ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Philip Corner (Bronx, NY, US, b. 1933)

Composer, performer, and visual artist whose work explores the intermedia between music and philosophy in the pursuit of an ultimate simplification of musical material. Having studied with Henry Cowell and Olivier Messiaen as well as playing on two volumes of Folkways’ Charles Ives recordings, the consummate pianist has nevertheless spent a career upsetting hierarchies between technique and aesthetic richness, sound and silence, and the occident and orient. A founding participant of Fluxus, his numerous indeterminate event scores—including food pieces, piano dismantlings and cleanings, one note events, love scores, and sound walks—are distinguished by the incorporation of such decorative script into poetic graphic notation frequently evocative of Zen koans. He was a resident composer and musician for the Judson Dance Theater from 1962 to 1964, collaborating with key figures in contemporary dance including Yvonne Rainer, Lucinda Childs, and Elaine Summers.

With Malcolm Goldstein and James Tenney, he co-founded the new music group Tone Roads Chamber Ensemble in 1963, with Julie Winter the music-ritual ensemble Sounds out of Silent Spaces in 1972 and with Barbara Benary and Daniel Goode Gamelan Son of Lion in 1976, a still-active new music ensemble that has performed many of Corner’s gamelan pieces, which number in the hundreds. Since 1992 he has lived in Reggio Emilia, Italy with his wife and collaborator, dancer Phoebe Neville.

To read the 2020 interview on Tone Glow with the artist, click here.