Pitt’s Department of Music and its contemporary chamber music series Music on the Edge will present a two-day mini-festival and symposium celebrating the late music of Morton Feldman. Two concerts, each exploring a separate Feldman work, will take place at Wood Street Galleries on the evening of November 3rd and 4th, and a day-long symposium, comprising scholars from around the country and musicians who worked closely with Feldman, will take place at Pitt’s Music Building on November 4.
The works of Morton Feldman (1926-1987) occupy a central place in the American experimental tradition, not just within the music world. Feldman was very often inspired by non-musical sources, including Persian rugs, abstract expressionist paintings by Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning and Philip Guston, and texts of Samuel Beckett, John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara. Kyle Gann remarked that, “in the current Babel of musical styles, Feldman is almost the only composer whose music appeals across stylistic boundaries, among minimalists, postserialists, 12-tone holdouts, electronic composers, academics, Downtowners, MAX programmers, DJ artists, and other miscellaneous wastrels.”
Visit our special Morton Feldman Symposium and Mini-Festival homepage for complete information about all the events, speakers, and performers.