News from the darkest corners of the musical universe:

◦ 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.