Welcome to the web site for the Society for Minimalist Music. The SMM was formed in September, 2007, at the First International Conference on Music and Minimalism, at the University of Bangor, Wales, directed by Pwyll ap Sion and Tristian Evans.
The Society for Minimalist Music exists to promote the intellectual and scholarly study of the music known as minimalism, and originating in the 1960s activities of composers La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Tony Conrad, Terry Jennings, Jon Gibson, Charlemagne Palestine, Phill Niblock, Barbara Benary, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and others. The Society’s interests are not limited to the music of that period, but also to ensuing streams of music developed from minimalist origins, and also in the relationship of music to minimalism in the other arts. Specifically, the Society recognizes minimalism not only in its familiar idiom of motivic repetition, but also its more general concern with drones and stasis.
The Second International Conference on Music and Minimalism will occur September 2-6, 2009, at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, directed by Kyle Gann and David McIntire. All scholars in this area are invited to submit papers. Relevant topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- - both American and European (and other) minimalist music;
- - early minimalism of the 1950s and 60s;
- - outgrowths of minimalism into postminimalism, totalism, and oher movements;
- - minimalist musics relation to pop music or visual art;
- - performance problems in minimalist music;
- - analyses or investigation of music by La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Arvo Pärt, Louis Andriessen, Gavin Bryars;
- - especially encouraged are papers on crucial but less public figures such as Tony Conrad, Phill Niblock, Jon Gibson, Eliane Radigue, Rhys Chatham, Barbara Benary, Julius Eastman, and so on.
Contributions are welcomed in the form of individual papers (20 minutes). Abstracts containing a maximum of 500 words should be sent as email attachments, by October 31, 2008, to kgann@earthlink.net and compositeurkc@sbcglobal.net.
SPECIAL NOTICE!!! - On September 13, 2008, the Society for Minimalist Music will host a one-day Colloquium at Goldsmiths, University of London, including papers and roundtable discussion on “Opera and Post-Opera” and “Performing Minimalism.” For registration information, contact Keith Potter at k.potter@gold.ac.uk.
