Books

Pauline Oliveros, IONE, Christopher Willes, and others. Resonance Gathering Resonance Gathering is a thoughtful package that documents and celebrates a recent two-year project to perform a Pauline Oliveros work from 1970: To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of their Desperation. The title itself suggests mantra, meditation, and healing ceremony,[...] Read more

Books Stuart Broomer Issue 146

Danielle Shlomit Sofer. Sex Sounds: Vectors of Difference in Electronic Music. Danielle Shlomit Sofer’s Sex Sounds sets the reader on the hunt for things missing in most discussions of electronic music: sex, sexuality, libidinal drive. Guided by Sofer, once we start looking for the missing element of sex in electronic music, we begin to see it everywhere.[...] Read more

Books Kurt Newman Issue 144

Adriana Barton. Wired for Music: A Search for Health and Joy Through the Science of Sound. What happens to a person who spent their entire childhood and youth practising to be a professional musician and can no longer play? Adriana Barton, who took up the cello when she was five years old and had dreams of being a concert soloist, was forced to give it up when she developed soft[...] Read more

Books Mary Dickie Issue 144

Paul Steinbeck. Sound Experiments: The Music of the AACM. The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) has been a guiding force in creative music since its inception in Chicago in 1965. Its membership has included a veritable who’s who of the jazz avant-garde scene, such as Muhal Richard Abrams, Anthony Braxton, Roscoe[...] Read more

Books Patrick O’Reilly Issue 144

Kyle Gann. The Arithmetic of Listening: Tuning Theory & History for the Impractical Musician. In addition to being a fascinating composer (e.g. the exuberant microtonal multi-Disklavier opus Hyperchromatica) and a professor of music theory and composition at Bard College, Kyle Gann remains one of the best-known contemporary-music critics, thanks to his writing for the Village Voice[...] Read more

Books Nick Storring

Mark Miller. Of Stars and Strings: A Biography of Sonny Greenwich. In 1945 World War II was over and Herb Greenidge had just returned from his stint overseas, bringing with him a guitar that fascinated his third child. But rather than emulate dad—an accomplished pianist but a mediocre plectrist at best—Herbert Junior pursued a more[...] Read more

Books Alexander Varty Issue 137

Eric Lewis. Intents & Purposes. Are John Coltrane’s out versions of “My Favorite Things” valid representations of the original Rodgers and Hammerstein song from The Sound of Music? What are the similarities and differences between fully scored and freely improvised music? More generally, how best conceive[...] Read more

Books Lawrence Joseph Issue 134

Brian Olewnick. "Keith Rowe: The Room Extended." At some point during the 1960s (the exact date is unclear, but happenings were starting and the Fab Four were still singing “yeah yeah yeah” on their radio hits) a young art-school graduate began to do horrible and wondrous things to a guitar. He took a vow to eschew tuning, for[...] Read more

Books Alexander Varty Issue 131

Punk Ethnography: Artists & Scholars Listen to Sublime Frequencies Last Christmas, our new Syrian friends were telling us about dabke, the Syrian line dance. “Dabke,” I said. “That’s what Omar Souleyman plays!” They laughed out loud and said, “We’d never heard of him in Syria, but now that we’re here, he[...] Read more

Books Daniel Glassman

Bill Dietz. 8 Tutorial Diversions, 2009-2014. Edition Solitude publishes the work of resident artists at Akademie Schloss Solitude, an artist fellowship and residency program in Germany. One of its recent monographs is 8 Tutorial Diversions, 2009-2014 by American-born, Berlin-based artist and composer Bill Dietz. Consisting of eight[...] Read more

Books Christopher Willes Issue 125

Bob Gilmore. Claude Vivier: A Composer’s Life. Both the music and the life of Canadian composer Claude Vivier, who was murdered in Paris in 1983, are fraught with mystery.   Mystery surrounds his birth and death. He never knew his biological parents, and was raised in a foster family. After his violent death, a score was[...] Read more

Books René van Peer Issue 120

David Grubbs. Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, the Sixties and Sound Recording. An endless stream of recordings flows through the Internet. Listeners rejoice in having easy access to over a century of music, their mood dampened only in contemplation of the terabytes of sound they will never find time to hear. Few, however, have stopped to study how this increased[...] Read more

Books Lawrence Joseph Issue 119