This program was produced for broadcast on the 40th anniversary of the world premiere of “Ionisation”, a work for percussion by Edgar Varèse. This work, which was once famously referred to as “a sock to the jaw” by a contemporary critic, heralded in a new era in avant-garde music. Eminent musicologist and raconteur, Nicolas Slonimsky, who conducted that performance, reminisces about the event with David Cloud of KPFK in an interview recorded on March 6, 1973. Varèse’s music was one of the first pieces in Western Classical music history performed solely on percussion instruments. Using a variety of conventional (snare drum, bass drum) and unconventional sources (sirens, Lion's roar), the music shocked audiences in the early 1930s but later became a classic work for percussion ensembles. The late David Cloud, a native of Alabama and then-Music Director of KPFK in Los Angeles, was a specialist in the music of maverick American composers and later a sound recordist for the UCLA Music Department. |
