La Monte Young, generally regarded as the father of musical minimalism, is one of America’s most important contemporary composers--and one of the most elusive. Early on Young eschewed the conventional musical institutions of publishers, record labels, and venues, in order to create compositions completely unfettered by commercial concerns. At the same time, however, he exercised profound influence on such varied figures as Terry Riley, Cornelius Cardew, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, Velvet Underground, Brian Eno and entire branches of pop music. For half a century he and his partner and collaborator, ... More

La Monte Young, generally regarded as the father of musical minimalism, is one of America’s most important contemporary composers--and one of the most elusive. Early on Young eschewed the conventional musical institutions of publishers, record labels, and venues, in order to create compositions completely unfettered by commercial concerns. At the same time, however, he exercised profound influence on such varied figures as Terry Riley, Cornelius Cardew, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, Velvet Underground, Brian Eno and entire branches of pop music. For half a century he and his partner and collaborator, Marian Zazeela, have worked in near-seclusion in their Tribeca loft, creating works that explore the furthest extremes of conceptual audacity, technical sophistication, acoustical complexity, and overt spirituality. Because of this seclusion, his importance as a composer has heretofore not been matched by a commensurate amount of scholarly scrutiny. Draw A Straight Line and Follow It: The Music and Mysticism of La Monte Young stands as the first monograph to examine Young’s life and work in detail. The book is a culmination of a decade of research, during which the author gained rare access to the composer and his archives. The book takes a multi-disciplinary approach that combines biography, musicology, ethnomusicology, and music analysis, and illuminates such seemingly disparate aspects of Young’s work as integral serialism and indeterminacy, Mormon esoterica and Vedic mysticism, and psychedelia and psychoacoustics. The book is a long-awaited, in-depth look at one of experimental music’s most fascinating figures.