[porkmarras]

Anyone likes this patron saint of the american avantgarde's music?Officially the slowest man alive according to John Cale who played and shared an appartement with him.When he answered the phone there would be 2 minutes of silence before he said 'hallo?'.I've been listening a lot to Walter de Maria's Drums and Nature and his playing in it transcends humanity as a whole.

[porkmarras]

Terry Jennings was born in Eagle Rock, California on July 19, 1940. Showing an early interest in music, he began playing the piano at the age of four, was taught by both of his parents, and by the age of 12 was studying John Cage's Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano. In junior high school Jennings was a featured clarinet soloist with the orchestra. He also made arrangements of Stravinsky piano pieces so that the orchestra would have music to play that he liked. He attended John Marshall High School in Los Angeles, the alma mater of composer La Monte Young, whom Jennings met in 1953. Jennings played and studied with Young and was greatly influenced by him. In 1954, at the age of 14, Jennings entered the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music and Art where he studied saxophone with William Green. It was in 1957 that he met Dennis Johnson, another composer who was not just an influence on him, but also a great appreciator of his music. In addition to his study of composition with La Monte Young, he also studied with Robert Erickson at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Leonard Stein at the California Institute of the Arts.

[porkmarras]

Jennings' first serious works were composed in 1958 with his style of composition eventually developing in the direction of modal improvisations, through which his saxophone playing prompted comparison with the great Indian shahnai player Bismillah Khan, and the American jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. Jennings first came to musical prominence in the late 1950s when he began to compose in the style of Young's influential early works involving sustained tones and expanded time concepts. He was introduced to the New York avant garde in 1960, when Young opened his series of concerts at Yoko Ono's loft with two programs of Jennings' music. Jennings was a part of many important new music concerts of the 1960's, both as a composer and a performer, premiering, among others, Richard Maxfield's Wind for tape and saxophone composed as a portrait of Jennings. He worked with the James Waring Dance Company (1962) and performed and recorded with Young's Theatre of Eternal Music. Jennings' Piano Piece (June 1960) and String Quartet (1960) were published in An Anthology (edited by Young in 1963), which led to their performance in England by Cornelius Cardew, John Tilbury and others. Jennings also wrote a collection of very beautiful poems which have remained almost completely unknown outside a small circle of his closest friends. Jennings' music has been performed throughout the United States and Europe, including concerts in New York, Ann Arbor, Seattle, Boston and Los Angeles. Terry Jennings died in San Pablo, California on December 11, 1981.

[porkmarras]

The New Grove Dictionary of American Music states: "With Young and Terry Riley, Jennings was involved in the earliest developments of drone-inspired, modal, repetitive music. He is best known for two piano works of 1965, Winter Trees and Winter Sun, both of which exemplify the repetitive, nonvirtuoso keyboard style he was among the first to employ; sets of phrases are played quietly in a specified order but repeated at will, in relatively free rhythm, and with liberal use of the sustaining pedal, creating a meditative mood and an understated lyricism. Jennings had a decisive influence on such composers as Harold Budd, Peter Garland, and Howard Skempton, who in the early 1970s created a body of so- called 'minimalist' keyboard music and were among the few musicians to perform his works. In later years Jennings composed works in a neoromantic style, including the song cycle The Seasons (1975)."

[Pookie]

Could you sum all that up in one line please?

[porkmarras]

Originally Posted by Pookie

Could you sum all that up in one line please?

Get out of this thread or you'll pay the price Pookie.

Dear La Monte Young,

If you are reading this, I would be immensely grateful if you decided to put out some of the music in your possesion that this guy played on.


Thank you.

5. TERRY JENNINGS, Piece for Cello and Saxophone (the composer plays saxophone)

 

A Trove of Archival Performances by Charlotte Moorman
http://www.ubu.com/sound/moorman.html

Well, it seems that La Monte Young is still disputing the contribution that the other musicians have made to the music, therefore he is still holding back many a release for the forseeable future. How very sad.

[racehorse]

i guess there must be a substantial gap in my knowledge as i'd never even heard of him before now. i'm downloading that track, thanks for that.