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.

This collection represents the best of the articles written for the Village Voice by Kyle Gann, a leading authority on experimental American music of the late 20th century. He paints a portrait of a bristling era in music history and includes interviews with Yoko Ono and Philip Glass, amongst others.

How can music-making help improve the lives of homeless people and others living in poverty in urban neighborhoods in the global North? How can popular music support the most vulnerable in developing their capabilities and asserting their human rights? In this book, author Klisala Harrisontakes readers to one of North America's poorest urban areas - Vancouver's Downtown Eastside - as she looks at and asks questions of its musical initiatives for the urban poor - from music jams and music therapy sessions to public performances of music theatre. Harrison not only demonstrates howthese initiatives succeed in promoting human rights but also reveals that they may sometimes unwittingly exacerbate human rights violations.Music Downtown Eastside draws on two decades of research to illustrate how human rights such as the right to health, the right to self-determination, and women's rights - all of which often remain unfulfilled for the homeless and the urban poor - can be promoted through music. Ethnographic vignettesand song lyrics by artists from the local community provide a vivid insight into the unique musical scene of Downtown Eastside. At the same time, Harrison's examination of how gentrification, grant funding, and different community organizations affect the success or failure of human rights-focusedmusical initiatives offers insights into the complex relationship between music, poverty, and human rights that have repercussions beyond this local context.

"Introduction Steve Reich pitched up in San Francisco in September 1961. He was a young musician, one who had been taken by the early-century work of the Hungarian composer and folklorist Béla Bartók, and he had journeyed west from New York in the hope of studying with Leon Kirchner, a composer in the rough-lyric Bartók tradition who'd been teaching at Mills College. But Kirchner had just left for Harvard, so Reich ended up working at Mills under Luciano Berio. Over the course of the previous decade, Berio had become identified as a figurehead of the European post-war avant-garde: his ultramodern serialist work was quite a different proposition to Kirchner's own"--

In recent years the music of minimalist composers such as La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass has, increasingly, become the subject of important musicological reflection, research and debate. Scholars have also been turning their attention to the work of lesser-known contemporaries such as Phill Niblock and Eliane Radigue, or to second and third generation minimalists such as John Adams, Louis Andriessen, Michael Nyman and William Duckworth, whose range of styles may undermine any sense of shared aesthetic approach but whose output is still to a large extent informed by the innovative work of their minimalist predecessors. Attempts have also been made by a number of academics to contextualise the work of composers who have moved in parallel with these developments while remaining resolutely outside its immediate environment, including such diverse figures as Karel Goeyvaerts, Robert Ashley, Arvo Pärt and Brian Eno. Theory has reflected practice in many respects, with the multimedia works of Reich and Glass encouraging interdisciplinary approaches, associations and interconnections. Minimalism’s role in culture and society has also become the subject of recent interest and debate, complementing existing scholarship, which addressed the subject from the perspective of historiography, analysis, aesthetics and philosophy. The Ashgate Research Companion to Minimalist and Postminimalist Music provides an authoritative overview of established research in this area, while also offering new and innovative approaches to the subject.

Are you a Ruppie? More and more people are trending toward living downtown. Author Kyle Ezell demonstrates how empty nesters can live out their golden years full of fun and independence in the midst of the city. Ruppies--Retired Urban People--are cropping up all over the country. The populations of city downtowns are exploding nationwide. Also known as active retirees, Ruppies are quickly becoming a big part of that population. Downtown living can help them stay active both physically and mentally while keeping them entertained in the process. After all, there's always a live theater or jazz band playing right around the corner. Author and noted city planner Kyle Ezell has assembled information on living downtown, shopping, eating at exciting new restaurants, getting around, staying active, downsizing to one car, volunteering, keeping faith alive, and much, much more into Retire Downtown. Retire Downtown lists the top 20 cities for Ruppies across the nation, with a wealth of facts on each area and a breakdown of each environment. Learning how to locate the right downtown neighborhood in which to live, and discovering art galleries, cool hangouts, coffee shops, and farmers' markets, as well as the unique and trendy ethnic shops, are all exciting parts of Ezell's book--a must-have for every up-and-coming active retiree!

“McLeod’s deft and generous book tells of a constellation of avant-garde squatters, divas, and dissidents who reinvented the world.” —Jonathan Lethem, New York Times-bestselling author of Motherless Brooklyn The 1960s to early ’70s was a pivotal time for American culture, and New York City was ground zero for seismic shifts in music, theater, art, and filmmaking. The Downtown Pop Underground takes a kaleidoscopic tour of Manhattan during this era and shows how deeply interconnected all the alternative worlds and personalities were that flourished in the basement theaters, dive bars, concert halls, and dingy tenements within one square mile of each other. Author Kembrew McLeod links the artists, writers, and performers who created change, and while some of them didn’t become everyday names, others, like Patti Smith, Andy Warhol, and Debbie Harry, did become icons. Ambitious in scope and scale, the book is fueled by the actual voices of many of the key characters who broke down the entrenched divisions between high and low, gay and straight, and art and commerce—and changed the cultural landscape of not just the city but the world. “The story of underground artists of the 1960s and ’70s, an amalgam of bustling radical creativity and fearless groundbreaking work in art, music, and theater.” —Tim Robbins “Breathes new fire into a familiar history and is a must-read for anyone who wants to know how American bohemia really happened.” —Ann Powers, critic, NPR Music “Honors those who were at the forefront of a movement that transformed our understandings of sexuality and artistic freedom.” —Lily Tomlin