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Downtown music is a subdivision of American music. The scene the term describes began in 1960, when Yoko Ono — one of the Fluxus artists, at that time still seven years away from meeting John Lennon — opened her SoHo loft to be used as a performance space for a series curated by La Monte Young and Richard Maxfield. Prior to this, most classical music performances in New York City occurred "uptown" around the area Lincoln Center would soon occupy. Ono's gesture led to a new performance tradition of informal performances in nontraditional venues such as lofts and converted industrial spaces, involving music much more experimental than that of the more conventional modern classical series' Uptown. Image File history File links Circle-question. ... The music of the United States includes a number of kinds of distinct folk and popular music, including some of the most widely-recognized styles in the world. ... Yoko Ono Lennon (born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese musician and artist best known as the widow of John Lennon of The Beatles. ... Fluxus (from to flow) is an art movement noted for the blending of different artistic disciplines, primarily visual art but also music and literature. ... John Winston Ono Lennon, MBE (October 9, 1940 – December 8, 1980), (born John Winston Lennon, known as John Ono Lennon) was an iconic English 20th century rock and roll songwriter and singer, best known as the founding member of The Beatles. ... Soho is an area of central Londons West End, in the borough of the City of Westminster. ... La Monte Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American composer whose eccentric and often hard-to-find works have been included among the most important post World War II avant-garde or experimental music. ... Richard Maxfield (February 2, 1927 - 1969) was a composer of instrumental, electro-acoustic, and electronic. ... Nickname: Big Apple, Gotham, NYC, City That Never Sleeps, The Concrete Jungle, The City So Nice They Named It Twice Location in the state of New York Coordinates: Country United States State New York Boroughs The Bronx Brooklyn Manhattan Queens Staten Island Settled 1676 Government  - Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) Area... The Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center. ...

Downtown music is not distinguished by any particular principle, but rather by what it does not do: it does not confine itself to the ensembles, performance tradition, and musical rhetoric of European classical music, nor to the commercially defined conventions of pop music. More than a continuous scene, Downtown music has resembled a battlefield on which, from time to time, various groups have reigned ascendant. In chronological order of dominance, the following movements have been prominent Downtown:

• Conceptualism — starting with the Fluxus artists, who made pieces from brief instructions ("the short form") or concepts. For instance, La Monte Young's "Draw a straight line and follow it"; Robert Watts's Trace, in which the musicians set fire to the music on their music stands; Yoko Ono's Wall Piece, in which performers bang their heads against the wall; or Nam June Paik's classic "Creep into the vagina of a living whale."
• Minimalism — a style of music that began with the repetition of short motifs, sometimes going out of phase due to slight differences of speed, and crescendoed into a movement of simple diatonic music of clearly defined linear processes. Steve Reich and Philip Glass became the public face of the movement, but the original minimalists (La Monte Young, Tony Conrad, John Cale, Charlemagne Palestine, Phill Niblock) were less characterized by their music's prettiness and accessibility than by its tremendous length, volume, and attention-challenging stasis.
• Performance art — starting with the enigmatic solo text/music pieces of Laurie Anderson, which often made innovative (even subversive) use of electronic technology, many Downtown artists developed an often humorous or thought-provoking style of solo performance with conceptualist overtones. This scene coexisted with minimalism, and due to the dearth of funding opportunities for Downtown composers, many of them still pursue genres of solo performance.
• Art rock — this is a term with several different meanings, depending on one's milieu, but two are most relevant to Downtown music: 1. originally, music made by visual artists, presumably musical amateurs, often tending toward surreal theater, as in the early performances of Glenn Branca and Jeffrey Lohn; and 2. subsequent to Rhys Chatham's influence, a transferral of minimalism to the instruments of rock music, resulting in static pieces played on electric guitars, generally with a backbeat. Groups like DNA, Sonic Youth and the Swans arose from this (and the No Wave) movement.
• Free improvisation — originating with Terry Riley and Pauline Oliveros, this scene took over Downtown in the early 1980s, under the leadship of John Zorn and Elliott Sharp. This music, celebrating extemporaneity, flourished in a city in which rehearsal space was expensive and difficult to come by, and provided an outlet for many jazz-trained/-centered musicians tired of jazz performance conventions.
• Postminimalism — a style of music based on a steady beat and diatonic harmony, less linear or obvious than minimalism but taking over its ensemble concept of amplified chamber groups. Postminimalism was more a far-flung national movement than anything specific to Manhattan, but William Duckworth and Elodie Lauten are examples of New York-based postminimalists.
• Totalism — another style emerging from minimalism but taking it in the direction of rhythmic complexity and rock-inspired beat momentum. Postminimalism and totalism were both bolstered by the emergence, starting in 1987, of the Bang on a Can festival, curated by Julia Wolfe, David Lang, and Michael Gordon.

The above list of movements and idioms is far from exhaustive — in particular, it omits the continuous history of electronics in Downtown music, which have tended toward process-oriented and interactive music rather than fixed compositions. The history of sound installations should be taken into account, along with the more recent advent of DJ-ing as an artform. Likewise, despite its origin in New York musical politics, "Downtown" music is not solely specific to Manhattan; many major cities such as Chicago, San Francisco, even Birmingham, Alabama have alternative, Downtown music scenes. The only thing that all Downtown music might be said to have in common is that, at least at the time of its original appearance, it was too outré - by dint of excessive length, stasis, simplicity, extemporaneity, consonance, noisiness, pop influence, vernacular reference, or other purported infraction - to have been considered "serious" modern music by the people who play modern music at Juilliard, Columbia University, and Lincoln Center. Another generalization one could point to is an embrace of the creative attitudes of John Cage, though this is not universal; Zorn in particular has downplayed his influence. Some Downtown music, particularly that of Glass, Reich, Zorn, and Morton Feldman, has subsequently become widely acknowledged within the more mainstream history of music. Conceptualism is a doctrine in philosophy intermediate between nominalism and realism, that universals exist only within the mind and have no external or substantial reality. ... Fluxus (from to flow) is an art movement noted for the blending of different artistic disciplines, primarily visual art but also music and literature. ... La Monte Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American composer whose eccentric and often hard-to-find works have been included among the most important post World War II avant-garde or experimental music. ... Robert Watts is a producer, known for his involvement with several hugely successful films. ... Yoko Ono Lennon (born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese musician and artist best known as the widow of John Lennon of The Beatles. ... Pre-Bell-Man, statue in front of the Museum für Kommunikation, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. ... Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features and core self expression. ... Stephen Michael Reich (born October 3, 1936) is an American composer. ... Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an Academy Award-nominated American composer. ... Tony Conrad (born Anthony S. Conrad in 1940) is an American avant-garde video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician/composer, sound artist, teacher and writer. ... John Davies Cale (born March 9, 1942) is a Welsh musician, songwriter and record producer. ... Charlemagne Palestine (born August 15, 1945 as Charles Martin in Brooklyn, New York, USA) is a minimalist composer and visual artist. ... Phill Niblock (born 2 October 1933, in Anderson, Indiana) is a minimalist composer, filmmaker, videographer, and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York. ... This article is about Performance art. ... Laurie Anderson (born Laura Phillips Anderson, on June 5, 1947, in Glen Ellyn, Illinois) is an American experimental performance artist and musician. ... Art rock is a term used by some to describe rock music that is characterized by ambitious or avant-garde lyrical themes and/or melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic experimentation, often extending beyond standard modern popular music forms and genres, toward influences in jazz, classical, world music or the experimental avant... Glenn Branca (born October 6, 1948 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) is an avant-garde composer and guitarist. ... Rhys Chatham (b. ... Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features and core self expression. ... DNA was a short-lived but influential New York rock band, associated with the no wave movement. ... Sonic Youth is a seminal American alternative rock group formed in New York City in 1981. ... Swans were an influential American rock, experimental, folk and post-industrial band active from 1982 to 1997, led by singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Michael Gira. ... No Wave was a short-lived but influential offshoot of punk rock centered in New York City during the late 1970s and early 1980s. ... Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the taste of the musicians involved, and not in any particular style. ... Terry Riley – (Portrait by Betty Freeman) Terry Riley (born 24 June 1935) is an American composer associated with the minimalist school. ... Pauline Oliveros (born 1932 in Houston, Texas) is an accordionist and composer who currently resides in Kingston, New York. ... John Zorn (born September 2, 1953 in NYC, USA) is an avant-garde Jewish American composer and saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist. ... Elliott Sharp (born 1951) is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, and performer who has personified the avant-garde experimental music scene in New York City for over thirty years. ... Postminimalism is a term utilized in various artistic fields for work which is influenced by, or attempts to develop, the aesthetic of minimalism. ... William Duckworth (born in 1943) is credited as composer of the first postminimal piece of music, The Time Curve Preludes. ... Elodie Lauten (b. ... Totalism In music, Totalism is some peoples term for a style of music that arose in the 1980s and 90s as a developing response to minimalism - parallel to postminimalism, but generally among a slightly younger generation, born in the 1950s. ... Bang on a Can is a musical organization based in New York City which was founded in 1987 by three American composers who remain its artistic directors: Julia Wolfe, David Lang, and Michael Gordon. ... Julia Wolfe (born December 18, 1958) is an American composer. ... David Lang (b. ... Michael Gordon was born in Florida in 1956 and grew up in Nicaragua and an Eastern European community in a jungle on the outskirts of Managua. ... Electronic music is a term for music created using electronic devices. ... Sound sculpture is one term for the multimedia artform where, as the name suggests, sculpture produces sound or, less often, the reverse. ... DJ or dj may stand for Disc jockey, dinner jacket The DeadJournal website, or Djibouti. ... The Borough of Manhattan, highlighted in yellow, lies between the East River and the Hudson River. ... Nickname: The Windy City, The Second City, Chi Town, City of the Big Shoulders, The 312, The City that Works, Second City (reference to when Chicago was second in population and prestige to New York). ... This page is a candidate for speedy deletion. ... Nickname: The Magic City, Pittsburgh of the South, BHam, The Ham Location in Jefferson County in the state of Alabama Coordinates: Country United States State Alabama County Jefferson, Shelby  - Mayor Bernard Kincaid (D) Area    - City  151. ... The Juilliard School is a performing arts conservatory in New York City, informally but definitively identified as simply Juilliard, and most famous for its musically-trained alumni. ... Columbia University is a private research university in the United States. ... The Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center. ... Morton Feldman (January 12, 1926 – September 3, 1987) was an American composer, born in New York City. ...

External link

• Kyle Gann on Downtown Music