Gordon Monahan, Eclectic Electrics

David Weinstein talks to the composer and multi-media artist Gordon Monahan about early work as well as his latest creations. From his legendary, and truly adventurous, rethinking of the piano and how to play it (Piano Mechanics, a piece that wowed John Cage) to his downright scary performances of Speaker Swinging to his more current experiments with the theremin and a sauerkraut synthesizer. Plus the definitive version of his storefront/performance space in East Berlin known the The Glowing Pickle.

Gordon Monahan's works for piano, loudspeakers, video, kinetic sculpture, and computer-controlled sound environments span various genres from avant-garde concert music to multi-media installation and sound art. As a composer and sound artist, he juxtaposes the quantitative and qualitative aspects of natural acoustical phenomena with elements of media technology, environment, architecture, popular culture, and live performance.

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