Tom Johnson (8)

[Originally published in EST magazine, 1991]

Do we really need a very chunky paperback reprinting one critic's weekly columns on New Music from a decade of New York's Village Voice? Are you kidding? Of course we do!

And that's exactly what this is. By "new music" we mean not just any old new music, but the art music that managed to steal that label during the seventies and hold onto it ever since: minimalism as produced by everyone from Steve Reich to La Monte Young being the most obvious example. Assuming that you're interested in that area, this is an eminently readable and quite informative book. Tom Johnson is refreshingly unpretentious: if he knows very little about something he admits it.

This collection is admirable also for presenting a large selection of the composers and performers who didn't necessarily achieve fame outside the new music community: Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros, Frederic Rzewski and plenty of others. On top of that, it's an interesting historical record of the minimalist genre's development, providing some insight into what life was like before Philip Glass became as ubiquitous as Persil washing powder. Because of all the New York artistic community's cross-fertilisation, those interested in performance art will also find plenty of period reviews and commentary in here.

To a certain extent, it's an impenetrable book to anyone not familiar with the music concerned, but you only need to know and appreciate a few of the musicians to use this as a valuable sourcebook of information on plenty of others.… (más)