John Lennon » Rock 'n' Roll

Diamanda Galás

Diamanda Galás (born August 29, 1955) is an American avant-garde performance artist, vocalist, and composer. Galás was born and raised in San Diego, California. She was classically trained in jazz piano from an early age, training which reveals itself consistently throughout all her work. Known for her distinctive, operatic voice, which has a three and a half octave range, Galás has been described as “capable of the most unnerving vocal terror”. Galás often shrieks, howls, and seems to imitate glossolalia in her performances. Her works largely concentrate on the topics of suffering, despair, condemnation, injustice and loss of dignity. Critic Robert Conroy has said that she is ‘unquestionably one of the greatest singers America has ever produced.

She worked with many avant-garde composers including Phillip Glass, Terry Riley, John Zorn, Iannis Xenakis and Vinko Globokar. She made her performance debut at the Festival d’Avignon in France as the lead in Globokar’s opera, Un Jour Comme Une Autre which deals with the death by torture of a Turkish woman. The work was sponsored by Amnesty International. She also contributed her voice to Francis Ford Coppola’s film Dracula (1992) and appeared on the film’s soundtrack.

Her work first garnered widespread attention with the controversial 1991 live recording of the album Plague Mass in the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York.

Sean Lennon

Born October 9, 1975, Sean Taro Ono Lennon is the son of musicians and peace activists John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Kyoko Chan Cox and Julian Lennon are his half-siblings. After Sean’s birth, John became a house husband, doting on his young son until his murder in 1980. Sean was educated at the exclusive private boarding school, Institut Le Rosey (which Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, King Albert II of Belgium, Dodi Al-Fayed as well as Strokes members Julian Casablancas and Albert Hammond, Jr. also attended) in Switzerland, and earlier at New York’s private Ethical Culture Fieldston and Dalton Schools.

His first appearance on record was on Ono’s album Season of Glass (1981), reciting a story that his father used to tell him. At the age of 9, he performed the song “It’s Alright” on the Yoko Ono tribute album Every Man Has A Woman (1984). In 1988 Sean was featured in the cast of Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker. He has recalled working with Jackson as a positive experience. Later in life, his initial efforts as a serious musician came as collaborations: he appeared on Lenny Kravitz’s album Mama Said (1991) and formed backing-band IMA for his mother’s album Rising (1995).

In 1997 Lennon (along with fellow IMA member Timo Ellis) joined New York-based Japanese duo Cibo Matto (Miho Hatori & Yuka Honda) for their second EP, Super Relax. Through his association with Cibo Matto, he was approached by the Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch, who expressed an interest in his music. Lennon’s debut solo album, Into the Sun, was released in 1998 on the Beastie Boys’ record label, Grand Royal Records. Regarding Grand Royal, Sean has said, “I think I found the only label on the planet who doesn’t care who my parents are and what my name is.

Alvin Lucier

Alvin Lucier (born May 14, 1931) is an American composer of music and sound installations exploring acoustic phenomena, especially resonance, as well as a former member of the Sonic Arts Union along with Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Gordon Mumma. As a self-acknowledged composer of experimental music, Lucier’s compositions sometimes deal with elements of indeterminacy. Much of his work is heavily informed by science, revolving around the physical properties of sound itself: resonance of spaces, phase interference between closely-tuned pitches, and the transmission of sound through physical media.

Phill Niblock

Phill Niblock (born 2 October 1933, in Anderson, Indiana) is a minimalist composer, filmmaker, videographer, and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York.

Phill Niblock’s music usually consists of simultaneous drones created from tape (later computer) manipulations of recorded pitches performed by instrumentalists such as Rafael Toral, David First, Lee Ranaldo, and Thurston Moore, on Guitar Too, for Four (G2,44+1x2); and Ulrich Krieger, on Touch Food.