Saturday 2/21:

The 1960's World of La Monte Young performed by Charles Curtis works by Young, Terry Jennings, Richard Maxfield (Barnsdall Art Park Gallery Theater. 8 PM. Program notes available at event)

La Monte Young has pioneered the concept of extended time durations in contemporary music for over 35 years. He contributed extensively to the study of just intonation and to the development of rational number based tuning systems which are used in his periodic composite sound waveform environments, as well as in many of his major performance works. Presentations of Young's work in the U.S. and Europe, as well as his theoretical writings, gradually influenced a group of composers to create a static, periodi music which became known as Minimalism. Musician magazine stated, "as the acknowledged father of minimalism and guru emeritus to the British art-rock school, his influence is pervasive," and the Los Angeles Herald Examiner wrote, " for the past quarter of a century he has been the most influential composer in America. Maybe in the world." In L.A. in the '50s Young played jazz saxophone, leading a group with Billy Higgins, Dennis Budimir and Don Cherry. He also played with Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, Terry Jennings, Don Friedman and Tiger Echols. At Yoko Ono's studio in 1960 he directed the first New York loft concert series. He was the editor of An Anthology (NY 1963), which with his Compositions 1960 became a primary influence on concept art and the Fluxus movement. In 1962 Young founded his group, The Theatre of Eternal Music, and embarked on The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys (1964- ), a large work involving improvisation within strict predetermined guidelines. Young played sopranino saxophone and sang with the group. Terry Riley, John Cale, Tony Conrad, Jon Hassell, Jon Gibson, Lee Konitz, David Rosenboom, Marian Zazeela and Angus MacLise are among those who worked in this group under Young's direction. With Marian Zazeela in the '60s he formulated the concept of a Dream House, a permanent space with sound and light environments in which a work would be played continuously. Young and Zazeela have presented works in sound and light worldwide, from music and light box sculptures to large-scale environmental installations, culminating in two Dia Art Foundation realizations: the 6-year continuous 6-story Harrison Street Dream House (NYC 1979-85) and the 1-year environment (22nd Street NYC 1989-90) within which Young presented The Lower Map of The Eleven's Division in The Romantic Symmetry (over a 60 cycle base) in Prime Time from 112 to 144 with 119 with the Theatre of Eternal Music Big Band. This 23-piece chamber orchestra consisted of 4 voices, 5 trumpets in Harmon mutes, 2 tenor trombones, 2 bass trombones, 3 horns, 3 tubas, 2 sustained electric guitars, and 2 sustained electric basses, and was the largest Theatre of Eternal Music ensemble to appear in concert to date. Young has since presented Dream House sound environments at Espace Donguy, Paris (1990); Ruine der KŸnste, Berlin (1992); Pompidou Center, Paris (1994-95); and the MELA Foundation Dream House: Seven Years of Sound and Light, which opened in New York in 1993 and will continue through the year 2000. As the first western disciple of renowned master vocalist Pandit Pran Nath, Young has performed and taught the Kirana style of Indian classical music since 1970. The 1974 Rome live world premiere of Young's magnum opus The Well-Tuned Piano (1964-73-81-present), was celebrated by a commission for him to sign the Bšsendorfer piano which remains permanently in the special tuning. Gramavision's full-length recording of the continuously evolving 5-hour-plus work has been acclaimed by critics to be " the most important and beautiful new work recorded in the 1980s," " one of the great monuments of modern culture" and " the most important piano music composed by an American since the Concord Sonata." At the 1987 MELA Foundation La Monte Young 30-Year Retrospective he played the work for a continuous 6 hours and 24 minutes. In 1991 Gramavision released the CD performance by The Theatre of Eternal Music Brass Ensemble, led by Ben Neill, of one of Young's most important early minimal works, The Melodic Version (1984) of The Second Dream of The High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer from The Four Dreams of China (1962). In 1990 Young formed The Forever Bad Blues Band, which has performed extensively in Germany, Austria, Holland, Italy and the U.S., presenting two to three-hour continuous concerts of Young's Dorian Blues, with Young, keyboard, Jon Catler, just intonation and fretless guitar, Brad Catler, bass, Jonathan Kane, drums, and Marian Zazeela, light design. In 1993 Gramavision released the 2-CD set, La Monte Young, The Forever Bad Blues Band, Just Stompin'/ Live at The Kitchen. Cellist Charles Curtis was born in California in 1960. Since 1986 has enjoyed a close association with the composer La Monte Young, both as a composition student and as a performer of Young's concert works. Young has referred to Curtis as "the outstanding interpreter of my string music in the world". Curtis is one of the few musicians to have perfected Young's complex just intonation tunings and to realize these in authorized performances lasting several hours. He has led performances and premieres of Young's works in New York and Europe, notably at the Dia Art Foundation, the Darmstadt Ferienkurse, with Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt, at the Podewil and the "Inventionen" festival in Berlin, and for the North German Radio in Hamburg. Curtis is also one of the very few musicians ever to have appeared publicly in duo formations with La Monte Young, performing rarely heard compositions by Richard Maxfield and Terry Jennings.