A candid account of a broad artistic community by an active participant and observer
Gordon Mumma worked for twenty years as a professor of music at the University of California. In 2000, he received the John Cage Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. His wife Michelle Fillion is a professor of musicology at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, and the author of Difficult Rhythm: Music and the Word in E. M. Forster.
"What counts here is the spirit of it, the inventiveness springing
from an independence of imagination as well as the willingness and
financial necessity to work outside the given conditions of the
time. Mumma shows us how that spirit is in fact crucial and,
always, of essential value."--Christian Wolff, from the foreword
"An excellent and engaging book that can take its readers to a
dizzying array of places, real and metaphoric. It is an admirable
introduction to the mind and spirit of Gordon Mumma as well as a
vivid and loving remembrance of an amazing time in the history of
music."--ARSC Journal "The firsthand histories flowing from this
book are precious, provided by one of the unsung heroes of the
American electronic music scene, Gordon Mumma... A valuable
resource."--Neural "Mumma's energetic perspectives on so many
topics--as a scholar, inventor, technician, performer, composer,
photographer, historian, and documentarian--richly enhance our
perspective on this period of rapid change and fruitful innovation.
A beautiful and much-anticipated achievement."--Amy C. Beal, author
of Johanna Beyer and Carla Bley "Widely known as a multi-talented
composer/performer and inventor of handmade circuits and various
forms of electronic wizardry that revolutionized live electronic
music, Mumma is far more than the prototypical American 'maverick.'
His fierce dedication to his own artistic vision has always been
coupled to a voracious interest in the work of the pathbreaking
composers, performers, dancers, architects, and visual artists who
inhabit his music world and with whom he has often collaborated.
This elegantly edited and annotated book is thus not only an
invaluable overview of Mumma's extraordinary creative output and
ideas, but also an intimate insider’s telling of the history of
experimental music during the last half century."--David W.
Bernstein, editor of The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s
Counterculture and the Avant-Garde "A treasure trove of primary
source material on American, and to a lesser extent Latin-American,
music, especially of the experimental kind. The reader is
repeatedly struck by the genuineness of Mumma's writing; whether in
passages from his diary or accounts of now-significant events, he
writes with the authority of one who was actually there."--Bob
Gilmore, editor of Ben Johnston's "Maximum Clarity" and Other
Writings on Music "A very wonderful collection of essays, with its
first-person witnessing of a scene that was critical for the
development of the music technology we have today, and I highly
recommend it."--Soundbytes "A wonderful resource for music and the
arts, the book can be read as narrative or used as reference.
Highly recommended."--Choice
"As all great books about music lead you to do, I couldn't help but
reach up to my CD shelves, where various Mumma discs releases on
lables like New World and Tzadik are housed."--Gramophone
"Part memoir of a remarkable life at the center of 20th and 21st
century American experimental music, and partly a collection of
Mumma's thoughtful, provocative, and influential essays, the book
introduces this pioneer to a new generation of sonic
explorers"--Electronic Musician
"A contemporary history of a particularly fertile and disruptive
time in the advanced arts. . . . Mumma's book bears articulate
witness to how this flexible discipline played itself out in
concrete situations over the decades."--Avant Music News
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
