Benjamin Piekut: Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-Garde and Its Limits (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · avant-garde, experimental music, jazz, music, music history, new york, performance
“In Experimental Otherwise, Benjamin Piekut takes the reader into the heart of what we mean by “experimental” in avant-garde music. Focusing on one place and time–New York City, 1964–Piekut examines five disparate events: the New York Philharmonic’s disastrous performance of John Cage’s Atlas Eclipticalis; Henry Flynt’s demonstrations against the downtown avant-garde; Charlotte Moorman’s Avant Garde Festival; the founding of the Jazz Composers Guild; and the emergence of Iggy Pop. Drawing together a colorful array of personalities, Piekut argues that each of these examples points to a failure and marks a limit or boundary of canonical experimentalism. What emerges from these marginal moments is an accurate picture of the avant-garde, not as a style or genre, but as a network defined by disagreements, struggles, and exclusions.”
Publisher University of California Press, 2011
ISBN 0520948424, 9780520948426
296 pages
Reviews: Thomas Fogg (Current Musicology, 2011), Clemens Gresser (Notes, 2012), Molly McGlone (Twentieth-Century Music, 2013), Jeremy Grimshaw (American Music, 2014).
PDF (updated on 2020-5-3)
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