raga Ensemble with their disciple Jung Hee Choi.

Biography

1935–1959

Young was born in a log cabin in Bern, Idaho.^[8][9] As a child he was influenced by the droning sounds of the environment, such as blowing wind and electrical transformers.^[10] During his childhood, Young's family moved several times before settling in Los Angeles, as his father searched for work. He was raised as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.^[10] He graduated from John Marshall High School.^[9] Young began his music studies at Los Angeles City College, and transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA),^[11] where he received a BA in 1958.^[8][9] In the jazz milieu of Los Angeles, Young played with notable musicians including Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Billy Higgins, and Eric Dolphy.^[12] He undertook additional studies at the University of California, Berkeley from 1958 to 1960.^[9] In 1959 he attended the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music under Karlheinz Stockhausen, and in 1960 relocated to New York in order to study electronic music with Richard Maxfield at the New School for Social Research. His compositions during this period were influenced by Anton Webern, Gregorian chant, Indian classical music, Japanese Gagaku, and Indonesian gamelan music.^[13]

A number of Young's early works use the twelve-tone technique, which he studied under Leonard Stein at Los Angeles City College. (Stein had served as an assistant to Arnold Schoenberg when Schoenberg, the inventor of the twelve-tone method, taught at UCLA.)^[14] Young also studied composition with Robert Stevenson at UCLA and with Seymore Shifrin at UC Berkeley. In 1958, he developed the Trio for Strings, originally scored for violin, viola, and cello, and which presaged his later work. The Trio for Strings has been described as an "origin point for minimalism."^[15] When Young visited Darmstadt in 1959, he encountered the music and writings of John Cage. There he also met Cage's collaborator, pianist David Tudor, who subsequently would première some of Young's works. At Tudor's suggestion, Young engaged in a correspondence with Cage. Within a few months, Young was presenting some of Cage's music on the West Coast. In turn, Cage and Tudor included some of Young's works in performances throughout the U.S. and Europe. Influenced by Cage, Young at this time took a turn toward the conceptual, using principles of indeterminacy in his compositions and incorporating non-traditional sounds, noises, and actions.^[16]

1960–1969

Young moved to New York in 1960 and quickly developed an artistic relationship with Fluxus founder George Maciunas (who designed the book An Anthology of Chance Operations, which was edited by Young) and other members of the nascent Fluxus movement. Young curated and organized a series of concert-performances at the top floor loft of Yoko Ono at 112 Chambers Street in December 1960 involving visual artists, musicians, dancers and composers — mixing music, visual art and performance together. During this period, Young created short, haiku-like, conceptual but dreamlike scores-texts that have become associated with Fluxus. For example, Young's Compositions 1960 includes a number of unusual actions: some of them un-performable, and constituted an early form of poetic conceptual art. Most examine a certain presupposition about the nature of music and art by carrying absurd Dada-like concepts to an extreme. One, Composition 1960 #10 to Bob Morris instructs: "draw a straight line and follow it" (a directive which Young has said has guided his life and work since).^[17] Another instructs the performer to build a fire. Another states that "this piece is a little whirlpool out in the middle of the ocean." Another says the performer should release a butterfly into the room. Yet another challenges the performer to push a piano through a wall. Composition 1960 #7 proved especially pertinent to his future endeavors: it consisted of a B, an F#, a perfect fifth, and the instruction: "To be held for a long time."^[18]

In 1962, based on his dream chord, Young wrote The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer. One of The Four Dreams of China, the piece is based on four pitches, which he later gave as the frequency ratios: 36-35-32-24 (G, C, +C#, D), and limits as to which may be combined with any other.^[19] Most of his pieces after this point are based on select pitches, played continuously, and a group of long held pitches to be improvised upon. For The Four Dreams of China Young began to plan Dream House, a light and sound installation conceived as a dream chord "work that would be played continuously and ultimately exist as a 'living organism with a life and tradition of its own,'" where musicians would live and create music twenty-four hours a day.^[20] He formed the music collective Theatre of Eternal Music to realize Dream House and other pieces.^[21] The group initially included calligrapher and light artist Marian Zazeela (who married Young in 1963), Angus MacLise, and Billy Name.^[3] In 1964 the ensemble comprised Young and Zazeela, John Cale and Tony Conrad (a former Harvard mathematics major), and sometimes Terry Riley (voices). Since 1966 the group has seen many permutations and has included Garrett List, Jon Hassell, Alex Dea, and many others, including members of Young's 60s groups.^[22]

On September 25, 1965, the Fluxus FluxOrchestra was conducted by Young at Carnegie Recital Hall in New York City, with a program, designed by George Maciunas, folded into paper airplanes and launched during the evening into the audience.

Young and Zazeela's first continuous electronic sound environment was created in their loft on Church Street, New York City, in September 1966 with sine wave generators and light sources designed to produce a continuous installation of floating sculptures and color sources, and a series of slides entitled Ornamental Lightyears Tracery. This Dream House environment was maintained almost continuously from September 1966 to January 1970, being turned off only to listen to "other music" and to study the contrast between extended periods in it and periods of silence. Young and Zazeela worked, sang and lived in it and studied the effects on themselves and visitors. Performances were often extreme in length, conceived by Young as having no beginning and no end, existing before and after any particular performance. In their daily lives, too, Young and Zazeela practiced an artificial sleep–wake cycle—with "days" longer than twenty-four hours.^[23]

1970–present

Beginning in 1970, Young's interests in Asian classical music, and his wish to be able to find the intervals he had been using in his work, led Young to pursue studies with pandit Pran Nath. Fellow students included Zazeela, composers Terry Riley, Michael Harrison, Yoshi Wada, Henry Flynt and Catherine Christer Hennix.^[24]

Young considers The Well-Tuned Piano—a permutating composition of themes and improvisations for just-intoned solo piano—to be his masterpiece. Young gave the world premiere of The Well-Tuned Piano in Rome in 1974, ten years after the creation of the piece. Previously, he had presented it as a recorded work. In 1975, Young premiered the work in New York, with eleven live performances during the months of April and May. As of October 25, 1981, the date of the Gramavision recording of The Well-Tuned Piano, Young had performed the piece 55 times.^[25] In 1987, Young performed the piece again as part of a larger concert series that included many more of his works.^[26] This performance, on May 10, 1987, was videotaped and released on DVD in 2000 on Young's label, Just Dreams.^[27] Performances have exceeded six hours in length, and so far have only been documented several times. The Well-Tuned Piano is strongly influenced by mathematical composition as well as Hindustani classical music practice.^[28]

Since the 1970s, Young and Zazeela have realized a long series of semi-permanent Dream House installations, which combine Young's just-intoned sine waves in elaborate, symmetrical configurations with Zazeela's quasi-calligraphic light sculptures.^[29] In July 1970 a model short-term Dream House was displayed to the public at the gallery Friedrich & Dahlem in Munich, Germany. Later, model Dream House environments were presented in various locations in Europe and the United States. In 1974, the two released Dream House 78' 17". From January through April 19, 2009, Dream House was installed in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York as part of The Third Mind exhibition. A Dream House installation exists today at the MELA Foundation on 275 Church Street, New York, above the couple's loft, and is open to the public.^[30]

In 2002, Young, with Zazeela and senior disciple Jung Hee Choi, founded the Just Alap Raga Ensemble. This ensemble, performing Indian classical music of the Kirana gharana, merges the traditions of Western and Hindustani classical music, with Young applying his own compositional approach to traditional raga performance, form, and technique.^[31]

Influences

Young's first musical influence came in early childhood in Bern. He relates that "the very first sound that I recall hearing was the sound of wind blowing under the eaves and around the log extensions at the corners of the log cabin". Continuous sounds—human-made as well as natural—fascinated him as a child. He described himself as fascinated from a young age by droning sounds, such as "the sound of the wind blowing", the "60 cycle per second drone [of] step-down transformers on telephone poles", the tanpura drone and the alap of Indian classical music, "certain static aspects of serialism, as in the Webern slow movement of the Symphony Opus 21", and Japanese gagaku "which has sustained tones in it in the instruments such as the Sho".^[32] The four pitches he later named the "Dream chord", on which he based many of his mature works, came from his early age appreciation of the continuous sound made by the telephone poles in Bern.^[33]

Jazz is one of his main influences; prior to 1956, he planned to devote his career to it.^[34] At first, Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh influenced his alto saxophone playing style, and later John Coltrane shaped Young's use of the sopranino saxophone. Jazz was, together with Indian music, an important influence on the use of improvisation in his works post-1962.^[34] Young discovered Indian music in 1957 on the campus of UCLA. He cites Ali Akbar Khan (sarod) and Chatur Lal (tabla) as particularly significant. The discovery of the tanpura, which he learned to play with Pandit Pran Nath, was a decisive influence in his interest in long-sustained sounds. Young also acknowledges the influence of Japanese music, especially Gagaku, and Pygmy music.^[35][36]

Young discovered classical music relatively late in life, thanks to his teachers at university. He cites Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, Pérotin, Léonin, Claude Debussy and Organum musical style as important influences.^[35] The serialism of Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern had the greatest impact.^[35]

Young was also keen to pursue his musical endeavors with the help of psychedelics. Cannabis, LSD and peyote played an important part in Young's life from mid-1950s onwards, when he was introduced to them by Terry Jennings and Billy Higgins. He said that "everybody [he] knew and worked with was very much into drugs as a creative tool as well as a consciousness-expanding tool". This was the case with the musicians of the Theatre of Eternal Music, with whom he "got high for every concert: the whole group".^[37] He considers that the cannabis experience helped him open up to where he went with Trio for Strings, though sometimes it proved a disadvantage when performing anything which required keeping track of the number of elapsed bars. He commented on the subject:

These tools can be used to your advantage if you're a master of [them]... If used wisely—the correct tool for the correct job—they can play an important role... It allows you to go within yourself and focus on certain frequency relationships and memory relationships in a very, very interesting way.^[38]

Legacy

Young's use of long tones and exceptionally high volume has been extremely influential within Young's group of associates: Tony Conrad, Jon Hassell, Rhys Chatham, Michael Harrison, Henry Flynt, Ben Neill, Charles Curtis, and Catherine Christer Hennix. It has also been notably influential on John Cale's contribution to The Velvet Underground's sound; Cale has been quoted as saying "LaMonte [Young] was perhaps the best part of my education and my introduction to musical discipline."^[39] His work has inspired prominent musicians across various genres, including fellow minimalist composer Terry Riley, experimental rock groups the Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth, and ambient music pioneer Brian Eno.^[6] Eno calls him "the daddy of us all".^[2] In 1981, Eno referred to X for Henry Flynt by saying, "It really is a cornerstone of everything I've done since."^[40]

Andy Warhol attended the 1962 première of the static composition by La Monte Young called Trio for Strings. Uwe Husslein cites film-maker Jonas Mekas, who accompanied Warhol to the Trio premiere, claiming that Warhol's static films were directly inspired by the performance.^[41][42] In 1963 Young had joined Warhol's musical group The Druds, a short-lived avant-garde noise music band, but, finding it ridiculous, quit after the second rehearsal.^[43][44] In 1964 Young provided a loud minimalist drone soundtrack to Warhol's static films Kiss, Eat, Haircut, and Sleep when shown as small TV-sized projections at the entrance lobby to the third New York Film Festival held at Lincoln Center.^[45]

Lou Reed's 1975 album Metal Machine Music notes, "Drone cognizance and harmonic possibilities vis a vis Lamont (sic) Young's Dream Music"^[46] among its "Specifications".

The album Dreamweapon: An Evening of Contemporary Sitar Music by the band Spacemen 3 is influenced by La Monte Young's concept of Dream Music, evidenced by their inclusion of his notes on the jacket. In 2018, Sonic Boom of Spacemen 3, along with Etienne Jaumet of Zombie Zombie and Indian dhrupad singer Céline Wadier, released Infinite Music: A Tribute to La Monte Young.^[47]

According to Seth Colter Walls, writing in The Guardian, while Young has released very little recorded material, with much of it currently out of print, he has had an "outsized influence on other artists."^[48]

Drone rock musician Dylan Carlson has described Young's work as being a major influence.^[49]

Discography

Studio recordings

• Drift Study 4:37:40-5:09:50 PM 5 VIII 68 NYC (SMS 4 Limited Edition, 1968)
• 31 VII 69 10:26-10:49 PM / 23 VIII 64 2:50:45-3:11 AM The Volga Delta [aka The Black Record] – La Monte Young & Marian Zazeela (Edition X, 1969)
• Dream House 78' 17" – La Monte Young / Marian Zazeela / The Theatre of Eternal Music (Shandar, 1974)
• The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer from the Four Dreams of China (Gramavision, 1991)
• The Tamburas of Pandit Pran Nath – La Monte Young / Marian Zazeela (Just Dreams, 1999)
• Inside the Dream Syndicate, Volume One: Day of Niagara (1965) – John Cale, Tony Conrad, Angus MacLise, La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela (Table of the Elements, 2000. Not authorized by La Monte Young.)^[50]

Live recordings

• The Well-Tuned Piano 81 X 25 (6:17.50–11:18:59 pm NYC) (Gramavision, 1988)
• Just Stompin': Live at The Kitchen – La Monte Young and the Forever Bad Blues Band (Gramavision, 1993)
• Trio for Strings (1958) recorded live at the Dia:Chelsea Dream House, performed by Theatre of Eternal Music String Ensemble, four discs and a 32-page set of liner notes (Dia Art Foundation, 2022)

Compilation appearances

• Small Pieces (5) for String Quartet ("On Remembering a Naiad") (1956) [included on Arditti String Quartet Edition, No. 15: U.S.A. (Disques Montaigne, 1993)]
• Sarabande for any instruments (1959) [included on Just West Coast (Bridge, 1993)]
• "89 VI 8 c. 1:45–1:52 am Paris Encore" from Poem for Tables, Chairs and Benches, etc. (1960) [included on Flux: Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine #24]
• Excerpt "31 I 69 c. 12:17:33-12:24:33 pm NYC" [included on Aspen #8's flexi-disc (1970)] from Drift Study; "31 I 69 c. 12:17:33–12:49:58 pm NYC" from Map of 49's Dream The Two Systems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals (1969) [included on Ohm and Ohm+ (Ellipsis Arts, 2000 & 2005)]
• 566 for Henry Flynt [included on Music in Germany 1950–2000: Experimental Music Theatre (Eurodisc 173675, 7-CD set, 2004)]

List of works

• Scherzo in a minor (c. 1953), piano;
• Rondo in d minor (c. 1953), piano;
• Annod (1953–55), dance band or jazz ensemble;
• Wind Quintet (1954);
• Variations (1955), string quartet;
• Young's Blues (c. 1955–59);
• Fugue in d minor (c. 1956), violin, viola, cello;
• Op. 4 (1956), brass, percussion;
• Five Small Pieces for String Quartet, On Remembering A Naiad, 1. A Wisp, 2. A Gnarl, 3. A Leaf, 4. A Twig, 5. A Tooth (1956);
• Canon (1957), any two instruments;
• Fugue in a minor (1957), any four instruments;
• Fugue in c minor (1957), organ or harpsichord;
• Fugue in eb minor (1957), brass or other instruments;
• Fugue in f minor (1957), two pianos;
• Prelude in f minor (1957), piano;
• Variations for Alto Flute, Bassoon, Harp and String Trio (1957);
• for Brass (1957), brass octet;
• for Guitar (1958), guitar;
• Trio for Strings (1958), violin, viola, cello;
• Study (c.1958–59), violin, viola (unfinished);
• Sarabande (1959), keyboard, brass octet, string quartet, orchestra, others;
• Studies I, II, and III (1959), piano;
• Vision (1959), piano, 2 brass, recorder, 4 bassoons, violin, viola, cello, contrabass and making use of a random number book;
• [Untitled] (1959–60), live friction sounds;
• [Untitled] (1959–62), jazz-drone improvisations;
• Poem for Chairs, Tables, Benches, etc. (1960), chairs, tables, benches and unspecified sound sources;
• 2 Sounds (1960), recorded friction sounds;
• Compositions 1960 #s 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 13, 15 (1960), performance pieces;
• Piano Pieces for David Tudor #s 1, 2, 3 (1960), performance pieces;
• Invisible Poem Sent to Terry Jennings (1960), performance pieces;
• Piano Pieces for Terry Riley #s 1, 2 (1960), performance pieces;
• Target for Jasper Johns (1960), piano;
• Arabic Numeral (Any Integer) to H.F. (1960), piano(s) or gong(s) or ensembles of at least 45 instruments of the same timbre, or combinations of the above, or orchestra;
• Compositions 1961 #s 1–29 (1961), performance pieces;
• Young's Dorian Blues in B♭ (c. 1960 or 1961);
• Young's Dorian Blues in G (c. 1960/1961–present);
• Young's Aeolian Blues in B♭ (Summer 1961);
• Death Chant (1961), male voices, carillon or large bells;
• Response to Henry Flynt Work Such That No One Knows What's Going On (c. 1962);
• [Improvisations] (1962–64), sopranino saxophone, vocal drones, various instruments. Realizations include: Bb Dorian Blues, The Fifth/Fourth Piece, ABABA, EbDEAD, The Overday, Early Tuesday Morning Blues, and Sunday Morning Blues;
• Poem on Dennis' Birthday (1962), unspecified instruments;
• The Four Dreams of China (The Harmonic Versions) (1962), including The First Dream of China, The First Blossom of Spring, The First Dream of The High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer, The Second Dream of The High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer, tunable, sustaining instruments of like timbre, in multiples of 4;
• Studies in The Bowed Disc (1963), gong;
• Pre-Tortoise Dream Music (1964), sopranino saxophone, soprano saxophone, vocal drone, violin, viola, sine waves;
• The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys (1964–present), voices, various instruments, sine waves. Realizations include: Prelude to The Tortoise, The Tortoise Droning Selected Pitches from The Holy Numbers for The Two Black Tigers, The Green Tiger and The Hermit, The Tortoise Recalling The Drone of The Holy Numbers as They Were Revealed in The Dreams of The Whirlwind and The Obsidian Gong and Illuminated by The Sawmill, The Green Sawtooth Ocelot and The High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer;
• The Well-Tuned Piano (1964–73/81–present). Each realization is a separately titled and independent composition. Over 60 realizations to date. World première: Rome 1974. American première: New York 1975;
• Sunday Morning Dreams (1965), tunable sustaining instruments and/or sine waves;
• Composition 1965 $50 (1965), performance piece;
• Map of 49's Dream The Two Systems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Lightyears Tracery (1966–present), voices, various instruments, sine waves;
• Bowed Mortar Relays (1964) (realization of Composition 1960 # 9), Soundtracks for Andy Warhol Films Eat, Sleep, Kiss, "Haircut", tape;
• The Two Systems of Eleven Categories (1966–present), theory work;
• Chords from The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys (1967–present), sine waves. Realizations include: Intervals and Triads from Map of 49's Dream The Two Systems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Lightyears Tracery (1967), sound environment;
• Robert C. Scull Commission (1967), sine waves;
• Claes and Patty Oldenburg Commission (1967), sine waves;
• Betty Freeman Commission (1967), sound and light box & sound environment;
• Drift Studies (1967–present), sine waves;
• for Guitar (Just Intonation Version) (1978), guitar;
• for Guitar Prelude and Postlude (1980), one or more guitars;
• The Subsequent Dreams of China (1980), tunable, sustaining instruments of like timbre, in multiples of 8;
• The Gilbert B. Silverman Commission to Write, in Ten Words or Less, a Complete History of Fluxus Including Philosophy, Attitudes, Influences, Purposes (1981);
• Chords from The Well-Tuned Piano (1981–present), sound environments. Includes: The Opening Chord (1981), The Magic Chord (1984), The Magic Opening Chord (1984);
• Trio for Strings (1983) Versions for string quartet, string orchestra, and violin, viola, cello, bass;
• Trio for Strings, trio basso version (1984), viola, cello, bass;
• Trio for Strings, sextet version (1984);
• Trio for Strings, String Octet Version (1984), 2 violins, 2 violas, 2 cellos, 2 basses;
• Trio for Strings Postlude from The Subsequent Dreams of China (c. 1984), bowed strings;
• The Melodic Versions (1984) of The Four Dreams of China (1962), including The First Dream of China, The First Blossom of Spring, The First Dream of The High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer, The Second Dream of The High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer, tunable, sustaining instruments of like timbre, in multiples of 4;
• The Melodic Versions (1984) of The Subsequent Dreams of China, (1980) including The High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer's Second Dream of The First Blossom of Spring, tunable, sustaining instruments of like timbre, in multiples of 8;
• The Big Dream (1984), sound environment;
• Orchestral Dreams (1985), orchestra;
• The Big Dream Symmetries #s 1–6 (1988), sound environments;
• The Symmetries in Prime Time from 144 to 112 with 119 (1989), including The Close Position Symmetry, The Symmetry Modeled on BDS # 1, The Symmetry Modeled on BDS # 4, The Symmetry Modeled on BDS # 7, The Romantic Symmetry, The Romantic Symmetry (over a 60 cycle base), The Great Romantic Symmetry, sound environments;
• The Lower Map of The Eleven's Division in The Romantic Symmetry (over a 60 cycle base) in Prime Time from 144 to 112 with 119 (1989–1990), unspecified instruments and sound environment;
• The Prime Time Twins (1989–90) including The Prime Time Twins in The Ranges 144 to 112; 72 to 56 and 38 to 28; Including The Special Primes 1 and 2 (1989);
• The Prime Time Twins in The Ranges 576 to 448; 288 to 224; 144 to 112; 72 to 56; 36 to 28; with The Range Limits 576, 448, 288, 224, 144, 56 and 28 (1990), sound environments;
• Chronos Kristalla (1990), string quartet;
• The Young Prime Time Twins (1991), including The Young Prime Time Twins in The Ranges 2304 to 1792; 1152 to 896; 576 to 448; 288 to 224; 144 to 112; 72 to 56; 36 to 28; Including or Excluding The Range Limits 2304, 1792, 1152, 576, 448, 288, 224, 56 and 28 (1991),
• The Young Prime Time Twins in The Ranges 2304 to 1792; 1152 to 896; 576 to 448; 288 to 224; 144 to 112; 72 to 56; 36 to 28; 18 to 14; Including or Excluding The Range Limits 2304, 1792, 1152, 576, 448, 288, 224, 56, 28 and 18; and Including The Special Young Prime Twins Straddling The Range Limits 1152, 72 and 18 (1991),
• The Young Prime Time Twins in The Ranges 1152 to 896; 576 to 448; 288 to 224; 144 to 112; 72 to 56; 36 to 28; Including or Excluding The Range Limits 1152, 576, 448, 288, 224, 56 and 28; with One of The Inclusory Optional Bases: 7; 8; 14:8; 18:14:8; 18:16:14; 18:16:14:8; 9:7:4; or The Empty Base (1991), sound environments;
• The Symmetries in Prime Time from 288 to 224 with 279, 261 and 2 X 119 with One of The Inclusory Optional Bases: 7; 8; 14:8; 18:14:8; 18:16:14; 18:16:14:8; 9:7:4; or The Empty Base (1991–present), including The Symmetries in Prime Time When Centered above and below The Lowest Term Primes in The Range 288 to 224 with The Addition of 279 and 261 in Which The Half of The Symmetric Division Mapped above and Including 288 Consists of The Powers of 2 Multiplied by The Primes within The Ranges of 144 to 128, 72 to 64 and 36 to 32 Which Are Symmetrical to Those Primes in Lowest Terms in The Half of The Symmetric Division Mapped below and Including 224 within The Ranges 126 to 112, 63 to 56 and 31.5 to 28 with The Addition of 119 and with One of The Inclusory Optional Bases: 7; 8; 14:8; 18:14:8; 18:16:14; 18:16:14:8; 9:7:4; or The Empty Base (1991), sound environments;
• Annod (1953–55) 92 X 19 Version for Zeitgeist (1992), alto saxophone, vibraphone, piano, bass, drums, including 92 XII 22 Two-Part Harmony and The 1992 XII Annod Backup Riffs;
• Just Charles & Cello in The Romantic Chord (2002–2003), cello, pre-recorded cello drones and light design;
• Raga Sundara, vilampit khayal set in Raga Yaman Kalyan (2002–present), voices, various instruments, tambura drone;
• Trio for Strings (1958) Just Intonation Version (1984-2001-2005), 2 cellos, 2 violins, 2 violas;

Footnotes

References

• Duckworth, William (1995). Talking Music: Conversations with John Cage, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and Five Generations of American Experimental Composers. New York; London: Schirmer Books; Prentice-Hall International. Reprinted 1999, New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80893-5
• Eno, Brian; Mills, Russell (1986). More Dark than Shark. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-13883-7.
• Gopnik, Blake (March 5, 2020). Warhol: A Life as Art. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 978-0-241-00338-1.
• Husslein, Uwe, ed. (1990). Pop Goes Art: Andy Warhol & Velvet Underground: anläßlich der gleichnamigen Ausstellung in der Hamburger Kunsthalle, 30.11.1990–3.2. 1991. Schriftenreihe des Instituts für Popkultur 1. Wuppertal: Institut für Popkultur.
• LaBelle, Brandon (2006). Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art. New York and London: Continuum International.
• Potter, Keith (2000). Four Musical Minimalists: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass. Music in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, UK; New York City: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521015011.
• Scherman, Tony; Dalton, David (2009). POP: The Genius of Andy Warhol. New York: Harper Collins.
• Strickland, Edward (1991). American Composers. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-20643-X.
• Strickland, Edward (2000) [1993]. Minimalism: Origins (revised ed.). Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253213884.
• Strickland, Edward (2001). "Young, La Monte". In Stanley Sadie; John Tyrrell (eds.). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2nd ed.). London: Macmillan.
• Young, La Monte; Mac Low, Jackson, eds. (1963). An Anthology of Chance Operations. New York: seld-published. Text via UbuWeb.
• Zuckerman, Gabrielle (July 2002), An Interview with La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, American Mavericks, American Public Media Originally published here Archived October 3, 2006, at the Wayback Machine Audio at SoundCloud; text via umintermediai501.blogspot.com

Further reading

• Ghosn, Joseph. 2010. La Monte Young. Marseilles: Le Mot et le Reste.
• Grimshaw, Jeremy. 2005. "Music of a 'More Exalted Sphere': Compositional Practice, biography, and Cosmology in the Music of La Monte Young." Doctoral dissertation, Eastman School of Music. Ann Arbor: UMI/ProQuest.
• Herzfeld, Gregor. 2007. Zeit als Prozess und Epiphanie in der experimentellen amerikanischen Musik. Charles Ives bis La Monte Young. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 285–341. ISBN 978-3-515-09033-9
• Dave Smith. 21 June 2004. "Following a Straight Line: La Monte Young." Journal of Experimental Music Studies. Updated reprint of Contact 18 (1977–78), 4–9.
• Solare, Juan María. 2006. "El Trío serial de La Monte Young". [About Young's Trio for Strings (1958)]. Doce Notas Preliminares, no. 17:112–142.
• Nickleson, Patrick. The Names of Minimalism: Authorship, Art Music, and Historiography in Dispute, University of Michigan Press
• Strickland, Edward (1990). American Composers: Dialogues on Contemporary Music. Indiana University Press.
• Watson, Steven. 2003. Factory Made: Warhol and the Sixties. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 0-679-42372-9
• Young, Logan K. 2014. "1,000 Anagrams for La Monte Young". New York: Peanut Gallery Press.
• Zimmerman, Walter, Desert Plants – Conversations with 23 American Musicians, Berlin: Beginner Press in cooperation with Mode Records, 2020 (originally published in 1976 by A.R.C., Vancouver). The 2020 edition includes a cd featuring the original interview recordings with Larry Austin, Robert Ashley, Jim Burton, John Cage, Philip Corner, Morton Feldman, Philip Glass, Joan La Barbara, Garrett List, Alvin Lucier, John McGuire, Charles Morrow, J.B. Floyd (on Conlon Nancarrow), Pauline Oliveros, Charlemagne Palestine, Ben Johnston (on Harry Partch), Steve Reich, David Rosenboom, Frederic Rzewski, Richard Teitelbaum, James Tenney, Christian Wolff, and La Monte Young.

External links

• La Monte Young page on Mela Foundation
• La Monte Young page on Other Minds
• La Monte Young page on UbuWeb
• La Monte Young biography at Kunst im Regenbogenstadl
• La Monte Young on Record from The Wire magazine
• Farley, William (Dir.). In Between the Notes: A Portrait of Pandit Pran Nath, Master Indian Musician. Video documentary produced by Other Minds.
• Gann, Kyle. "La Monte Young.”
• Young, La Monte. "Notes on Continuous Periodic Composite Sound Waveform Environment Realizations." Aspen 8—The Fluxus Issue, edited by Dan Graham, designed by George Maciunas (1970–71). The issue also features a sound recording of Young's Drift Study 31 1 69.
• Young, La Monte. 89 VI 8 c. 1:42–1:52 AM Paris Encore (audio duration 10:33). Tellus #24 Flux Tellus, published on the Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine.

Interviews

• Golden, Barbara. "Conversation with La Monte Young." eContact! 12.2—Interviews (2) (April 2010). Montréal: CEC.
• La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela (August 13–14, 2003). "LaMonte Young and Marian Zazeela at the Dream House". NewMusicBox (Interview). Interviewed by Oteri, Frank J. (published October 1, 2003). (includes video)
• La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela on WNYC’s New Sounds #449. Audio of a 1990 radio show featuring an interview and sound recordings.

Thuunderboy! – Thuunderboy! Mid-April - May 6, 1973. First Thuunderboy Recordings 1 A Penny For 1:33 2 Hey Money Go 2:03 3 Arms 2:31 May 7 - ?, 1973. Thuunderboy Turntablist Ted Spins On Two Turntables 4 And They Called It Puppy 3:12 5 And You Will See 2:01 6 Goo Goo 0:42 7 Let My 11:45 September 9, 1973. Some "Nice Raras" 8 Oh Oh Touch 4:33 9 A New Day 4:48 10 No Wait A Second 18:44 11 Wait A Second 1:36 September 16, 1973 12 At Last 14:49 January 6, 1974. Thuunderboy's Last Set 13 [They] Called It 4:4 Design [Graphic] – Susan Archie Executive-Producer [Thuunderboy's] – Beverly Grant Conrad Liner Notes – Steve Dollar Mastered By [Additional Mastering] – Chris Griffin (2) Producer, Art Direction – Jeff Hunt Recorded By, Producer, Mastered By – Tony Conrad Turntables – Ted Conrad This CD presents recordings of young Ted playing with a defective children's turntable, made by Tony Conrad in 1973-74. Produced from archival recordings by Tony Conrad, Buffalo NY, 2000. Additional mastering: Griffin Mastering, Atlanta. Wrap-around cover over jewel case. Table Of The Elements – 76 Os, Table Of The Elements – TOE-CD-76

Tony Conrad – Fantastic Glissando A1 Fantastic Glissando A2 Process One Of Fantastic Glissando B1 Process Two Of Fantastic Glissando B2 Process Three Of Fantastic Glissando Lacquer Cut By – KPG* Producer – Tony Conrad A1 - Stereo-phase glissando, produced by sine wave oscillator processed through pump counter. Identical channels, but with head gap delay. Recorded December 12, 1969, on Revox reel-to-reel tape at 7½ ips. A2 - Both tracks of A1 played 3¾ ips, mixed and processed through pump counter. Identical channels, but with head gap delay. Recorded December 12, 1969, on Revox reel-to-reel tape at 3¾ ips. B1 - Both tracks of A2 played 3¾ ips, mixed and processed through pump counter. Identical channels, but with head gap delay. Recorded December 12, 1969, on Revox reel-to-reel tape at 3¾ ips. B2 - Both tracks of B1 played 3¾ ips, mixed and processed through pump counter. Identical channels, but with head gap delay. Recorded December 12, 1969, on Revox reel-to-reel tape at 3¾ ips. Produced from archival recordings by Tony Conrad, Buffalo NY, 1999. © 1969 Tony Conrad. All selections ℗Tony Conrad Music (ASCAP) 2003. This release ©2003 The Sandwalking Company. First catalog number on back cover and labels. Second catalog number on spine. Table Of The Elements – 82 Pb, Table Of The Elements – SWC-LP-82

Paul Panhuysen – The Galvano's A Part 1 B Part 2 Design, Art Direction – Jon Malic Recorded By – Paul Panhuysen Recorded at Het Apollohuis Eindhoven, 23 November 1993. Limited numbered edition of less than 1000. Table Of The Elements – Al 13 Guitar Series Vol. 2

 Paul Panhuysen (born August 21, 1934, Borgharen, The Netherlands - died January 29, 2015, Eindhoven, The Netherlands) was a Dutch visual and sound artist.
Panhuysen studied painting and monumental design at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht and art sociology at the University of Utrecht from 1954 until 1959. He was a director of the Fine Arts Academy in Leeuwarden, a curator for the Den Haag City Museum as well as for the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven. In 1965 he founded the artist group "De Bende van de Blauwe Hand" (Band Of The Blue Hand). This group closely related to Fluxus (4) and presented exhibitions, environments and happenings in museums and galleries.

In 1968, he founded the Maciunas Ensemble and began performing experimental music. Paul Panhuysen had focused on sound art, which was to occupy an important place in his visual art work. He had performed his long string installations during concerts and exhibitions since 1982 in many cities including Boston, Washington D.C., Dresden, Berlin, Hanover, Linz, Ferrara, Barcelona, Lodz, Warsaw, Moscow, Paris, New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, Kobe, Kyoto, Lyon, Rome, Prague and Mexico City. Performances were set up in indoor or outdoor spaces and always took full advantage of site specific sound and architectural properties. In 1980, Paul Panhuysen founded Het Apollohuis: a platform for sound and visual arts, exhibitions and new music concerts. He was the director until its disclosure in 1997.

Thurston Moore – Starfield Wild / Earth/Amp A Starfield Wild B Earth/Amp Design, Art Direction – Jon Malic Electric Guitar [Fender Jazzmaster], Effects [Mutro Wah/Vol, Sovtek Big Muff, Turbo-Rat, Phasetron], Bells – Thurston Moore Recorded By – Butch Vig, John Siket, Sonic Death Edition of approximately 2000 machine-numbered copies. Thurston Moore: Mutro Wah/Vol, Turbo-Rat, Sovtek Big Muff, Phasetron, Fender Jazzmaster, Peavey Roadmaster, Dennis Microphone Console, Earth Speaker/Cabinet, Bells. Recorded late 93 NYC. ©&℗ Thurston Moore, MCMXC

Table Of The Elements – 16 S Sulfur, Table Of The Elements – 32.066 Guitar Series Vol. 2  7", 45 RPM, Numbered, Grey Marble

Laurie Spiegel – Harmonices Mundi A Harmonices Mundi Originally commissioned in 1975 by Dr. Carl Sagan for inclusion on the Golden Record which accompanies the Voyager II Spacecraft. Part of a series of 14 single-sided limited edition LPs Screen printed B side © ℗ 1977 Laurie Spiegel / Laurie Spiegel Publishing (ASCAP) © 2003 Table Of The Elements All Rights Reserved Laurie Spiegel was born in Chicago (September 20, 1945) where in her teens she played guitar, banjo, and mandolin, and through them cultivated a devout philosophy of amateur music making. After receiving a degree in the social sciences, she returned to music. Having taught herself notation, she studied classic guitar and composition privately in London with John W. Duarte, then baroque and renaissance lute at Julliard, and composition with Jacob Druckman (who later took her as an assistant) and Vincent Persichetti. She also names Michael Czajkowski, Hall Overton, Max Mathews, and Emmanuel Ghent as important teachers. Having worked with analog synthesizers since 1969, she sought out the greater compositional control which digital computers could provide and wrote interactive compositional software at Bell Labs from 1973-79. She later founded New York University's Computer Music Studio, and became famous in rock music circles for her music software for personal computers, especially MusicMouse.

12", 33 ⅓ RPM, Single Sided, Limited Edition, Blue Table Of The Elements – Pm 61, Table Of The Elements – 144.9127

Tony Conrad ‎– Joan Of Arc Label:Table Of The Elements ‎– 77 Ir, Audio ArtKive ‎– Audio ArtKive 010 Format:CD, Album Country:US Released:Oct 2006 Genre:Electronic, Stage & Screen Style:Soundtrack, Experimental, Minimal Tracklist 1 Joan Of Arc 64:31 Credits Art Direction, Executive Producer– Jeff Hunt Design [Graphic Design]– Megan Downey Mastered By– Chris Griffin Organ [Pump]– Tony Conrad Photography By– Ira Cohen, Will Swofford Notes Originally recorded as a soundtrack for the Piero Heliczer film of the same name, 1968.

Loren Connors ‎– Sails Label:Table Of The Elements ‎– Ac 89 Format:2 × CD Country:US Released:Jan 2006 Genre:Blues, Rock Style:Post Rock, Avantgarde Tracklist 1.1 Pretty As Ever 1 1:44 1.2 Pretty As Ever 2 3:14 1.3 Pretty As Ever 3 2:04 1.4 Pretty As Ever 4 1:23 1.5 Pretty As Ever 5 1:27 1.6 Pretty As Ever 6 1:06 1.7 Pretty As Ever 7 1:34 1.8 Pretty As Ever 8 1:25 1.9 Here, I'll Whisper It To You 2:56 1.10 Trinity 1 1:38 1.11 Trinity 2 4:38 1.12 Trinity 3 2:09 1.13 Portrait Of A Fool 1 2:30 1.14 Portrait Of A Fool 2 5:19 1.15 In The Night 4:59 2.1 Dark Is The Night, Cold Is The Ground Guitar – John Fahey 6:49 2.2 Sails 36:06 Credits Guitar– Loren Connors*

American experimental musician, born 2 October 1949 in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. Son of Mary Mazzacane.

Loren Mazzacane Connors (born October 22, 1949) is an American guitarist who has recorded and performed under several different names: Guitar Roberts, Loren Mazzacane, Loren Mattei, and currently Loren Connors.^[1] His music has touched on many genres, but often features an abstract or experimental version of blues and folk styles.

Biography

Connors was born in New Haven, Connecticut, United States, and studied art at Southern Connecticut State University and the University of Cincinnati in the early 1970s, before deciding to pursue music rather than painting.^[2]

Best known as a composer and improviser on acoustic and electric guitar, Connors has released over 50 albums, on commercial record labels such as Family Vineyard, Table of the Elements, Recital and Father Yod as well as on his own Black Label, St. Joan and Daggett self-publishing imprints.^[3] They include spare solo and duo blues, ensemble experimental jazz, noise, drones, and avant garde rock.

An early champion of his music was Dr. William Ferris, noted blues historian who served as head of the National Endowment for the Arts under the Clinton Administration. Connors made contact with him in the late 1970s, while Dr. Ferris was teaching at Yale University. Although Ferris did not know it at the time, Connors was the janitor who cleaned his office. Many years later, Ferris wrote the liner notes for a sweeping compilation CD set of Connors's seven-inch recordings, called "Night Through."^[4]

From 1978 to 1984, Connors recorded a series of mostly solo blues abstractions, releasing them in limited amounts on his Daggett label,^[2] later reissued in a joint effort by Byron Coley, Thurston Moore on the Ecstatic Peace label in 1999, mastered by Jim O’Rourke, in part to celebrate Connors's 50th birthday.^[5] Cadence Magazine noted at the time that he was “similar to others in the Advanced Guard of improvising guitarists in that he is trying to extend the boundaries of sound and pitch of acoustic guitar, but he is unique in the utilization of Blues in his work, one could almost say this is Avant Garde Blues.”^[6] From 1981 to 1984, Connors released six limited edition albums with folksinger Kath Bloom, including traditional songs and Bloom originals.^[7]

In the mid-1980s, Connors took a partial break from music and honed his compositional skills by focusing on the art of haiku.^[8] He received the 1987 Lafcadio Hearn Award, and he and life partner Suzanne Langille also co-wrote an article on blues and haiku, "The Dancing Ear," published in the Haiku Society of America's journal.^[9] (A book of Connors's work from this period, Autumn Sun,^[10] was re-released by Thurston Moore and Byron Coley a couple decades later.) He wrote under the name Loren Mattei, and a music recording from this period, Ribbon o' Blues, was also released under that name.

Soon after returning to music, Connors began working with layered tracks. The first of this period was the In Pittsburgh album, released in 1989,^[2] later reissued by the Dexter's Cigar label in 1996.^[11][12] He moved to New York City in 1990,^[2] where he continued using the multi-track approach through the 1990s.^[13] Langille's vocals were featured on several recordings,^[14] and she also helped edit his suites.^[15] Many of these releases were on the RoadCone label, managed by Mike Hinds.^[2] During this period Connors introduced an abstracted undercurrent of Irish themes and melodic influences, while eschewing formal structure, with the Hell’s Kitchen Park CD being a hallmark of this added influence.^[16]

Such 1990s recordings were interspersed with recordings of live performances of guitar duets. The first of those recordings was with Japanese guitarist Keiji Haino, introduced to Connors by WFMU DJ David Newgarten, who then produced the recording, released in 1995. This was followed by the first of several recordings with guitarist Alan Licht in 1996, and with Thurston Moore and others.^[17][2]

In the mid-to-late 1990s he led the blues-rock group Haunted House with Langille, Andrew Burnes (of the band San Agustin), and percussionist Neel Murgai.^[11] Connors and Langille also joined with San Agustin's David Daniell and Burnes for a recording on the Secretly Canadian label. In the late 1990s, Connors and John Fahey met at a Chicago event,^[18] introduced by guitarist Jim O'Rourke. Fahey, who died in 2001, included on his last CD, released posthumously in 2003, a piece called, "Red Cross, Disciple of Christ Today (for Guitar Roberts)," referring to Connors's nickname. In the mid-2000s, Connors met and performed with Jandek, a long-time improviser whose unique independence and originality had often been compared to Connors's. He worked very closely with poet Steve Dalachinsky (who died in 2019)^[19] and also with multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter.

From 1999 through the present, Connors has focused on extended solo improvisational recordings, including the Departing of a Dream series, his tribute to Miles Davis. His main record label for these recordings has been Family Vineyard, managed by Eric Weddle.^[20]

In 2003, he composed and recorded a score for the film Why Can’t I Stop This Uncontrollable Dancing?.^[21] In 2009, Connors's piece, “Airs No. 3,” appeared in the soundtrack for the French-language film, Le Premier Cercle (“The Ultimate Heist), by director Laurent Tuel, featuring Jean Reno.^[22][23]

In 2012, his composition, "The Murder of Joan of Arc," was used as one of two alternative soundtracks for a reissue by Criterion Collection and Eureka Entertainment of Carl Dreyer's silent film, The Passion of Joan of Arc.^[24]

In the mid-to-late 2010s, Connors took up painting again, while continuing his music composing and performing. An art show of a series of acrylic paintings on Belgium linen canvas was hosted at the Artists Space in Manhattan in the fall of 2018.^[25]