David Eugene Tudor was an American pianist and composer of experimental music.
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).
Morton Subotnick is an American composer of electronic music, best known for his 1967 composition Silver Apples of the Moon, the first electronic work commissioned by a record company, Nonesuch. He was one of the founding members of California Institute of the Arts, where he taught for many years.
Roger Lee Reynolds is an American composer. He is known for his capacity to integrate diverse ideas and resources, and for the seamless blending of traditional musical sounds with those newly enabled by technology. Beyond composition, his contributions to musical life include mentorship, algorithmic design, engagement with psychoacoustics, writing books and articles, and festival organization.
Electroacoustic music is a genre of popular and Western art music in which composers use technology to manipulate the timbres of acoustic sounds, sometimes by using audio signal processing, such as reverb or harmonizing, on acoustical instruments. It originated around the middle of the 20th century, following the incorporation of electric sound production into compositional practice. The initial developments in electroacoustic music composition to fixed media during the 20th century are associated with the activities of the Groupe de recherches musicales at the ORTF in Paris, the home of musique concrète, the Studio for Electronic Music in Cologne, where the focus was on the composition of elektronische Musik, and the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York City, where tape music, electronic music, and computer music were all explored. Practical electronic music instruments began to appear in the early 20th century.
Gordon Mumma is an American composer. He is known most for his work with electronics, many devices of which he builds himself, and for his performances on horn.
Michael Kevin Daugherty is an American composer, pianist, and teacher. He is influenced by popular culture, Romanticism, and Postmodernism. Daugherty's notable works include his Superman comic book-inspired Metropolis Symphony for Orchestra (1988–93), Dead Elvis for Solo Bassoon and Chamber Ensemble (1993), Jackie O (1997), Niagara Falls for Symphonic Band (1997), UFO for Solo Percussion and Orchestra (1999) and for Symphonic Band (2000), Bells for Stokowski from Philadelphia Stories for Orchestra (2001) and for Symphonic Band (2002), Fire and Blood for Solo Violin and Orchestra (2003) inspired by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, Time Machine for Three Conductors and Orchestra (2003), Ghost Ranch for Orchestra (2005), Deus ex Machina for Piano and Orchestra (2007), Labyrinth of Love for Soprano and Chamber Winds (2012), American Gothic for Orchestra (2013), and Tales of Hemingway for Cello and Orchestra (2015). Daugherty has been described by The Times (London) as "a master icon maker" with a "maverick imagination, fearless structural sense and meticulous ear."
John Sinclair is an American poet, writer, and political activist from Flint, Michigan. Sinclair's defining style is jazz poetry, and he has released most of his works in audio formats. Most of his pieces include musical accompaniment, usually by a varying group of collaborators dubbed Blues Scholars.
Mimi Johnson is a New York City-based arts administrator.
The culture of Ann Arbor, Michigan includes various attractions and events, many of which are connected with the University of Michigan.
Niccolò Castiglioni was an Italian composer, pianist, and writer on music.
The Prime Movers were an American blues band based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States, which was formed in 1965. The band originally consisted of Michael Erlewine, Dan Erlewine, Robert Sheff (keyboards), Robert Vinopal (bass), and Michael "Spider" Wynn (drums). Vinopal left soon after the band's formation and was replaced by Jack Dawson. Wynn left a short time later and was replaced by James Osterberg, who would later become famous as Iggy Pop. When he joined the Prime Movers Osterberg took the name "Iggy", from his previous band The Iguanas.
Philip Krumm is an American composer who was "a pioneer of modal, repetitive pattern music". Krumm studied orchestration and composition with Raymond Moses in high school, with Frank Sturchio at Saint Mary's University, with Ross Lee Finney at University of Michigan, and with Karlheinz Stockhausen at University of California at Davis.
Ross Lee Finney Junior was an American composer who taught for many years at the University of Michigan.
Ben Miller is an American rock and avant garde guitarist born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and now based in the NYC-metro area. He has formerly been a member of such Detroit/Ann Arbor bands as Sproton Layer, Destroy All Monsters, and non-fiction. Destroy All Monsters, in particular, still a cult favorite, was a big part of the proto-punk, punk, and post-punk Detroit rock scene, featuring such bands as the MC5, the Stooges, Sonic's Rendezvous Band, and The Up.
Niagara Falls for Symphonic Band (1997) by American composer Michael Daugherty, is his first composition for concert band. It is a 10-minute, single-movement work, that explores the most visited waterfalls in the world. Niagara Falls was commissioned by the University of Michigan Bands in honor of its centennial, and dedicated to H. Robert Reynolds. The premiere was performed by the University of Michigan Symphony Band, under the direction of Reynolds, in October 1997, at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Source: Music of the Avant-Garde – also known and hereafter referred to as Source Magazine – was an independent, not-for-profit musical and artistic magazine published between 1967 and 1973 by teachers and students of the University of California, Davis, California. It emerged from the flourishing Californian musical experimentalism of the late 1950s-early 1960s, at UC-Davis and Mills College. The 11 issues document new music practices of the period like indeterminacy, performance, graphic scores, electronic music and intermedia arts.
Experimental rock, also called avant-rock, is a subgenre of rock music that pushes the boundaries of common composition and performance technique or which experiments with the basic elements of the genre. Artists aim to liberate and innovate, with some of the genre's distinguishing characteristics being improvisational performances, avant-garde influences, odd instrumentation, opaque lyrics, unorthodox structures and rhythms, and an underlying rejection of commercial aspirations.
Mary Ashley was an important early video artist and performance artist, painter, and a founding member of the influential ONCE Group, together with her then-husband, the composer Robert Ashley. She was later active in the Correspondence Art scene, collaborating with Fluxus artists including Dick Higgins and George Brecht. She is credited with introducing the Ozalid process, an ammonia-based technique for the reproduction of industrial drawings, to the art world.
