This CD provides a good overview of
Mac Low's creativity: the "1st Milarepa Gatha" (1976), "Thanks" (1960), the "38th and 39th Merzgedichte in Memoriam Kurt Schwitters" (1989), "Phoneme Dance in Memoriam John Cage" (by
Mac Low and Anne Tardos) (1993), "Free Gatha 1" (1978), and "Free Gatha 2" (1981) are works for massed, multi-tracked voices speaking/singing at the same time with complex compositional procedures described in the notes; the "Milarepa Quartet for Four Like Instruments" (1982) employs a letter-to-pitch-class code that translates text into music in the manner of procedures used by
Messiaen, Ashley,
Cage, et al. "Winds/Instruments" (1980) is for voices and instrumentalists who sometimes speak, and "Lucas 1 to 29: For One or More Instrumentalists (In Memoriam Morton Feldman and for the Musicians of Germany)" (1990) is based on the Lucas sequence. ~ "Blue" Gene Tyranny