HAPPY 88TH BIRTHDAY TO LA MONTE YOUNG
My meeting with the humble giant of dream music
Happy 88th birthday to La Monte Young, a composer, musician, and artist recognized as one of the first American minimalist composers and central figure in post-World War II avant-garde music. He is credited for his exploration of long, sustained tones, beginning with his 1958 composition TRIO FOR STRINGS.
His music calls into question the nature and definition of music, with attribution to the “Just Intonation” movement of the 20th Century.
Despite having released very little recorded material (much of it hard to find https://web.archive.org/web/20120425061838/http://thewire.co.uk/articles/192/ ), some have described him as "the most influential living composer today.” The Observer wrote that he has had "an utterly profound effect on the last half-century of music."
Born in 1935, La Monte’s career started in the 1950s as he played jazz saxophone and studied composition in California. In that period he gigged with Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, and other jazz legends. Then in 1960 LaMonte moved to New York, where he collaborated with fringe artists, including events and art installations with Yoko Ono.
From there focused on pioneering drone music (a.k.a. “dream music”) with his Theatre of Eternal Music, a collective that included John Cale, Tony Conrad, Jon Hassell, Billy Name, Terry Riley, and La Monte’s wife Marian Zazeela.
Somewhere in that time frame La Monte introduced John Cale to Lou Reed, and Velvet Underground was birthed.
La Monte pressed on with Marian in various multimedia projects, and La Monte created his most-known work, THE WELL-TUNED PIANO.
In recent years he’s branched into a fusion of Indian classical music, jazz, Japanese gagaku, and microtonal blues rock.
With this preamble, in 1993 I was given passes to see (or should I say engage with) a La Monte Young concert at Lincoln Center in New York City. The passes came via Brad (bassist) and John Catler (fretless guitarist), two musical wunderkind brothers who have their own amazing resumes. The Catlers were supportive of my playing when I was in a band with their cousin, drummer-percussionist-inventor Bil Bryant, in the mid-70s. I was thrilled to reconnect with them, and the concert itself was remarkable—a cross between a massive Pink Floyd jam and a probe into the universe of microtones.
I was late getting into the city and didn’t have time to dress up, so for the post-concert reception I found myself in a room of Manhattanites adorned in evening gowns and tuxedos. La Monte and Marian made their entrance and, astonishingly, zero’d in on me, bypassing the upscale patrons. After giving me a big hug, La Monte and Marian peppered me with questions on what I thought about the music, what I’m up to, where I’m from, etc.. I can’t recall how I responded—I was quite disarmed by their warm intellects and being treated my like a long-lost son. They told me to load up on the catered food. I fellowshipped with the Catlers a bit, and went home with an indelible memory of an amazing event in time and space.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060202005140/http://www.otherminds.org/shtml/Young.shtml