La Monte YOUNG

La Monte Young, a pupil of John Cage and one of the founders of the Fluxus movement, is the real "inventor" of minimalism. The term originally referred to his "dream house", a New York loft in which Young and his Theater Of Eternal Music (comprising violinist Tony Conrad, viola player John Cale, trumpet player Jon Hassell, keyboardist Terry Riley and others) developed a music made of semi-stationary waves, of slowly evolving amorphous sound. Music became a living organism. He is one of the most influential underground composers of the 20th century. His early experiments with long tones in 1957-58, fusing as they did interests in both twelve-tone music and Cagean conceptualism, led directly to the style known today as minimalism. His rule-based improvisations under the auspices of the Theatre of Eternal Music, though not heard publicly in decades, remain an icon of the psychedelic age, and were a direct influence on the Velvet Underground and artrock

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