On Tue, 14 Nov 2000, i.d.m. wrote:
quoted 2 lines also, anyone have a good recommendation for something to get by john> also, anyone have a good recommendation for something to get by john
> cage or steve reich? i'm reading a book of my girlfriend's about john
There's a 3CD set by Wergo called _The 25-Year Retrospective Concert of
John Cage_ which is a great overview of his influential early work. It
includes most of the hits (First Construction in Metal, Imaginary
Landscape no 1, a disc of the gamelan-esque Sonatas for Prepared Piano and
Williams Mix among others) and is performed by an all-star cast (including
the composer himself). It's about $40.
Another good introduction to his ideas (and sense of humor) is the 2CD
_Indeterminancy_, which is 90 Cage stories recited against occasional
musical outbursts from David Tudor, who was in another room fiddling with
music playback of Cage electronic pieces.
The essential Steve Reich pieces:
Four Organs
Phase Patterns
Come Out
It's Gonna Rain
Pendulum Phase
everything else is more or less poo. Reich was part of a group of
SF-based composers of a like mind (who founded the San Francisco Tape
Music Center, which was later subsumed into Mills College), so if you're
really blown away by his tape pieces you really oughta check out early
Pauline Oliveros (Alien Bog/Beautiful Soop CD, as well as a comp on
Paradigm) & Terry Riley (Music From the Gift CD is the most apropos, but
all of the Cortical stuff is excellent). Oliveros in particular was good
enough for Brian Eno to completely rip off for his "Discrete Music"
"system" some time later.
By the way, you can get all of these CDs from Forced Exposure while you're
loading up on whatever else you happen to be loading up on.
-rob
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