About the Authors:
Virginia Anderson. Editor, Jems. Former performer of experimental music and writer/researcher on all things experimental and minimal. Her writings can be found in Performance Research, the Galpin Society Journal, Journal of Musicological Research, plus articles in The Independent, Bookforum, MLA Notes, and so on. Her Ph.D. thesis was ‘Aspects of British Experimental Music as a Separate Art-Music Culture’ (2004).
Gavin Bryars. Composer, writer, director, performer. Co-founder of the Portsmouth Sinfonia, director of the eponymous Gavin Bryars Ensemble. Known for his operas Medea and Doctor Ox’s Experiment, but especially for his recordings on Obscure in the 1970s: The Sinking of the Titanic and Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet. This last, newly-recorded on Point Records in the 1990s, sold over a quarter of a million copies.
Rob Haskins. Assistant Professor of Music at the University of New Hampshire, Haskins has published articles on Cage and Glass. He produced a full-length, fully-staged presentation of Cage’s Song Books at the Eastman School of Music in 2002 and continues to perform experimental music as both a keyboard player and reciter.
Michael Parsons. Composer, writer, director, educator. Co-founder of the Scratch Orchestra (with Cornelius Cardew and Howard Skempton). Formally part of a duo with Howard Skempton; has directed countless workshops in experimental and world music. Parsons has been influenced in his compositions by the geography of the Arctic and the music of the Eastern Mediterranean.
Dave Smith. Composer, performer, director. Lecturer, University of Hertfordshire. Editorial board member, Jems. Was member of a piano duo with John Lewis; current member of the Gavin Bryars Ensemble. Probably best known for his series of Piano Concerts: full-length concerts of single works or collections of works linked by style or idea.
John Tilbury. Pianist, improviser, writer. Often considered ‘the David Tudor of Britain’, Tilbury has performed experimental music for over forty years, for a long time in association with Cornelius Cardew. His epic series in 1968, ‘The Contemporary Pianist’, in which he presented the music by American and British experimental composers, was matched by his more recent performances of music by Morton Feldman. Tilbury’s biography on Cornelius Cardew, A LIfe Unfinished, was published by Copula in 2008. Tilbury has for some years worked as a permanent member of the improvisation group AMM.
Daniel Varela. Writer, composer. Journalist for several Spanish and English-language music magazines. He has taught free-lance courses on experimental music at different venues in Argentina. His duo Circular (with Argentine visual artist José Marchi) explores different approaches to minimal and systems music.