Morton Feldman: Triadic Memories
Amy Williams is a composer of music that is “simultaneously demanding, rewarding and fascinating” (Buffalo News), “fresh, daring and incisive” (Fanfare). Her compositions have been presented at renowned contemporary music venues on four continents by many of the leading contemporary music soloists and ensembles, including the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, JACK Quartet, Ensemble Aleph, Dal Niente, Wet Ink, Talujon, International Contemporary Ensemble, and pianist Ursula Oppens. Her pieces appear on the Albany, Parma, VDM (Italy), Blue Griffin, Centaur and New Ariel labels. As a member of the Bugallo-Williams Piano Duo, Ms. Williams has performed at important new music festivals and series worldwide and recorded six critically-acclaimed CDs for Wergo (works of Nancarrow, Stravinsky, Varèse/Feldman and Kurtág). She has taught at Bennington College and Northwestern University and is currently Associate Professor of Composition at the University of Pittsburgh.
MORTON FELDMAN was born in New York in 1926. He studied music and piano with several teachers at a young age before becoming a student of Stefan Wolpe after graduating from high school in 1944. Although Feldman mastered atonality, the pair spent much of their time together simply arguing about music and Feldman struggled to find an artistic voice when composing music.
Feldman’s artistic development took shape in 1949 when Feldman met composer John Cage, commencing a lifelong artistic association of crucial importance to American music in the 1950s. Cage was instrumental in encouraging Feldman to have confidence in his instincts, which resulted in totally intuitive compositions. From then on, Feldman never worked with any systems that anyone has been able to identify, working from moment to moment, from one sound to the next. During this vital time of his musical career, his friends during the 1950s in New York included the composers Earle Brown and Christian Wolff; painters Mark Rothko, Philip Guston, Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock and Robert Rauschenberg; and pianist David Tudor.