Monday 26 October 2009

Liberation Music by Richard Gott

'What do we remember about Cornelius Cardew? That he was a brilliant avant-garde composer who pioneered free improvisation and led a Scratch Orchestra of musicians and artists; that his father was Michael Cardew, the potter; that he wrote a polemical tract alleging that Stockhausen ‘serves imperialism’; and that, after spending a decade as a prominent Maoist, he was killed by a hit-and-run driver, in an apparent accident that conspiracy theorists have liked to construe as the work of the intelligence services.

Now we have a thousand-page book to fill in the details of his life, written with affection, humour and perspicacity by the pianist John Tilbury'.



The start of Richard Gott's review of John Tilbury's Cornelius Cardew: A Life Unfinished

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n05/print/gott01_.html

No comments:

Post a Comment