A new anthology of writings by the late composer and longtime CalArts faculty member James Tenney was recently published by Bloomsbury Academic Press. Titled James Tenney: Writings and Interviews on Experimental Music, the collection brings together a comprehensive selection of Tenney’s interviews, essays, and aesthetic reflections from across his five-decade artistic career.
The volume is co-edited by Tashi Wada (Music BFA 08), a former student of Tenney’s; Robert Wannamaker, associate dean for Academic and Special Projects in The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts; and Lauren Pratt, who was married to Tenney and is the executor of his estate. Pratt had also previously served as associate producer for music at REDCAT and was a longtime School of Music staff member.
In addition to Tenney’s own writings, the anthology includes archival materials, photographs, compositional sketches, artworks, and previously unpublished scores. Appendices feature complete lists of his compositions and writings, as well as detailed performance chronologies documenting his impact on the mid-20th century experimental music scenes in New York and beyond.
In his blurb for the book, Pulitzer Prize winner John Luther Adams (Music BFA 73) offered the following: “James Tenney was one of the greatest musical minds of our times. In this book, his words and his thoughts resonate with the same expansive clarity and depth as his music.”
Tenney taught at CalArts from 1970 to 1975, and again from 2000 until his death in 2006, serving as the Roy E. Disney Chair in Composition. Over the course of his career, he helped shape multiple areas of experimental music, including digital sound synthesis, algorithmic composition, nonstandard tuning systems, minimalism, and spectral music. Among his most notable collaborations was his work with artist Alison Knowles on The House of Dust, a computer-generated poem and installation.
