La Monte Young / Marian Zazeela

The composition Just Charles & Cello in The Romantic Chord was written by La Monte Young at the request of his long-time collaborator and interpreter of his works, the cellist Charles Curtis.
This is unusual in that La Monte Young's compositional interest lies in composing multiple harmonically related tones, which he uses like tone colours and with which he creates his typical sound environments. This concept is opposed by the composition of solo pieces. In this case, the dilemma was solved by adding drones to the solo cello.

In accordance with the basic idea of la Monte Young's oeuvre, according to which his music must be understood as a single, branching and interlocking work, the piece Just Charles & Cello in The Romantic Chord does not stand alone. It fits into this constantly changing and expanding ‘work in progress’ by further developing musical material from Well-Tuned Piano and incorporating stylistic elements from The Four Dreams of China.
For this performance, Marian Zazeela has once again created a light environment - Abstract #1 from Quadrilateral Phase Angle Traversals with Dream Light.