Village Voice review by Tom Johnson

 

Influenced by avant-garde pioneer La Monte Young, Rhys Chatham composed and premiered his new minimalist work featuring four large amplified gongs at The Kitchen. Working with three musicians in addition to himself, Chatham’s work highlighted the vibration and continual ringing of the gongs. The instruments’ sounds echoed and overlapped in a seemingly impulsive way, leading reviewer Tom Johnson of the Village Voice to describe it as: “their sound was so suggestive and familiar one hardly noticed that the music was actually a radical new kind of minimalism which almost negated the whole idea of composition.”