Email Author Kyle Gann

2001 Stories by Kyle Gann

• Composer, Interrupted

  published December 25, 2001

  Fifty years later, everyone's agreed on one thing: She never should have quit composing. And people are angry about it. For Ruth Crawford... More >>

• Quartet 4 the Beginning of Time

  published December 4, 2001

  He's lived many years in Manhattan—part of the time in the same building where the Gershwin brothers once wrote musicals—but Jerome... More >>

• Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya

  published November 20, 2001

  Musical evenings rarely come as weird and wacky these days as did the October 25 Interpretations concert at Merkin Hall. We had opera without... More >>

• Musico-Collateral Damage

  published October 30, 2001

  The Vietnam War left subtle traces on American music, but did not interrupt it or change its direction. Desert Storm had even less impact. But the... More >>

• The Uptowners Among Us

  published October 9, 2001

  I haven't written much about composers of a generation younger than mine, and I feel bad about it. I've sometimes gone to their concerts without... More >>

• Down But Not Out

  published September 25, 2001

  I'll never forget my first trip on the New York subway, in 1981. I saw a sign that referred to the WTC, and my mental screen froze. Why in the... More >>

• We Will, We Will Nonpop You

  published September 11, 2001

  MONTPELIER—Well, I've finally been to Woodstock. It was the Ought One festival in Montpelier, Vermont, billed as "the Woodstock of... More >>

• Everybody Plays

  published August 28, 2001

  Janice Giteck wrote an orchestra piece recently and showed it to a friend who's an Uptown, academic-type composer. The friend said, "It looks like... More >>

• Departing From Recipe

  published August 7, 2001

  It is an article of faith among us new-music types that music should appeal to large audiences, and not only to experts and cognoscenti. We get a... More >>

• Music Afraid to Be Heard

  published July 24, 2001

  Of all the composers in Europe, few would have been more interesting for the Lincoln Center Festival to bring in than Salvatore Sciarrino. He was... More >>

• Jumping the Groove

  published July 10, 2001

  The day minimalism was born, inertia became a problem again. It had last been one in the 18th century. Bach and Handel, once they started a... More >>

• Dueling With Symphonies

  published June 26, 2001

  In the late 1970s, Glenn Branca and Jeffrey Lohn invited Rhys Chatham to play bass with their band, Theoretical Girls, for a couple of gigs.... More >>

• East Village Buddha

  published June 5, 2001

  In 1973, a 22-year-old punk rocker named Elodie Lauten saw an ad in The Village Voice seeking musicians for a women's rock band. She went... More >>

• Skimmed Cream

  published May 22, 2001

  Since almost two years have elapsed since my last guide, there's no way to encompass the stacks of new discs rising like diminutive office... More >>

• Credo in Unum Tonum

  published April 17, 2001

  It's odd, isn't it, that we so easily identify a certain type of music as "spiritual." Spiritual music is slow, or at least slowly changing, yet... More >>

• Shades of Pretty

  published April 3, 2001

  One night many years ago, following a certain number of judgment-impairing libations, I and a friend of mine—who will probably be relieved to... More >>

• Quite by Chants

  published March 20, 2001

  LONDON—My long-held image of Europe is that of a continent endlessly spellbound by the Darmstadt composers who became famous during... More >>

• A Tale of Two Cities

  published March 6, 2001

  Seattle composer Janice Giteck has written about ritual as the essence of a musical performance, ritual defined as "people coming together... More >>

• Women on the Verge

  published February 20, 2001

  So septuagenarian Lorin Maazel is chosen as the next conductor of the New York Philharmonic. Pierre Boulez, now 74, becomes Carnegie Hall's "new"... More >>

• Mistaken Memories

  published February 6, 2001

  I ran into my old friend Al Niente at Tony Conrad's January 18 gig at Tonic. Conrad was droning away raspily on his violin, seeking out obscure... More >>

• Songs of the Open Road

  published January 23, 2001

  I attended "Musical Intersections: Toronto 2000," the millennial mega-musicology conference in that city a few weeks ago. Less exciting than... More >>

• Death Wish

  published January 9, 2001

  During the election campaign, George W. Bush—darling of the NRA and oil companies—referred time and time again to Al Gore as "the... More >>