New Music America

New Music America was an American festival of experimental or Downtown new music.

The festival began at The Kitchen in New York City in 1979. In this first year, the festival was actually called New Music New York.^[1]

In 1980, the festival was held in Minneapolis, Minnesota and was called New Music America. The 1989 edition was particularly diatribed; composer John Zorn wrote in the pamphlet with the music for the Brooklyn Philharmonic:^[2][3]

Less than an actual music festival, New Music America is one-sided overview that's more about politics, marketing, and sales than about the music it pretends to support... it's no more than a convention for the people in the music business who try to "out-hip" each other in the manipulation of artists. This postmodern yuppie tendency of business people dictating creative policy to artists is a very real danger that I intend to avoid at all costs.

From 1980 to 1990, the festival was held in a different U.S. (or Canadian) city each year:

• 1980 - Minneapolis
• 1981 - San Francisco
• 1982 - Chicago
• 1983 - Washington D.C.
• 1984 - Hartford
• 1985 - Los Angeles
• 1986 - Houston
• 1987 - Philadelphia
• 1988 - Miami
• 1989 - Brooklyn
• 1990 - Montreal

A loose-knit group called the "New Music Alliance" oversaw the administration of the festival, but it was sponsored by different institutions and directed by different people in each city. In 1992, the festival was revived as a group of radio-broadcast concerts across the United States, and was called New Music Across America.

Bibliography

• Brooks, Iris, ed. (1992). New Music Across America. Valencia, California: California Institute of the Arts, in conjunction with High Performance Books.

References