La Monte Young
has pioneered the concept of extended time durations in contemporary
music for over 50 years. He contributed extensively to the study of
just intonation and to the development of rational number based tuning
systems that 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, periodic 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 in 1985 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 Minimalism:Origins, 1993,
Edward Strickland added, “Young is now widely recognized as the
originator of the most influential classical music style of the final
third of the twentieth century.”
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 was director of 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. Jennings, Dennis Johnson, Terry Riley, Angus
MacLise, Marian
Zazeela, Tony Conrad, John Cale, Jon Gibson, Jon Hassell, Lee Konitz
and David Rosenboom are among those who worked in this group under
Young's direction.
With Marian Zazeela
in the early '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 was the largest Theatre of
Eternal Music ensemble to appear in concert to date. Young has since
presented Dream House sound environments at the Guggenheim
Museum, New York (2009), Espace Donguy, Paris (1990); Ruine der Künste,
Berlin
(1992); Pompidou Center, Paris (1994-95 and 2004-2005); Musée
Art Contemporain Lyon (1999) and the MELA Foundation Dream House:
Seven Years of Sound and Light, which opened in New York in 1993
and has continued through present.
Young and Zazeela
helped bring renowned master vocalist Pandit Pran Nath to the U.S. in
1970 and became his first Western disciples, studying with him for
twenty-six years in the traditional gurukula
manner of living with and serving the guru. They taught the Kirana
style and performed with Pandit Pran Nath in hundreds of concerts in
India, Iran, Europe and the United States and continue to perform with
their group The Just Alap Raga Ensemble. In June 2002, Young was
conferred the title of Khan Sahib
by Ustad Hafizullah Khan Sahib, the Khalifa of the Kirana Gharana and
son of Pandit Pran Nath's teacher, Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan Sahib.
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 Bösendorfer 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 the ‘80s and
‘90s, The Theatre of Eternal Music Brass and String Ensembles led by
Ben Neill and Charles Curtis presented numerous performances in the
U.S. and Europe of The Melodic Versions (1984) of The Four
Dreams of China (1962), one of Young’s most important early minimal
works, from which in 1991 Gramavision released a CD of The Second
Dream of The High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer. 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.
For La Beauté, the celebration
of the Year 2000, the French government invited Young and Zazeela to
create a four-month, large-scale Dream House installation featuring the
continuous
DVD projection of the 1987 six-hour 24-minute performance of their
collaborative masterwork, The
Well-Tuned Piano in The Magenta Lights, set in a site-specific
light environment created by Zazeela. Shown daily and visited by more
than 200,000 people, the installation was headlined by L'Express:
"La
Monte Young: Le Son
du Siècle.”
From May through October 2001, Kunst im Regenbogenstadl, Polling,
presented the German premiere of the DVD Dream House
installation,
continuing from 2002 through the present as a long-term installations
with the addition in 2007 of the European
premiere of an electronically generated continuous periodic composite
sound waveform environment of The
Magic Opening Chord from The
Well-Tuned Piano. In March-April 2002, MaerzMusik Festival of
the Berliner Festspiele premiered the DVD installation of The
Well-Tuned Piano in The Magenta Lights
set in Zazeela's light design for the monumental Berlin Staatsbank.
Just Dreams released the DVD of The
Well-Tuned Piano in The Magenta Lights (JD002) in 2001,
described by The Village Voice
as "The most important piano work of the late 20th Century."
In 2003, under
commission from four European organizations, Young and Zazeela created Just Charles & Cello in The Romantic
Chord in a setting of Abstract
#1 from Quadrilateral Phase
Angle Traversals with Dream
Light, for solo cello, pre-recorded cello drones and light
design. The full evening work was composed specifically for cellist
Charles Curtis, who premiered it during 2003-04 in Paris, Dijon,
Lyon, Berlin and Kunst im Regenbogenstadl Dream House. In 2005, the
American avant-premiere was presented as part of the La Monte Young
70th Birthday Celebration in a three concert series at the MELA Dream House, New York. In May 2008,
Curtis presented the Italian premiere at the Angelica Festival in
Bologna.
In 2005, the world
premiere video installation of The Just Alap Raga Ensemble performing
Young's composition Raga Sundara
(ektal
vilampit khayal) set
in Raga Yaman Kalyan was added to the long-term Regenbogenstadl Dream House. The 2005 La Monte
Young 70th Birthday Celebration also included the avant-premiere
perfomance at Kunst im Regenbogenstadl and the world premiere
performances at MELA Foundation, New York of the Just Intonation
Version (1984-2001-2005) of the Trio
for Strings (1958) by The Theatre of Eternal Music String
Ensemble led by Charles Curtis, as well as two concerts of the ongoing
avant-premiere of Young's Raga
Sundara by The Just Alap Raga Ensemble at MELA Foundation.
Featuring extended alap
sections and sustained vocal drones in just intonation over tamburas,
The Just Alap Raga Ensemble is now Young's primary compositional and
performance vehicle. He has presented annual concert series of the
group at the MELA Dream House
from 2002 to present, including two world premiere performances in
March 2009 in the Young Zazeela Dream
House sound and light environment installed at the Guggenheim
Museum as part of the exhibition The
Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia.