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News from the darkest corners of the
musical universe:
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Thursday, August 31, 2006 ◦
Experimental composer James Tenney, who was a musical theorist, pianist and university professor, has died of cancer in Valencia, Calif., at age 72.
Tenney was born Aug. 10, 1934, in Silver City, N.M. He attended the University of Denver with the intention of studying engineering, but when he heard John Cage play "Sonatas and Interludes," his music "blew me away," he told the Los Angeles Times in 2002. He said he admired the way Cage had altered the sound of the piano with screws and bolts and thought that was the kind of engineer he preferred to be.
After studying at Juilliard School in New York, he earned his bachelor's degree from Bennington College in Vermont in 1958. At the University of Illinois, he earned his master's degree. Tenney worked at Bell Laboratories from 1958 to 1964, researching the new field of computer music, the Los Angeles Times reported. He taught at several universities, including California Institute of the Arts in Valencia and York University, Toronto, where he also got orchestral commissions and recorded.
In 2002, he performed the piece that had gotten him into a music career 50 years before -- Cage's "Sonatas and Interludes."
Tenney is survived by his wife Lauren Pratt, two sons, two daughters and three grandchildren.
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Wednesday, August 30, 2006 ◦
The Monstrous Movie Music label, which usually releases re-recordings of scores from classic science fiction movies, is branching out into original soundtracks this October with two new CDs: THE BLOB by Ralph Carmichael and THE INTRUDER by Herman Stein. THE BLOB CD will also include selections of library music featured in several low-budget films, and THE INTRUDER will include additional Herman Stein
music. Full details here.
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Saturday, August 12, 2006 ◦
Yma Sumac visited Peru earlier this year. Pictures are here and here.
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Wednesday, August 09, 2006 ◦
"We, The Gloomy Pharmacists, would like to present you with this, a loving walk down Pharmacy Lane. For reasons too boring to detail here, we are presenting it to you via the interweb. However, if, like us, you like your music to be tangible, we are affording you the opportunity to craft your own CD version of this album."
Download The Best of Gloomy Pharmacy here.
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Tuesday, August 08, 2006 ◦
In commemoration of the Fourtieth Anniversary of Frank Zappa's legendary debut Freak Out Zappa Records is very pleased to present the FZ Audiography and Documentary Evidence (for the first time this century) of those certain recording sessions that occurred in Los Angeles between March and April of 1966. This exciting and Deluxe, Limited Edition will be released in september and contains FOUR historically magnificent discs for your Audio Gratification. And a Gorgeous booklet - with the original art and lots of special surprises - and your name too.
More info will appear on Zappa.com very soon.
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Sunday, August 06, 2006 ◦
More info about the Captain Beefheart remasters can be found at Beefheart.com.
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Friday, August 04, 2006 ◦
For all Don van Vliet fans: All five Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band studio albums for Virgin have been remastered and are being reissued on CD - together with the first official release of the London 74 live album.
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Wednesday, August 02, 2006 ◦
News from The Residents:
As part of the overall 35th anniversary festivities, a series of new releases is set to start rolling out from the El Ralpho Archives. El Ralpho refers to the Residents first studio, probably named for the Sun Ra record label, El Saturn. It contains everything the Residents have ever recorded.
Though many people believe the archive is full of wondrous creations that the world has never heard, anyone who know The Cryptic Corporation knows that organization is not one to pass up releasing any worthwhile material. Most of the music found in the archives has been released, but some of it only in limited forms.
The first new CDs coming out of the archive is three volumes of rare instrumentals called "BEST LEFT UNSPOKEN..." Volume one, due in late August, is centered on the large work, Pollex Christi, but includes six unreleased tracks as well to round out an hour of Residential instrumental music, none of which has been on major albums.
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