Stephen Michael Reich is an American composer who is known for his contribution to the development of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, and canons. Reich describes this concept in his essay, "Music as a Gradual Process", by stating, "I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music." For example, his early works experiment with phase shifting, in which one or more repeated phrases plays slower or faster than the others, causing it to go "out of phase." This creates new musical patterns in a perceptible flow.
Terrence Mitchell "Terry" Riley is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his work became notable for its innovative use of repetition, tape music techniques, and delay systems. His best known works are the 1964 composition In C and the 1969 album A Rainbow in Curved Air, both considered landmarks of minimalism and important influences on experimental music, rock, and contemporary electronic music. Subsequent works such as Shri Camel (1980) explored just intonation.
Young Marble Giants were a Welsh post-punk band formed in Cardiff, Wales, in 1978. Their music was based around the vocals of Alison Statton along with the minimalist instrumentation of brothers Philip and Stuart Moxham. Their early sound was a sharp contrast with the more aggressive punk rock that dominated the underground at the time. Young Marble Giants released just one studio album, Colossal Youth, in 1980. They also released two EPs and recorded a John Peel session.
Einstein on the Beach is an opera in four acts composed by Philip Glass and directed by theatrical producer Robert Wilson, who also collaborated with Glass on the work's libretto. The opera eschews traditional narrative in favor of a formalist approach based on structured spaces laid out by Wilson in a series of storyboards which are framed and connected by five "knee plays" or intermezzos. The music was written "in the spring, summer and fall of 1975." Glass recounts the collaborative process: "I put [Wilson’s notebook of sketches] on the piano and composed each section like a portrait of the drawing before me. The score was begun in the spring of 1975 and completed by the following November, and those drawings were before me all the time."
Nettwerk Music Group is the umbrella company for Nettwerk Records, Nettwerk Management, and Nettwerk One Publishing.
Meredith Jane Monk is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. From the 1960s onwards, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theatre, and dance, recording extensively for ECM Records. In 1991, Monk composed Atlas, an opera, commissioned and produced by the Houston Opera and the American Music Theater Festival. Her music has been used in films by the Coen Brothers and Jean-Luc Godard. Trip hop musician DJ Shadow sampled Monk's "Dolmen Music" on the song "Midnight in a Perfect World". In 2015, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts by Barack Obama.
Marc Cerrone is a French disco drummer, composer, record producer and creator of concert shows. Cerrone is a producer of 1970s and 1980s disco songs. He has sold over 30 million albums worldwide, including over four million copies in France, and eight million copies of Supernature. The single "Love in C Minor" (1976) reached No. 3 and was in the charts for two months, selling three million copies. With "Supernature" (1977), Cerrone merged symphonic orchestration with synthesizers. At the 1978 Billboard Disco Forum, Cerrone received six awards including Disco Artist of the Year.
"Autumn Leaves" is a popular song based on a French song "Les Feuilles mortes" composed by Joseph Kosma in 1945. The original lyrics were written by Jacques Prévert in French, and the English lyrics were by Johnny Mercer. An instrumental version by pianist Roger Williams was a number one best-seller in the US Billboard charts of 1955.
Don and Dewey were an American rock, blues, and R&B duo, comprising Don "Sugarcane" Harris and Dewey Terry.
A Rainbow in Curved Air is the third album by American composer Terry Riley, released in 1969 on CBS Records. The title track consists of Riley's overdubbed improvisations on several keyboard and percussion instruments, including electric organ, electric harpsichord, dumbec, and tambourine. The B-side "Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band" is a saxophone-based drone piece featuring tape loops and edits, drawing on Riley's all-night improvisatory performances in the 1960s.
The Labèque sisters, Katia and Marielle, are an internationally known French piano duo.
Émilie Simon is a French singer, songwriter and composer of electronic music.
Tracy Silverman is an American violinist, composer, and producer.
Digitalism are an electronic music duo formed in Hamburg by German musician Jens Moelle and Turkish musician İsmail Tüfekçi in 2004. The duo are signed to French label Kitsuné, as well as Virgin Records and Astralwerks in other parts of the world.
Shandar was a French record label specializing in avant-garde material that did seminal work during the 1970s releasing, among others, recordings by Albert Ayler, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Steve Reich, Sunny Murray, Philip Glass, Richard Horowitz, Charlemagne Palestine, La Monte Young, Alan Silva, Pandit Pran Nath, Terry Riley, Cecil Taylor and Sun Ra. The records often carry, besides the name Shandar, the logo Shanti.
SPINDRIFT is an American psychedelic rock band, created by singer-songwriter-composer-producer-actor Kirpatrick Thomas. Founded in 1992, the band originated in Newark, Delaware along with such other local bands of the period including Jake and the Stiffs, The Verge, Boy Sets Fire, Zen Guerilla and Smashing Orange. Heavily influenced by The Doors, My Bloody Valentine, Hawkwind, Bruce Haack, and Chrome, SPINDRIFT's early stages were experimental and differed greatly from their present sound though the band's musical style is ever in a period of flux.
The Dharma at Big Sur is a composition for solo electric violin and orchestra by the American composer John Adams. The piece calls for some instruments to use just intonation, a tuning system in which intervals sound pure, rather than equal temperament, the common Western tuning system in which all intervals except the octave are slightly impure. The piece was composed in 2003 for the opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and was conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. The electric violin solo was written for violinist Tracy Silverman.
Fitz and the Tantrums are an American indie pop and neo soul band from Los Angeles, California, that formed in 2008. The band consists of Michael Fitzpatrick, Noelle Scaggs, James King, Joseph Karnes, and Jeremy Ruzumna (keyboards). Their debut studio album, Pickin' Up the Pieces, was released in August 2010 on indie label Dangerbird Records and received critical acclaim; it also reached no. 1 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart. In early 2013 the band signed to their current label, Elektra Records, which released their second LP, More Than Just a Dream, the same year. Their self-titled third album was released in 2016, which contains their most notable song, "HandClap". Their fourth studio album, All the Feels, was released in 2019, and their fifth, Let Yourself Free, in 2022.
At the Royal Majestic is an organ concerto by the American composer Terry Riley. The work was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. Its world premiere was given by the organist Cameron Carpenter and the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the direction of John Adams at the Walt Disney Concert Hall on April 11, 2014.
Daniel Caux was a French musicologist, essayist, journalist, music critic, radio producer and organizer of musical events.
