Mark Swed writes an excellent overview of musical minimalism for the LA Times. It's in preparation for the LA Philharmonic's Minimalist Jukebox festival, which looks on paper to be one of the best things an American orchestra has ever done, convening such classic works as Terry Riley's In C, Reich's Four Organs, Glass's Akhnaten, Andriessen's De Staat, Pärt's Tabula Rasa, and Adams's Harmonielehre, together with such latter-day phenomena as Glenn Branca's Hallucination City for 100 electric guitars (Branca is seeking players), Michael Gordon's film symphony Decasia, and a performance by The Orb. (I'd be covering all this, but after some agony I've decided that there is more news value in the Paris premiere of Kaija Saariaho's second opera, Adriana Mater, which is happening at the same time. Esa-Pekka Salonen is conducting, Peter Sellars directing: there is no escaping the LA domination.) Swed recounts a Berkeley professor's reaction to In C: "[Riley] betrayed Berkeley. He betrayed music. He betrayed Gedalge [author of Treatise on the Fugue]. He betrayed everything this department stands for. I will not allow that album to be brought into my classroom. This has nothing to do with Vietnam. It is about preserving civilization." Minimalism is civilization, dear sir. It is tradition made modern. Also, here is Alan Rich's minimalist paean, replete with memories of the infamous 1973 performance of Four Organs in Carnegie Hall, which caused the last great musical scandal of the twentieth century. By the way, if you want to see something very haunting, watch the video of the June, 2001 premiere of Hallucination City, in a place that no longer exists. (Photo above by Emily Watkins.)
