Concerts by Composers:
No. 06: Works by Jon English, Candace Natvig, Yasunao Tone, & Gregory Sandow

In the late 1970s and early 1980s the Experimental Intermedia Foundation held a series of exciting concerts of avant-garde and electro-acoustic music at Phill Niblock’s loft in the SoHo district of New York City. These concerts were then packaged into a series of hour-long radio programs entitled “Concerts by Composers” and distributed to interested radio stations around the United States. This sixth program in the series features music by Candace Natvig, Jon English and Yasunao Tone, with additional commentary by music critic Gregory Sandow. The program begins with a solo composition by Candace Natvig, which is based on a Pygmy melody and scored for violin and voice. This is followed by a joint composition by Natvig and Jon English in which each sings as well as playing their respective instruments, violin and trombone. The music portion of the program concludes with an excerpt from Yasunao Tone’s “Music Genealogy,” as recorded during a May 1979 concert at the Experimental Intermedia Foundation. The work takes it’s text from an ancient Chinese history book’s treatise on music. The program concludes with a talk by music critic Gregory Sandow in which he discusses the differences between the more conservative and academic uptown school of music and the more informal avant-garde downtown school that is reflected in the concerts given at the Experimental Intermedia Foundation . The production and distribution of this program was originally funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, & the Beards Fund.