Mimi Johnson is a New York City-based arts administrator. [1] [2]
Through her nonprofit organization Performing Artservices, Inc. (founded in 1972), Johnson assists, promotes, and presents artists working in the fields of contemporary music, theater, and dance. [1] [2] [3] The agency was developed so that artists could obtain services they could not afford individually. [1] [2] Among the artists first managed by Performing Artservices were John Cage, David Tudor, Richard Foreman, Mabou Mines, The Sonic Arts Union (Robert Ashley, David Behrman, Alvin Lucier, and Gordon Mumma), The Viola Farber Dance Company, and the Philip Glass Ensemble. [1] [2] Among the services handled by the agency are business and fiscal management, fundraising, booking and contract negotiation, tour management, publicity and promotion, and local production. [1] [2]
Johnson is also the founder of Lovely Music, Ltd., a record label dedicated to the dissemination of new American music. The label is one of the most important and longest running labels focusing exclusively on new music and has released over 100 recordings on LP, CD, and videocassette. [3] [4]
Johnson was married to the late composer Robert Ashley. [3]
Alvin Augustus Lucier Jr. was an American composer of experimental music and sound installations that explore acoustic phenomena and auditory perception. A long-time music professor at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, Lucier was a member of the influential Sonic Arts Union, which included Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Gordon Mumma. Much of his work is influenced by science and explores the physical properties of sound itself: resonance of spaces, phase interference between closely tuned pitches, and the transmission of sound through physical media.
Robert Reynolds Ashley was an American composer, who was best known for his television operas and other theatrical works, many of which incorporate electronics and extended techniques. His works often involve intertwining narratives and take a surreal multidisciplinary approach to sound, theatrics and writing, and have been continuously performed by various interpreters during and after his life, including Automatic Writing (1979) and Perfect Lives (1983).
Archie Shepp is an American jazz saxophonist, educator and playwright who since the 1960s has played a central part in the development of avant-garde jazz.
David Behrman is an American composer and a pioneer of computer music. In the early 1960s he was the producer of Columbia Records' Music of Our Time series, which included the first recording of Terry Riley's In C. In 1966 Behrman co-founded Sonic Arts Union with fellow composers Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier and Gordon Mumma. He wrote the music for Merce Cunningham's dances Walkaround Time (1968), Rebus (1975), Pictures (1984) and Eyespace 40 (2007). In 1978, he released his debut album On the Other Ocean, a pioneering work combining computer music with live performance.
The New York School was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s and 1960s in New York City. They often drew inspiration from surrealism and the contemporary avant-garde art movements, in particular action painting, abstract expressionism, jazz, improvisational theater, experimental music, and the interaction of friends in the New York City art world's vanguard circle.
The Kitchen is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary avant-garde performance and experimental art institution located at 512 West 19th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. As the organization undergoes a multi-year renovation it is currently sited at a satellite loft space in the West Village located at 163B Bank Street, where exhibitions and performances are regularly held. It was founded in Greenwich Village in 1971 by Steina and Woody Vasulka, who were frustrated at the lack of an outlet for video art. The space takes its name from the original location, the kitchen of the Mercer Arts Center which was the only available place for the artists to screen their video pieces. Although first intended as a location for the exhibition of video art, The Kitchen soon expanded its mission to include other forms of art and performance. In 1974, The Kitchen relocated to a building at the corner of Wooster and Broome Streets in SoHo, and incorporated as a not-for-profit arts organization. In 1987 it moved to its current location.
Lovely Music is an American record label devoted to new American music. Based in New York City, the label was founded in 1978 by Mimi Johnson, an outgrowth of her nonprofit production company Performing Artservices Inc. It is one of the most important and longest running labels focusing exclusively on new music and has released over 100 recordings on LP, CD, and videocassette.
JoAnne Akalaitis is an avant-garde Lithuanian-American theatre director and writer. She won five Obie Awards for direction and was founder in 1970 of the critically acclaimed Mabou Mines in New York City.
Esser Leopold "Lee" Breuer was an Obie Award-winning and Pulitzer-, Grammy-, Emmy- and Tony-nominated American playwright, theater director, academic, educator, filmmaker, poet, and lyricist. Breuer taught and directed on six continents.
Steve Paxton is an experimental dancer and choreographer. His early background was in gymnastics while his later training included three years with Merce Cunningham and a year with José Limón. As a founding member of the Judson Dance Theater, he performed works by Yvonne Rainer and Trisha Brown. He was a founding member of the experimental group Grand Union and in 1972 named and began to develop the dance form known as Contact Improvisation, a form of dance that utilizes the physical laws of friction, momentum, gravity, and inertia to explore the relationship between dancers.
Maggi Payne is an American composer, flutist, video artist, recording engineer/editor, and historical remastering engineer who creates electroacoustic, instrumental, vocal works, and works involving visuals.
The ONCE Group was a collection of musicians, visual artists, architects, and film-makers who wished to create an environment in which artists could explore and share techniques and ideas in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The group was responsible for hosting the ONCE Festival of New Music in Ann Arbor, Michigan, between 1961 and 1966. It was founded by Ann Arborites Robert Ashley, George Cacioppo, Gordon Mumma, Roger Reynolds and Donald Scavarda.
Ruth Sophia Reinprecht, professionally known as Ruth Maleczech, was an American avant-garde stage actress. She won three Obie Awards for Best Actress in her career, for Hajj (1983), Through the Leaves, (1984) and Lear (1990) and an Obie Award for Design, shared with Julie Archer, for Vanishing Pictures (1980), which she also directed. Her portrayal of King Lear as an imperious Southern matriarch in Lear was widely acclaimed.
ISSUE Project Room is a music venue in Brooklyn, New York, founded in 2003 by Suzanne Fiol. ISSUE Project room owns a theatre in 110 Livingston Street in Downtown Brooklyn. The venue supports a wide variety of contemporary performance, specializing in presenting experimental and avant-garde music.
George Michael Bartenieff was a German-born American stage and film actor. He was noted both for his character roles in commercial and non-commercial films and on television, and for his work in the avant-garde theatre and performance world of downtown Manhattan, New York City in the 1960s and 1970s. He was a co-founder of the Theatre for the New City, and of the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade.
Cynthia Marie "Tina" Girouard was an American video and performance artist best known for her work and involvement in the SoHo art scene of the 1960s and early 1970s.
Jacqueline Humbert is an American recording, performance and visual artist, as well as a designer for film, television and live performing arts. Under the name J. Jasmine, she recorded a song cycle, J Jasmine: My New Music which dealt progressively with topics such as androgyny and female sexual agency. The cycle was presented at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in 1978. Her artistic persona on this release has been described as "a Linda Ronstadt for the avant garde". She would collaborate again with Rosenboom in 1979–80 on the song cycle Daytime Viewing, which uses the framework of soap operas to deal with themes of commercialism, family, fashion, and abuse.
Jill Kroesen is a performance artist and writer who was active in No Wave bands and avant-garde productions in the late-1970s and early-1980s in Downtown New York City. She has produced original musical theater works and written for many independent publications.
Frankie Mann is an American electronic music composer and performance artist. Mann was a part of the New York City avant-garde music scene of the 1970s and 1980s. Mann was born in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1955 and studied electronic music at Oberlin College and Mills College, where she studied with David Behrman and Robert Ashley. Mann's work was released by the record label Lovely Music, Ltd.