Lawrence Ball
Lawrence Ball (born 17 September 1951) is an English musician and composer who lives in North London North London is the northern part of London, England, north of the River Thames. It extends from Clerkenwell and Finsbury, on the edge of the City of London financial district, to Greater London's boundary with Hertfordshire. The term ''nor .... He produces multi-media compositions, performs in concert, and also works as a private tutor in mathematics, music theory and physics. Musical career Lawrence Ball was born in London and graduated from Queen Mary, University of London, Queen Mary College, London University, with a BSc in Computer Science with Mathematics, then received a scholarship to Dulwich College from 1963 to 1969. He studied harmony and counterpoint with Robert Smith (musician), Robert Smith at the Guildhall School of Music from 1976 to 1977, piano with Tessa Uys from 1977 to 1978, and composition with composer Robert Boyle, an associate of Philip Glass, fr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Electronic Musical Instrument
An electronic musical instrument or electrophone is a musical instrument that produces sound using electronic circuitry. Such an instrument sounds by outputting an electrical, electronic or digital audio signal that ultimately is plugged into a power amplifier which drives a loudspeaker A loudspeaker (commonly referred to as a speaker or speaker driver) is an electroacoustic transducer that converts an electrical audio signal into a corresponding sound. A ''speaker system'', also often simply referred to as a "speaker" or ..., creating the sound heard by the performer and listener. An electronic instrument might include a user interface for controlling its sound, often by adjusting the pitch (music), pitch, frequency, or duration of each Musical note, note. A common user interface is the musical keyboard, which functions similarly to the keyboard on an acoustic piano, except that with an electronic keyboard, the keyboard itself does not make any sound. An electronic ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji
Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (born Leon Dudley Sorabji; 14 August 1892 – 15 October 1988) was an English composer, music critic, pianist and writer whose music, written over a period of seventy years, ranges from sets of miniatures to works lasting several hours. One of the most prolific 20th-century composers, he is best known for his piano pieces, notably nocturnes such as ''Gulistān'' and ''Villa Tasca'', and large-scale, technically intricate compositions, which include seven symphonies for piano solo, four toccatas, ''Sequentia cyclica'' and ''100 Transcendental Studies''. He felt alienated from English society by reason of his homosexuality and mixed ancestry, and had a lifelong tendency to seclusion. Sorabji was educated privately. His mother was English and his father a Parsi businessman and industrialist from India, who set up a trust fund that freed his family from the need to work. Although Sorabji was a reluctant performer and not a virtuoso, he played so ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Erik Satie
Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (, ; ; 17 May 18661 July 1925), who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. He was the son of a French father and a British mother. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, but was an undistinguished student and obtained no diploma. In the 1880s he worked as a pianist in café-cabaret in Montmartre, Paris, and began composing works, mostly for solo piano, such as his ''Gymnopédies'' and '' Gnossiennes''. He also wrote music for a Rosicrucian sect to which he was briefly attached. After a spell in which he composed little, Satie entered Paris's second music academy, the Schola Cantorum, as a mature student. His studies there were more successful than those at the Conservatoire. From about 1910 he became the focus of successive groups of young composers attracted by his unconventionality and originality. Among them were the group known as Les Six. A meeting with Jean Cocteau in 1915 led to the creation of the ballet '' Par ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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LaMonte Young
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. He is best known for his exploration of sustained tones, beginning with his 1958 composition ''Trio for Strings.'' His compositions have called into question the nature and definition of music, most prominently in the text scores of his ''Compositions 1960''. While few of his recordings remain in print, his work has inspired prominent musicians across various genres, including avant-garde, rock, and ambient music. 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.Jeremy Grimshaw, ''Draw a Straight Line and Follow It: The Music and Mysticism of La Monte Young''. Oxford University Press, 2012 He then bec ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Terry Riley
Terrence Mitchell "Terry" Riley (born June 24, 1935) is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his music became notable for its innovative use of repetition, tape music techniques, and delay systems. His best known works are the 1964 composition '' In C'' and the 1969 LP ''A Rainbow in Curved Air'', both considered landmarks of minimalism and important influences on experimental music, rock, and contemporary electronic music. Raised in California, Riley began studying composition and performing solo piano in the 1950s. He befriended and collaborated with composer La Monte Young, and later became involved with the San Francisco Tape Music Center. A three-record deal with CBS in the late 1960s, resulting in an LP recording of ''In C'' (1968) and ''A Rainbow in Curved Air'' (1969), brought his work to wider audiences. In 1970, he began intensive studies under Hin ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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New Age
New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars consider it a religious movement, its adherents typically see it as spiritual or as unifying Mind-Body-Spirit, and rarely use the term ''New Age'' themselves. Scholars often call it the New Age movement, although others contest this term and suggest it is better seen as a ''milieu'' or ''zeitgeist''. As a form of Western esotericism, the New Age drew heavily upon esoteric traditions such as the occultism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including the work of Emanuel Swedenborg and Franz Mesmer, as well as Spiritualism, New Thought, and Theosophy. More immediately, it arose from mid-twentieth century influences such as the UFO religions of the 1950s, the counterculture of the 1960s, and the Human Potential Movement. Its exact origins ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Minimalism
In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Donald Judd, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Carl Andre, Robert Morris, Anne Truitt and Frank Stella. The movement is often interpreted as a reaction against abstract expressionism and modernism; it anticipated contemporary postminimal art practices, which extend or reflect on minimalism's original objectives. Minimalism in music often features repetition and gradual variation, such as the works of La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Julius Eastman and John Adams. The term ''minimalist'' often colloquially refers to anything or anyone that is spare or stripped to its essentials. It has accordingly been used to describe the plays and novels of Samuel Beckett, the films of Robert Bresson, the stories of Raymond Carver, an ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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John Whitney (animator)
John Hales Whitney, Sr. (April 8, 1917September 22, 1995) was an American animator, composer and inventor, widely considered to be one of the fathers of computer animation. Life Whitney was born in Pasadena, California and attended Pomona College. He is a descendant of the Whitney family through his father's direct line. His first works in film were 8 mm movies of a lunar eclipse which he made using a home-made telescope. In 1937-38 he spent a year in Paris, studying twelve-tone composition under René Leibowitz. In 1939 he returned to America and began to collaborate with his brother James on a series of abstract films. Their work, ''Five Film Exercises'' (1940–45) was awarded a prize for sound at the First International Experimental Film Competition in Belgium in 1949. In 1948 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. During the 1950s, Whitney used his mechanical animation techniques to create sequences for television programs and commercials. In 1952, he directed engi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Method Music
''Method Music'' is a double-album of electronic music by the English composer and mathematician Lawrence Ball created using the compositional system that would become The Lifehouse Method, an online-based compositional project conceived by Pete Townshend of The Who to compose customized algorithmically-generated musical portraits. The album's music evolved from tests of the portraiture system. The release was produced by Pete Townshend and Bob Lord (musician), Bob Lord and was released on 31 January 2012 on Navona Records. History ''Method Music'' is an outgrowth of Townshend's groundbreaking 1971 futurist composition ''Lifehouse (rock opera), Lifehouse''. Although Townshend originally intended ''Lifehouse'' as a multimedia audience-participation musical production to follow The Who's ''Tommy (rock opera), Tommy'', difficulties in implementing the project led to its temporary abandonment; a selection of constituent components extracted from ''Lifehouse'' were recorded and asse ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Lifehouse Method
The Lifehouse Method was an Internet site where applicants could sit for an electronic musical portrait made up from data they enter into the website. This website was the result of a collaboration between the Who's principal songwriter and composer Pete Townshend, composer Lawrence Ball and software developer Dave Snowdon. The website was operated by Eel Pie Recording Production, Limited, a company set up in 1970 by Pete Townshend. History The Lifehouse Method grew out of Pete Townshend's unfinished 1971 science-fiction album '' Lifehouse'', written for the Who. Although Townshend originally intended ''Lifehouse'' as a multi-media, audience-participation musical production to follow the Who's ''Tommy'', difficulties in funding and implementing the project led to its release as the Who's album ''Who's Next'' instead. Although some of the key ''Lifehouse'' songs were left off ''Who's Next'', the basic concept of the opus is still recognizable within the album. In ''Lifehouse'' To ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Endless Wire (The Who Album)
''Endless Wire'' is the eleventh studio album by the English rock band the Who, released on 30 October 2006 in the UK through Polydor Records and the following day in the US by Universal Republic. It was their first new studio album of original material in 24 years following the release of ''It's Hard'' in 1982, as well as their first since the death of the bassist John Entwistle. It was originally due to be released in early 2005 under the working title ''WHO2''. ''Endless Wire'' received generally positive reviews from music critics. It debuted at #7 on the ''Billboard'' album chart and #9 in the UK. Portions of it were featured on The Who Tour 2006-2007. Most of the songs from this album were used in the rock musical adaptation of ''The Boy Who Heard Music'' which debuted in July 2007 as part of Vassar College's Powerhouse Summer Theater workshop series. History and composition Most of what is known about the development of the album has come from Pete Townshend's website. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |