Return to SOURCE: Contemporary Composers Discuss the Sociopolitical Implications of Their Work

46 years ago, the editors of Source: Music of the Avant Garde magazine asked 20 composers to respond to a single question: "Have you, or has anyone ever used your music for political or social ends?" It was my great honor and pleasure to invite 20 composers I respect and admire to respond to the same question for the 2015 Leonardo Music Journal Politics of Sound Art issue. 

Currently one must be an LMJ subscriber to access to the piece. On May 1, 2016 – after the 6-month exclusive publication agreement with Leonardo/ISAST elapses – I will add the responses to the publicly-accessible archive page where the original SOURCE #6 article can currently be found in its entirety. In the coming days and weeks, I will be highlighting each artist's response as an excerpt on this blog, one by one (to receive notification when new posts are added, please engage the "follow by email" feature found at the bottom of this page).

I really can't begin to describe what a thrill it was to facilitate a collaboration between these 20 brilliant artists...it was like hosting a giant jam session, with each person contributing an individual track. While waiting nearly a year for the article to be published, it felt very strange to be the only one who could hear what the tracks sounded like all together. I am so pleased to be able to share it now...

Many thanks to Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Annea Lockwood, Kristin Norderval, Rinde Eckert, Billy Martin, Jon Hassell, Anne LeBaron, Elliot Sharp, Brenda Hutchinson, Stuart Dempster, John King, Rhys Chatham, Pamela Z, Ben Neill, Alvin Curran, Frederic Rzewski, Ben Barson, Christian Wolff, and Laurie Spiegel for their generous contributions to this collaboration.