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 studied with Carl Ruggles, John Cage, Harry Partch and Edgard Varèse, and later played in Cage and Partch's ensembles. His 1961 thesis Meta-Hodos was one of the first attempts to describe how music is actually heard. He was a pioneer of computer music, working with Max Mathews at Bell Telephone Laboratories in the early 1960s, and at the same time a member of Fluxus and co-founder of the ensemble Tone Roads.
West coast soundings
2014 release **
New compilation of works by emerging west coast composers who somehow belong within a John Cage lineage. Music by James Tenney, Michael Pisaro and their students, Mark So, Michael Winter, Chris Kallmyer, Tashi Wada, Liam Mooney, Scott…
Works for String Quartet and Percussion
"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 featu…
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
First recordings of James Tenney's Poem, Monody, Seegersong #1 and #2 and the Ergodos series for computer music, with string, instrumental and percussion responses, played by the Barton Workshop and soloists.