Music Downtown: Writings from the Village Voice

by Kyle Gann

This collection represents the cream of the more than five hundred articles written for the Village Voice by Kyle Gann, a leading authority on experimental American music of the late twentieth century. Charged with exploring every facet of cutting-edge music coming out of New York City in the 1980s and '90s, Gann writes about a wide array of timely issues that few critics have addressed, including computer music, multiculturalism and its thorny relation to music, music for the AIDS crisis, the brand-new art of electronic sampling and its legal implications, symphonies for electric guitars, operas based on talk shows, the death of twelve-tone music, and the various streams of music that flowed forth from minimalism. In these articles―including interviews with Yoko Ono, Philip Glass, Glenn Branca, and other leading musical figures―Gann paints a portrait of a bristling era in music history and defines the scruffy, vernacular field of Downtown music from which so much of the most fertile recent American music has come.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Essays, Criticism

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 14, 2006

About the author

Kyle Gann is Associate Professor of Music at Bard College, a composer, and former new-music critic for the Village Voice. He lives in Germantown, NY.

Reviews

[Charlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A phenomenal guidebook to an underrepresented era of experimental music in our recent history, led by a delightfully sardonic and honest guide in Kyle Gann. The writing about figures I knew sings with respect and truth (Cage, Eastman) or righteous chiding (Zorn), and I was introduced to a dozen musicians and composers that are quickly becoming favorites.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gann covered the NYC downtown art music scene for the Village Voice at a time of great upheaval and change (mid-'80's to early '90's). These pieces represent some of the best writing about American music of this time. For the obituary of Julius Eastmen alone, this book is worth the price.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of Kyle Gann's reviews from the village voice. These are excerpted in such a way as to provide an engaging read even for a person who did not attend the original concerts, though at times I did find myself wishing I had been there.

[Phil Overeem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Besides learning a ton about "Downtown" classical music from them, Gann's essays also kept my mind stimulated and excited by his description of the tensions between classical schools and within the work of his favorite composers.

[Larry-bob Roberts]

Includes obituary for composer Julius Eastman.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Cage is championed and serialism is the worst. CLASSICAL MUSIC IS DEAD. Read to find out who killed it.

[Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. I very much agree with Gann's aesthetic and philosophical positions. Required reading for making sense of the new music scene of the 80's and 90's.