The Tortoise Recalling the Drone of the Holy Numbers as they were Revealed in the Dreams of the Whirlwind and the Obsidian Gong, Illuminated by the Sawmill, the Green Sawtooth Ocelot and the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer
featuring (at different times) La Monte Young, John Cale, Angus MacLise, Marian Zazeela, Tony Conrad, John Cale, and sometimes Terry Riley.
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2.) La Monte Thornton Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American composer and musician. Young is commonly seen as the first minimalist composer and one of the four most celebrated leaders of the minimalist school, along with Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass, despite having little in common formally with Glass or Reich. Young is also probably the least heard and least well known of the major minimalist composers.
Young considers The Well Tuned Piano — a permutating composition of themes and improvisations for just-intuned solo piano — to be his masterpiece. Performances have exceeded six hours in length, and so far have been documented twice: first on a five-CD set issued by Gramavision, then a later performance on a DVD on Young's own Just Dreams label. One of the defining works of American musical minimalism, it is strongly influenced by mathematical composition as well as Hindustani classical music practice.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Monte_Young
I've never heard him.
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3.) And somehow I have been led to the Velvet Underground. John Cale and Angus MacLise worked with the Theater of Eternal Music with minimalist La Monte Young (see above). Later John Cale went on to record with Velvet Underground (he plays viola, bass guitar, and piano) on what I believe is their debut album:
John Cale later went on to produce and create what seems to be punk-like music. Angus MacLise played with an early version of the Velvet Underground in 1965 but quit later that year when they were offered a paying gig and Angus thought they had sold out (only to try later to rejoin the group).
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cale and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_MacLise
The circles spin, in or out, I'm not yet sure.
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4.) Also with the Theater of Eternal Music were (occasionally) Terry Riley (see below), Tony Conrad, and Marian Zazeela.
Obsessed with duration and play upon the senses in saturation, by the late 60s, she [Marian Zazeela] began presenting light-work in collaboration with Young's music in what were envisioned as long-term installations titled Dream Houses. (One of them at 275 Church St, above the couple's loft, has run since the early 90s and is open to the public two days a week.) (She was also a vocalist.)
The Theater of Eternal Music performed compositions by La Monte Young, in which other performers sustained harmonically related pitches for the duration of each piece as Young performed complex improvisations on saxophone or voice.
(Tony) Conrad is known as being responsible for the name of The Velvet Underground, although he was not an actual member of the famous group. (Lou Reed and John Cale found a book entitled The Velvet Underground, which had belonged to Conrad, after moving into his old apartment in New York City.)
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Zazeela
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Conrad
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