Composition in the Style of La Monte Young's 1960 Sustained Friction Sounds

Sun, November 10, 2024 — 7:00 PM

Location

Dream House
275 Church Street
New York, New York 10013
Location map

About this event

CONCERT SERIES
IN CELEBRATION OF

LA MONTE YOUNG'S 89TH BIRTHDAY YEAR
THE MELA DREAM HOUSE'S 31ST YEAR

MELA is pleased to announce a series of four concerts to celebrate both the 89th birthday of La Monte Young (born 14 October 1935) and the 31th consecutive year of the MELA Dream House sound and light environment at 275 Church Street, New York City. 89 and 31 are both prime numbers, and prime numbers (as manifested in the musical domain by numerically expressible frequency relationships among two or more “well-tuned” sounds) have been an elemental source of inspiration for Young throughout his career as a composer. 

Season passes are available for $89 and include admission to each concert series. Purchase season passes HERE.
 
The music on the four programs emerges from the historically crucial period during the middle of the twentieth century (coinciding with La Monte Young’s years as a student and budding master) when certain like-minded musicians—trained in the Western tradition but working under a novel aesthetic aegis famously expressed by Edgard Varèse as “the liberation of sound” and by John Cage as “letting sounds be themselves”—first began to move beyond the limits of a fixed-pitch scale system, to recognize and explore the musical properties inherent in everyday sounds (in other words, "noises”). The series also celebrates the spirit of shared purpose and collaboration in that ecosystem, made tangible in the fruits of creative relationships that are sometimes mentor-to-student (as between Richard Maxfield and La Monte Young or between Young and Jung Hee Choi) and sometimes peer-to-peer (as with Young and his fellow avant-garde travelers Robert Morris, and Walter De Maria). By no means is that history over, however: While each concert is an “event” in the conventional sense, we can—as we contemplate the contributions, influences, reactions, and counter-reactions of these independent artists at independent moments in time—gain a palpable sense of history as a living organism, unfolding over periods of years or even decades.
 

Program 2

Jung Hee Choi
Composition
in the Style of
La Monte Young's
1960 Sustained Friction Sounds (2000)
Performed by Jung Hee Choi combined with her multi-channel video installation, RICE
in a setting of Marian Zazeela, Imagic Light
November 10, 2024 at 7 pm

MELA Foundation Dream House
275 Church Street, 3rd Floor, New York

 

Program 2 features Jung Hee Choi as both a sonic and visual artist, with her video piece RICE projected in a setting of Marian Zazeela, Imagic Light to a live solo performance of her Composition in the Style of La Monte Young’s 1960 Sustained Friction Sounds (2000). As the latter title implies, Choi is both celebrating her discipleship and carrying a tradition forward—in her own voice, as that tradition continues to evolve. The 2003 MELA presentation marked the first collaboration between Marian Zazeela and Choi on a simultaneous light environment. The latest performance of the piece at the MELA Dream House was presented nineteen years ago on October 14, 2005, as part of the La Monte Young Seventieth-Birthday Celebration.

These concerts make up Program 2 in a four-part celebratory concert series. For a complete listing of all programs, see MELA's website. Season passes are available for $89 and include admission to all concerts. Direct links to tickets for the additional programs are below.

Program 1
La Monte Young
Studies in the Bowed Disc (1963)
on
Robert Morris
Gong for La Monte Young
November 2 and 3, 2024 at 7 pm

• • •

Program 3
Richard Maxfield
Perspectives
for
La Monte Young (1961-62)
December 12 and 13, 2024 at 7 pm

Tickets →

• • •

Program 4
Jung Hee Choi
Seven
on
Walter De Maria
Instrument for
La Monte Young (1966)
December 20 and 21, 2024 at 7 pm

Tickets →

MELA's programs are made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and generous contributions from individuals and MELA Members.

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