Recommended reading, news, and so forth elsewhere:
● Jon Hassell on Diagonal Composing, the Curses of Cliché & Abundance (theaustralian.news.com.au): Thorough newspaper profile of Jon Hassell, in advance of his first visit to Australia. Notes his work with Terry Riley and La Monte Young, and his association with Brian Eno. For a musician whose work is founded on a blurring of cultures and modes, he proves refreshingly opinionated: "I've avoided jazz clichés. You'll never hear a ride cymbal or certain intervals. Clichés are rampant in jazz." And: "We're living in an age of musical addiction. People think they have to have 20,000 songs on their lipstick-shaped iPods. But you have to put on the filter or you'll perish." And he talks at length about Indian drones: "If you think of music as horizontal, being melody, and vertical, being harmony, I think of what I do as diagonal, because there's a harmonic loop repeating in the background. That's my take on the tamboura. With the loops, all the notes, the three chords, are in the air. That's the harmonic cloud to play within. The combined harmony is there, and yet I can play around it." … Hassell’s latest album, Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street, was the subject of a recent “MP3 Discussion Group” here (disquiet.com), 22 comments and counting.
● Gavin Bryars Pays Tribute to Nicholas Maw (guardian.co.uk): In a letter to the Guardian, Gavin Bryars elaborates on an obituary for Nicholas Maw, published a week earlier: "His example enabled me, 15 years ago, to leave the cushioned environment of academia for the more dangerous one of the full-time professional composer, and I have always been grateful to him." Original obituary at guardian.co.uk. … In related news, Bryars has posted his upcoming events: gavin-bryars.livejournal.com.
More online resources at disquiet.com/elsewhere.