Earle Brown
Earle Brown (December 26, 1926 – July 2, 2002) was an American composer who established his own formal and notational systems. Brown was the creator of "open form," a style of musical construction that has influenced many composers since—notably the downtown New York scene of the 1980s (see John Zorn) and generations of younger composers. Among his most famous works are ''December 1952'', an entirely graphic score, and the open form pieces ''Available Forms I & II'', ''Centering'', and ''Cross Sections and Color Fields''. He was awarded a Foundation for Contemporary Arts John Cage Award (1998). Life Brown was born in Lunenburg, Massachusetts, and first devoted himself to playing jazz. He initially considered a career in engineering, and enrolled for engineering and mathematics at Northeastern University (1944–45). He enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1945. However, the war ended while he was still in basic training, and he was assigned to the base band at Randolph Fi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Downtown Music
Downtown music is a subdivision of American music, closely related to experimental music, which developed in downtown Manhattan in the 1960s. History The scene the term describes began in 1960, when Yoko Ono, one of the early Fluxus artists, opened her loft at 112 Chambers Street, in a part of Lower Manhattan later named Tribeca, to be used as a performance space for a series curated by La Monte Young and Richard Maxfield. Prior to this, most classical music performances in New York City occurred "uptown" around the areas that the Juilliard School at Lincoln Center and Columbia University would soon occupy. Ono's gesture led to a new performance tradition of informal performances in nontraditional venues such as lofts and converted industrial spaces, involving music much more experimental than that of the more conventional modern classical series Uptown. Spaces in Manhattan that supported Downtown music from the 1960s on included the Judson Memorial Church, The Kitchen, Exper ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Rye (town), New York
Rye is a town in Westchester County, New York, United States. The population was 49,613 at the 2020 United States census over 45,928 at the 2010 census. It is a separate municipality from the city of Rye. The Town of Rye contains two villages – Port Chester and Rye Brook – and the Rye Neck section of the village of Mamaroneck (the remainder of the village of Mamaroneck is in the town of Mamaroneck). Port Chester, Rye Brook and Rye Neck comprise the entire area of the town of Rye. History The town of Rye has its original roots on Manursing Island. On June 29, 1660, three settlers living in "Grenege" (now known as Greenwich, Connecticut), Thomas Studwell, John Coe, and Peter Disbrow, purchased Manursing Island (called Menussing by the Indians) from the Mohegan Indians. A tract of land lying between the Byram River and Blind Brook was sold by the Indians to Peter Disbrow on May 22, 1661. That year the four men were joined by John Budd, an original settler of Long Island ( ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Steven Mackey
Steven ("Steve") Mackey (born February 14, 1956) is an American composer, guitarist, and music educator. Life As a musician growing up listening to and performing vernacular American musics as well as classical music, Mackey's compositions are influenced by rock and jazz, though in an avant-garde vein. He favors the electric guitar and frequently performs his own compositions for the instrument, which include a concerto for electric guitar and orchestra (''Tuck and Roll'') and two works for electric guitar and string quartet (''Physical Property'' and ''Troubadour Songs''). As an electric guitar soloist, he has performed with the Kronos Quartet (''Short Stories''), the Arditti Quartet, New World Symphony, Dutch Radio Symphony, and London Sinfonietta. Among Mackey's notable awards include a Guggenheim fellowship, a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, two awards from the Kennedy Center for the performing arts, and the Stoeger Pr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tod Machover
Tod Machover (born November 24, 1953, in Mount Vernon, New York), is a composer and an innovator in the application of technology in music. He is the son of Wilma Machover, a pianist and Carl Machover, a computer scientist. He was named Director of Musical Research at IRCAM in 1980. Joining the faculty at the new Media Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1985, he became Professor of Music and Media and Director of the Experimental Media Facility. Currently Professor of Music and Media at the MIT Media Lab, he is head of the Lab's Hyperinstruments/Opera of the Future group and has been co-director of the Things That Think (TTT) and Toys of Tomorrow (TOT) consortia since 1995. In 2006, he was named visiting professor of composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He has composed significant works for Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Matt Haimovitz, the Ying Quartet, the Boston Pops, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Penn & Teller, and many others, as well a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Alvin Lucier
Alvin Augustus Lucier Jr. (May 14, 1931 – December 1, 2021) was an American composer of experimental music and sound installations that explore acoustic phenomena and auditory perception. A long-time music professor at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, Lucier was a member of the influential Sonic Arts Union, which included Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Gordon Mumma. Much of his work is influenced by science and explores the physical properties of sound itself: resonance of spaces, phase interference between closely tuned pitches, and the transmission of sound through physical media. Early life Lucier was born in Nashua, New Hampshire, the son of Kathryn E. Lemery, a pianist, and Alvin Augustus Lucier, a lawyer who was Mayor of Nashua. He was educated in Nashua public and parochial schools and the Portsmouth Abbey School, Yale University and Brandeis University. In 1958 and 1959, Lucier studied with Lukas Foss and Aaron Copland at the Tanglewood Center. In 19 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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David Lang (composer)
David Lang (born January 8, 1957) is an American composer living in New York City. Co-founder of the musical collective Bang on a Can, he was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Music for ''The Little Match Girl Passion'', which went on to win a 2010 Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance by Paul Hillier and Theatre of Voices. Lang was nominated for an Academy Award for " Simple Song #3" from the film ''Youth''. Early life and education Lang was born in Los Angeles, California. Lang is of Jewish descent. In his youth he played trombone. After completing his undergraduate degree at Stanford University, he went to the University of Iowa; he says, "There was a teacher in composition at the University of Iowa named Martin Jenni, and he had come to Stanford as a leave replacement to teach for a semester. And I just thought he was amazing. He knew a lot of stuff that I'd never heard of before. So when I thought about grad school, I went to Iowa. I was happy I did. It was rea ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ornette Coleman
Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman (March 9, 1930 – June 11, 2015) was an American jazz saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter, and composer known as a principal founder of the free jazz genre, a term derived from his 1960 album '' Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation''. His pioneering performances often abandoned the chordal and harmony-based structure found in bebop, instead emphasizing a jarring and avant-garde approach to improvisation. AllMusic called him "one of the most important (and controversial) innovators of the jazz avant-garde". Born in Fort Worth, Texas, Coleman began his musical career playing in local R&B and bebop groups, and eventually formed his own group in Los Angeles featuring members such as Ed Blackwell, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, and Billy Higgins. In 1959, he released the controversial album ''The Shape of Jazz to Come'' and began a long residency at the Five Spot jazz club in New York City. His 1960 album ''Free Jazz'' would profoundly influence the di ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Luciano Berio
Luciano Berio (24 October 1925 – 27 May 2003) was an Italian composer noted for his experimental work (in particular his 1968 composition ''Sinfonia'' and his series of virtuosic solo pieces titled ''Sequenza''), and for his pioneering work in electronic music. His early work was influenced by Igor Stravinsky and experiments with serial and electronic techniques, while his later works explore indeterminacy and the use of spoken texts as the basic material for composition. Biography Berio was born in Oneglia (now part of Imperia), on the Ligurian coast of Italy. He was taught piano by his father and grandfather, who were both organists. During World War II, he was conscripted into the army, but on his first day, he injured his hand while learning how a gun worked and spent time in a military hospital. Following the war, Berio studied at the Milan Conservatory under Giulio Cesare Paribeni and Giorgio Federico Ghedini. He was unable to continue studying the piano because of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Henry Brant
Henry Dreyfuss Brant (September 15, 1913 – April 26, 2008) was a Canadian-born American composer. An expert orchestrator with a flair for experimentation, many of Brant's works featured spatialization techniques. Biography Brant was born in Montreal, to American parents (his father was a violinist), in 1913. Something of a child prodigy, he began composing at the age of eight, and studied first at the McGill Conservatorium (1926–29) and then in New York City (1929–34). He played violin, flute, tin whistle, piano, organ, and percussion at a professional level and was fluent with the playing techniques for all of the standard orchestral instruments. As a 19-year-old, Brant was the youngest composer included in Henry Cowell's landmark book from 1933, ''American Composers on American Music''; and Cowell realized that Brant had already demonstrated an early identification with the American experimental musical tradition. He was represented in Cowell's anthology by an essa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Graphic Notation (music)
Graphic notation (or graphic score) is the representation of music through the use of visual symbols outside the realm of traditional music notation. Graphic notation became popular in the 1950s, and can be used either in combination with or instead of traditional music notation.Pryer, Anthony. "Graphic Notation." ''The Oxford Companion to Music'', edited by Alison Latham. ''Oxford Music Online''. 12 April 2011 Graphic notation was influenced by contemporary visual art trends in its conception, bringing stylistic components from modern art into music. Composers often rely on graphic notation in experimental music, where standard musical notation can be ineffective. Other uses include pieces where an Aleatoric music, aleatoric or Indeterminacy (music), undetermined effect is desired. One of the earliest pioneers of this technique was Earle Brown, who, along with John Cage, sought to liberate performers from the constraints of notation and make them active participants in the creation ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Early Music
Early music generally comprises Medieval music (500–1400) and Renaissance music (1400–1600), but can also include Baroque music (1600–1750). Originating in Europe, early music is a broad musical era for the beginning of Western classical music. Terminology Interpretations of historical scope of "early music" vary. The original Academy of Ancient Music formed in 1726 defined "Ancient" music as works written by composers who lived before the end of the 16th century. Johannes Brahms and his contemporaries would have understood Early music to range from the High Renaissance and Baroque, while some scholars consider that Early music should include the music of ancient Greece or Rome before 500 AD (a period that is generally covered by the term Ancient music). Music critic Michael Kennedy excludes Baroque, defining Early music as "musical compositions from heearliest times up to and including music of heRenaissance period". Musicologist Thomas Forrest Kelly considers that the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mobile (sculpture)
A mobile (,) is a type of kinetic sculpture constructed to take advantage of the principle of equilibrium. It consists of a number of rods, from which weighted objects or further rods hang. The objects hanging from the rods balance each other, so that the rods remain more or less horizontal. Each rod hangs from only one string, which gives it the freedom to rotate about the string. An ensemble of these balanced parts hang freely in space, by design without coming into contact with each other. Mobiles are popular in the nursery, where they hang over cribs to give infants entertainment and visual stimulation. Mobiles have inspired many composers, including Morton Feldman and Earle Brown who were inspired by Alexander Calder's mobiles to create mobile-like indeterminate pieces. John Cage wrote the music for the short film Works of Calder that focused on Calder's mobiles. Frank Zappa stated that his compositions employ a principle of balance similar to Calder mobiles. Origin ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |