Kyle Gann's Discography of Postminimal, Totalist, and Rare Minimalist Music

Discography of Postminimal, Totalist, and Rare Minimalist Music

Here is Kyle Gann's much more comprehensive addition to my minimalist/postmodern listening list. I am familiar with some of the music on the list, but I am always interested in something new.

I also enjoyed finding Mikel Rouse's music . I just got his CD of his opera Dennis Cleveland today and enjoyed downloading music from his movie Cameraworld off of ITunes.

enjoy!

putting modernism behind/ kyle gann

Yesterday was a good day.

Since creating my blog I have been looking for some other people that have similar experiences. In los angeles it seems that the art music world is so far away. We do have a new music scene here, but it is easy to feel that art music is irrelevant. I can't remember the last time I met a composer who wasn't trying to get into film scoring. So when I found the site ArtsJournal: Daily Arts News, I felt like I found a new home. There are a number of great blogs on every artistic subject matter, but kyle gann's ArtsJournal: putting modernism behind is a real treat. He nails the problem right on the head with the statement:

"That there are still uncharted musical universes left to explore strikes me as unquestionable. But there is only so far you can meaningfully go in terms of left-brain analytical complexity, greater dissonance, more rarefied abstraction, and by pursuing only that one direction as if it were some god-given historical mandate, the Carterites, the Ferneyhoughites, and even the Zornites had left the musical needs of the human race behind. Music, as Lewis says, can also be lyric, epic - and I would also add poetic, meditative, sensitizing, physical, participatory, communal."

Overall the modernists "leaving the human race behind" has put us younger composers in an interesting position. Its like they dropped the atomic bomb on art music and killed off themselves and most everything around them.

Lloyd Rodgers told me a story that he thought the change was finally here in 1976 when Philip Glass made the cover of Time. He thought it was an exciting time artistically, funding was pretty good and a new audience was developing. But almost 30 years later, what? Where is the next generation of composers?

Have they all gone on to a steady job in hollywood?

I also wonder about the college system. I knew a few students as tonal/hip young composers change completely on the way to their DMA. It's like I don't know them anymore once they get once they start grant writing, attending artists colonies and chasing commissions.

So where does that leave us?

I think that while we have been fighting the modernism/postmodern wars the public got sick of conceptual concerts, posturing and elitism, and decided to go elsewhere for their art.

minimalist/postmodern listening list

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What to listen to? That is the question!

I'm going to try and keep the descriptions brief and let you decide for yourself. Hopefully there will be something new for you to check out. Of course the following are just my opinions, so if you think something is missing, please let me know.

The songs are in no particular order. They are linked to Amazon, and if you are lucky some sites (like itunes) are selling them as mp3's these days.


Philip Glass
Einstein on the Beach
non-narrative opera, seminal work, not as repetitive as you might think, probably a bit much for my friends, but if you can make it through it you will be rewarded with one of the most beautiful endings of a opera.

Koyaanaisqatsi
kind of a Einstein on the Beach Light, a great introduction to PG, get the DVD and CD

Michael Nyman
The Essential Michael Nyman Band is a great starting point to his film music

String Quartets, 2-4, written for amplified string quartet, my favorite recent quartets, it would be great to hear them played in live in the US.

Steve Reich
Desert Music
great vocal piece, text is in english, very easy to understand and relate to
music for 18 musicians
Reich sets up a huge musical machine process and leads the instruments through the journey. It still sound like it could have been written yesterday.

Terry Riley
In C
probably the most important minimalist work, Riley brought modular impovisation to the art music world, In C is a composition of motives that musician can perform at his own pace. The result is an amazing revolution in improvisation.

Instead of improvisation being based on a rote language as in jazz, Riley gives the musicians the 'licks' to play and lets them use their musicianship to create their own performance. Hence, any musician can sit down and play the music, the true art comes from the precompositional harmonic and melodic strategies created by the composer.

This is not the best recording, but if you ever see an advertisement for this piece being played live, GO SEE IT!!!
A Rainbow of Curved Air
very unique, deals with non-traditional tunings, riley uses technology to create endless loops and be a one-man improvisatory band

John Adams
Harmonium
I heard the LA Master Chroral(and my wonderful vocalist friends Nicole Baker, Susan Taylor Mills, and Nike St. Clair, perform this for their first concert at Disney Hall. This is one of the first pieces that I "got" in my 20's. I took my wife to the concert and after the first half she was really impressed by the Bobby Mcferrin piece. I thought it was nice, but told her to wait until the second half. She and the audience "got" the Adams piece so much that they started applauding about 3 minutes before the "real" ending. You gotta love LA.

Lloyd Rodgers
Unless you are a student at Cal State Fullerton you probably have not heard of Lloyd. To me (and a very biased person) he is as important as anybody listed above. His ensemble the Cartesian Reunion Memorial Orchestra was a mainstay in the 1980's in Los Angeles, but never achieved the type of exposure that they deserved. Since the group disbanded in 1990, he changed gears completely and created a tighter ensemble of electric guitar, electric bass, vibes and keyboard. The amount of quality music that Lloyd has written and performed over the last 30 years is mind-blowing. Hopefully as well as sharing my music I can share lloyd's as well. I will try to post some of his music and let you in on the best-kept secret I know of. You can start with the music from the Little Prince, a chamber ballet/opera for choreographer Raiford Rodgers and the Los Angeles Chamber Ballet.


There are definitely other composers I have not mentioned, and other pieces by the above group. Like all lists it's incomplete. The music that I listed I have either performed or seen live. That is probably the most important way to appreciate any music, which is also the biggest problem about this music. You can't really go out and see it performed that much. It probably isn't played on the radio at all, I know I stopped listening to 'classical radio' long ago because they only play music of 'dead people'.

Come to think about it, this is the other part of the problem, how can any music survive and gain a footing? It must have exposure in the marketplace through live performance, and radio airplay. Since this type of music has a very limited footprint in either, I am not surprised that most people cannot name a living postmodern composer.

I guess that is what the internet is supposed to help.

Over time we will find out if the internet has the power to help savvy listeners find the music they like and help composers/musicians find that audience?

We shall see.

pb