[NewMusic] Avant Garde (was Zorn/Taylor Lincoln Center review in NYTimes)

[Matt Davignon]

I think I'm with Weasel on this one (And not just because Weasel has a
nice article on him in this week's SF Weekly - with his name listed on
the cover.)

I personally see "Avant Garde" as being a large genre in itself,
rather than its literal meaning of  "the constant vanguard". It's kind
of a strange musical phenomenon, since it suggests that artists who
originally set the genre might not fit within it anymore once the
newness wears off.

Secondly, "Avant Garde" now brings to mind a number of specific
techniques, approaches and philosophies about music, which I will not
attempt to enumerate, but aren't necessarily the same set of
techniques, approaches and philosophies used by 'vanguard' musicians
today.

For example, it doesn't sit quite right with me to consider Christian
Fennesz an "Avant Garde" musician. Nor do I think of myself as "avant
garde". (No, I'm not claiming to be comparable to Fennesz of a
vanguard musician either.)

So, maybe we can call the recent new ideas and philosophies "Fat New
Explosion" or something. Then we'll be able to know what we're talking
about, and 40 years from now, "Fat New Explosion" will refer to that
time in the early 2000's where ideas of post-avant-garde and
improvisation were combining with the possibilities emerging with
digital signal processing, etc...., and people will argue about
whether musicians from 2007 still count as fat or new.



On 3/15/07, weasel walter <weaselw at juno.com> wrote:
> i'm not sure i really believe in the concept of a contemporary "avant
> garde" per se.