Music Downtown

by Gann, Kyle

• ISBN13: 9780520229822
• ISBN10: 0520229827
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-12-09
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

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

Table of Contents

Preface: New Music and the Village Voice	xiii
introduction: the importance of being downtown	1	(16)
interviews	17	(56)
Shouting at the Dead: Robert Ashley's Neoplatonist TV Operas	17	(6)
The Part That Doesn't Fit Is Me: Yoko Ono, the Inventor of Downtown	23	(5)
Midtown Avant-Gardist: Philip Glass Sails Columbus into a Clash of Keys and Cultures	28	(5)
Trimpin's Machine Age: A Revolutionary Tinker Revives the Dream of Infinitely Fluid Music	33	(5)
Dancing with the Audience: Carman Moore's Mass Attempts to Heal the World	38	(4)
Harps from Heaven: Glenn Branca Reemerges from the Thick of Theory	42	(8)
Shadowing Capote: Mikel Rouse	50	(5)
The Dance Between: David First	55	(4)
Raising Ghosts: Leroy Jenkins Brings the African Burial Ground to Life	59	(4)
Opera Meets Oprah: Mikel Rouse Hawks Salvation in an Opera for Real People	63	(3)
A Difficult Woman: A Cosmic Piano Concerto from the Outspoken Composer of Vagina	66	(3)
Monkey Business: Fred Ho De-Europeanizes Opera with Martial Arts	69	(4)
music and/versus society	73	(37)
Plundering for Art: Sampling	73	(4)
Mozarts Live! ``Performing Mozart's Music''	77	(2)
Killers in the Audience	79	(2)
Letting Euro Go	81	(3)
What Normal People Hear: Rose Rosengard Subotnik	84	(2)
Dysfunctional Harmony: Repealing the Suppression of Creativity	86	(2)
Don't Touch That Dahl: Classical Radio	88	(2)
Spin It Around: New Music in the Public's Hands	90	(3)
Paradise at Our Fingertips: Voltaire's Bastards	93	(2)
What's Your AQ?	95	(2)
Dump the Multicult	97	(3)
No More Heroes	100	(2)
Music of the Excluded Middle	102	(2)
Medicine Music: The Uses of Art	104	(2)
Who Killed Classical Music? Forget It, Jake---It's Uptown	106	(4)
musical politics	110	(37)
Paradigms Lost: Rhys Chatham/John Zorn	110	(4)
Blurred Out: On Language	114	(2)
Rock Rules: Bandwagonism	116	(4)
Pulitzer Hacks: Amateur Composers versus the Professionals	120	(3)
Composer's Clearinghouse: The Pulitzer Prize	123	(2)
Obitchuaries: Critics Take Their Final Potshots at John Cage	125	(2)
Totally Ismic: Totalism	127	(3)
The Last Barbarian: John Cage	130	(2)
Berlitz's Downtown for Musicians: New-Music Performance	132	(2)
What Are We, Chopped Liver? The New Generation	134	(2)
The Great Divide: Uptown Composers Are Stuck in the Past	136	(4)
Y Not 2K? Nostalgia for Modernism as the Millennium Ends	140	(4)
Ding! Dong! The Witch Is Dead: Modernism Loses Its Grip as the Odometer Turns Over	144	(3)
aesthetics	147	(35)
Let X = X: Minimalism versus Serialism	147	(2)
A Tale of Two Sohos: Plato/Aristotle	149	(2)
A Secret Manifesto: Fred Lerdahl	151	(5)
The Modernist Dance: War in the Brain	156	(4)
It's Only as Good as It Sounds: Richard Rorty	160	(4)
Noises of Fate: You Don't Need a Sampler to Recontextualize	164	(4)
Sounding the Image	168	(2)
Waiting for Monteverdi: Minimalism	170	(2)
Dads versus Shadows: James Hillman	172	(2)
Vexing the Purists: Vexations	174	(3)
Musical Amnesia Cured! Imagism	177	(2)
End of the Paper Trail: Scores	179	(3)
reflections on books, figures, and events	182	(28)
No Shortcuts: John Cage	182	(4)
E.T., Go Home: Tuning	186	(2)
Composing the Lingo: Harry Partch, American Inventor	188	(4)
Morton Feldman's Abstract Expressions	192	(4)
One-Note Wonder: A New York Retrospective for Italy's Saintly Mystic, Giacinto Scelsi	196	(3)
Father of Us All: The Critic as Composer	199	(4)
Minimalism Isn't Pretty: Tony Conrad Makes a Truculent Comeback	203	(4)
Grand Old Youngster: Turning the Century at Lincoln Center	207	(3)
concert reviews	210	(76)
Maximal Spirit: La Monte Young	210	(4)
Big Machines, Little Issues: The 1987 International Computer Music Conference	214	(4)
First Flight: John Adams	218	(2)
Admiring the Waterfall: David Garland	220	(2)
Yawn: R.I.P. Hayman	222	(2)
Searching for the Plague: Diamanda Galas	224	(4)
Oceans without Walls: Laurie Anderson	228	(4)
Insiders, Outsiders, and Old Boys: New Music America '89	232	(4)
Dark Stormy Night: Nicolas Collins	236	(2)
Let There Be Noise: David Rosenboom/Trichy Sankaran	238	(2)
Music in Time of War: The Composer-to-Composer Symposium	240	(4)
Don't Worry, Be Hopi	244	(3)
Enough of Nothing: Postminimalism	247	(4)
Voltage High: Ron Kuivila	251	(2)
Isn't That Spatial? Henry Brant	253	(2)
The Limits of Craft: Frederic Rzewski/Philip Glass	255	(2)
Opera Is Relative: Einstein on the Beach	257	(3)
Well-Tuned Blues: The Forever Bad Blues Band	260	(2)
Voice of the Unutterable: The S.E.M. Ensemble	262	(2)
How Peculiar? The American Eccentrics	264	(2)
Flutes and Flying Branches: The Taos Pueblo Powwow	266	(3)
The Tingle of p x mn -- 1: La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela	269	(2)
The British Don't Have Oral Sex: Now Eleanor's Idea	271	(2)
View from the Gap: Emerging Voices	273	(2)
Bang! Crunch! Who's on First? Twisted Tutu	275	(3)
Regarding Henry: The World's First Multicultural Modernist Conservative Patron Saint of Outsiders	278	(3)
What Our Pulses Say: David Garland	281	(3)
Mistaken Memories: Tony Conrad: One-Idea Composer or Late Bloomer?	284	(2)
passings	286	(13)
Legacy of the Quiet Touch: Morton Feldman, 1926--1987	286	(2)
The Antidote to Publicity: Virgil Thomson, 1896--1989	288	(1)
That Which Is Fundamental: Julius Eastman, 1940--1990	289	(4)
Philosopher No More: John Cage (1912--1992) Quietly Started a Spiritual Revolution	293	(6)
Index	299