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James Tenney

James Tenney (1934–2006) was born in Silver City, New Mexico, and grew up in Arizona and Colorado, where he received his early training as a pianist and composer. He was a pioneer in the field of electronic and computer music, working with Max Mathews and others at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in the early 1960s to develop programs for computer sound-generation and composition.

James Tenney (1934–2006) was born in Silver City, New Mexico, and grew up in Arizona and Colorado, where he received his early training as a pianist and composer. He was a pioneer in the field of electronic and computer music, working with Max Mathews and others at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in the early 1960s to develop programs for computer sound-generation and composition.

Fame di Vento
Huge Tip! Fame di Vento is Manuel Zurria's latest work. A triple CD to evoke the many suggestions and projects that have taken place in recent years, full of collaborations, of the Sicilian flautist. Fame Di Vento is also an idealized homage to Aligh…
Arbor Vitae - Quatuors + Quintettes
*2023 stock* The sixth volume of the collection, Arbor Vitæ, pays homage to the Canadian-American composer James Tenney with performances of the complete quartets and quintets. These works were composed over a period of more than 50 years, from the f…
Postcard From Heaven
The harp is a strange and compelling instrument that in its technological ancientness beckons composers and listeners alike to bask in its heavenly aura. Like hand drums and acoustic guitars, the immediacy of a harp's sound production demands an inti…
Spectral Malsconcities
The evolution of the string quartet repertory has accelerated during the last half of the twentieth-century and beyond as composers from both the mainstream and the avant-garde have mined its seemingly inexhaustible creative resources. This CD featur…
Again & Again
This is the third and final chapter of a project/research on "minimalisms" that the Italian flutist Manuel Zurria, acclaimed instrumentalist and passionate lover of the more adventurous contemporary music, began in 2007. The double CD include near tw…
Desert Plants
**Essential reading!** Walter Zimmermann interviews Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff, John Cage, Philip Corner, Jim Burton, Phil Glass, Steve Reich, Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier, Joan La Barbara, Pauline Oliveros, David Rosenboom, Richard Teitelbaum, L…
From Scratch
**2015 edition. 504 pages big book, edited by Larry Polansky**Essential music-theoretical writings from a giant of avant-garde composing  One of the twentieth century's most important musical thinkers, James Tenney did pioneering work in multiple fie…
Changes: 64 Studies for 6 Harps
James Tenney, for almost the entirety of his career, was one of the great, unsung giants of the American musical avant-garde - an artist’s artist, whose towering contribution and influence was everywhere - equal to Feldman and Cage, but who, like Nan…
Harmonium
Just Asked whether he would describe his music as “Sound for the sake of sound,” James Tenney (1934–2006) replied, “It’s sound for the sake of perceptual insight—some kind of perceptual revelation.” This release aptly demonstrates Tenney’s deep explo…
Spectrum Pieces
James Tenney (1934-2006) was one of the most versatile figures in contemporary American music. Apart from creating a large, wide-ranging, and fascinating body of compositions, more than a hundred of them, he was one of the key music theorists of the …
Having Never Written a Note for Percussion
Rrose (Sandwell District, Eaux, Stroboscopic Artefacts) has found her own niche in the American techno underground. Her hypnotic tracks incorporate ideas from ambient and minimalist music as prominently as they do the history of dance music, opera…
Sonatas & Interludes
How rare, and valuable, it is to be able to experience one composer’s masterwork through the sensibility of another significant, stylistically distinct composer – via a performance that reveals unexpected aspects of both. that is to say, an appro…
Forms 1-4
Four works by James Tenney, each paired with music by an American composer to whom the Tenney composition is dedicated. The four 'Forms' compositions share with their senior partners -- Edgard Varèse, John Cage, Stefan Wolpe, and Morton Feldman -- a …
James Tenney: Selected Works 1961- 1969
This recording is a reissue of the 1992 Frog Peak/Artifact CD, the first recorded collection of James Tenney’s music of the 1960s. Many of the pieces on this CD were realized at Bell Telephone Laboratories from 1961 to 1969, where Tenney used Max Mat…
Melody, Ergodicity and Indeterminacy
Barton Workshop. James Fulkerson & Frank Denyer, directors. First Recordings. "James Tenney (1934-2006) was probably the first composer to develop an aesthetic for computer music, realizing that electronic music almost forced the composer to accep…
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