La Monte Young | MoMA
Wikipedia entry
Introduction
La Monte Thornton Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American composer, musician, and performance artist recognized as one of the first American minimalist composers and a central figure in Fluxus and post-war avant-garde music. He is best known for his exploration of sustained tones, beginning with his 1958 composition Trio for Strings. His compositions have called into question the nature and definition of music, most prominently in the text scores of his Compositions 1960. While few of his recordings remain in print, his work has inspired prominent musicians across various genres, including avant-garde, rock, and ambient music. Young played jazz saxophone and studied composition in California during the 1950s, and subsequently moved to New York in 1960, where he was a central figure in the downtown music and Fluxus art scenes. He then became known for his pioneering work in drone music (originally called dream music) with his Theatre of Eternal Music collective, alongside collaborators such as Tony Conrad, John Cale, and his wife, the multimedia artist Marian Zazeela. Since 1962, he has worked extensively with Zazeela, with whom he developed the Dream House sound and light environment. In 1964, he began work on his unfinished improvisatory composition The Well-Tuned Piano, iterations of which he has performed throughout subsequent decades. Beginning in 1970, he and Zazeela studied under Hindustani singer Pandit Pran Nath. In 2002, Young and Zazeela formed the Just Alap Raga Ensemble with their disciple Jung Hee Choi.
Wikidata
Q432822
View or edit the full Wikipedia entry
Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License
Getty record
Introduction
A proponent of experimental music created by the use of extended drones. Educated at the University of California, Los Angeles (1957-1958), he completed his graduate studies in composition at the University of California, Berkeley. An avid jazz musician, Young performed with Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry. In the mid-1960s he formed the Theater of Eternal Music with Marian Zazeela, Angus MacLise and Billy Name; Tony Conrad and John Cale joined later. His use of long tones at high volume was an important influence on other group members, especially Cale, who went on to form the Velvet Underground.Young studied with world-renowned North Indian vocal master Pandit Pran Nath in the 1970s. Young and Zazeela later created the Dream House, a sound and light installation.
Nationality
American
Gender
Male
Roles
Artist, Composer, Musician, Performance Artist
Name
La Monte Young
Ulan
500081186
View the full Getty record
Information from Getty’s Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License

Works

38 works online

Exhibitions

View all 10 exhibitions

Licensing

If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).

MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit https://www.moma.org/research/circulating-film.

If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].

Feedback

This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please send feedback to [email protected].