La Monte Young
Born in Idaho in 1935 and raised in the West, La Monte Young trained as a jazz saxophonist before turning to composition and becoming a founding figure of minimalism. In the late 1950s and early 1960s his work moved toward extreme sustained tones and just intonation, holding single pitches or chords for extraordinary lengths so that the ear settles into the fine detail of a static, beating drone. In New York he formed the Theatre of Eternal Music, an ensemble whose shifting membership included Tony Conrad and, crucially, the young John Cale, and whose hours-long drone performances fed directly into rock through Cale's later work with the Velvet Underground. With his partner Marian Zazeela, Young developed the long-running 'Dream House' sound-and-light installations, extending his fascination with continuous tone into a music meant to be lived inside.
we haven’t charted La Monte Young yet
this stretch of the river isn’t mapped. we trace the watershed one artist at a time — and we’re always heading further upstream.