New Music America:
1990: Montreal Musique Actuelles

Charles Amirkhanian reports on happenings of the 1990 installment of the peripatetic New Music America Festival, which began in 1979 and was held this year for the first time outside the U.S. Montreal Musique Actuelles highlighted the work of Canadian composers, performers and improvisers alongside the work of such well-known Americans as La Monte Young, Scott Johnson, and Alvin Curran. Among participants interviewed are Jean Piche, a composer who directed the Festival and whose own work for percussion and tape was a highlight. Also heard are the voices of Montreal composer Linda Bouchard who lives in New York and is active as a composer and conductor; Jan Wolff, artistic director of Icebreaker, an internationally acclaimed center for avant-garde music in Amsterdam; electro-acoustic music specialist Hildegard Westerkamp of Vancouver; Shannon Peet, artistic director of the Toronto based ensemble Sound Pressure; composer Carolie Shoemaker of Seattle, and several other composers and audience members at the Festival. (- from the KPFA Folio)