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The Tree Watcher (live, 1981)

by Michael Gordon

about

Streamable in the essay "An Industry Playlist" by Will Robin here:
van-us.atavist.com/an-industry-playlist

Will Robin writes:
"My book begins with a minor but revealing incident when, as a grad student at Yale in 1981, Michael Gordon debuted a work called “The Tree Watcher.” The piece is clearly indebted to the minimalism of Philip Glass and Steve Reich, but its incessant repetitions are even more abrasive than those composers’ early works. Gordon played simple, overlapping arpeggios on a portable organ that were looped through a tape delay system. Towards the end of the performance, Gordon’s best friend David Lang came onstage and began buzzing a hotel bell, creating feedback that eventually drowned out the organ. When they finished, some in the audience cheered and others lustily booed.

The moment documents the ambivalent status of minimalism in the academy in this period, and represents an early example of the cheeky provocations that would be central to Bang on a Can."

credits

released March 4, 2021
Michael Gordon, electric organ and tape loops
David Lang, hotel bell

recorded live at Yale University, New Haven, CT, October 12, 1981

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Michael Gordon New York, New York

Michael Gordon's music merges subtle rhythmic invention with incredible power embodying, in the words of The New Yorker's Alex Ross, "the fury of punk rock, the nervous brilliance of free jazz and the intransigence of classical modernism."

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