Biography Base Home Link To Us Search Biographies: Browse Biographies A B C D ... Z La Monte Young Biography La Monte Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American composer whose eccentric but influential (if hard to find) works have been classified by some as avant garde or experimental. Both his Fluxus influenced and "minimal" compositions question the nature of music and often stress elements of performance not normally indicated. He is normally listed as one of the "big four" minimalists along with Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and Terry Riley, despite having little in common with Glass and Reich.
He was born in Bern, Idaho. His family moved several times in his childhood while his father searched for work before settling in Los Angeles, California. He studied at Los Angeles City College, and was such a good saxophonist that he came out ahead of Eric Dolphy in an audition for the school's jazz band. As well as Dolphy, he also played alongside Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry and Billy Higgins.
He later entered the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to study music, and later still the University of California, Berkeley. He also studied electronic music with Richard Maxfield and attended the summer courses at Darmstadt under Karlheinz Stockhausen. Over this period he virtually gave up playing the saxophone to concentrate on composition, being influenced by Anton Webern, Gregorian chant and various music of other cultures, including Indian classical music and Indonesian gamelan music. These interests, and a wish to be able to find the intervals he used by ear, later led to him studying with Pandit Pran Nath from 1970 (fellow students included his wife Marian Zazeela and the composer Terry Riley). | |
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