Mindblowing reissue! The journal Source: Music of the Avant-garde was and remains a seminal source for materials on the heyday of experimental music and arts. Conceived in 1966 and published to 1973, it included some of the most important composers and artists of the time: John Cage, Harry Partch, David Tudor, Morton Feldman, Robert Ashley, Pauline Oliveros, Dick Higgins, Nam June Paik, Steve Reich, and many others. A pathbreaking publication, Source documented crucial changes in performance practice and live electronics, computer music, notation and event scores, theater and installations, intermedia and technology, politics and the social roles of composers and performers, and innovations in the sound of music.



Source Magazine emerged in 1967 after an incredibly creative decade in the Bay Area and a series of buoyant, multifarious initiatives in the fields of improvised music (Lukas Foss’ Improvisation Chamber Ensemble, the Pauline Oliveros/Terry Riley/Loren Rush 1958 improvisations for a Claire Falkenstein film); electronic music by Morton Subotnik and the San Francisco Tape Music Center; intermedia art (Herbert Blau’s Actor’s Workshop, the San Francisco Mime Troupe and choreographer Ann Halprin all collaborated with experimental music composers); performances and Fluxus events by Allan Kaprow or La Monte Young; etc. Various institutions helped disseminate and stage these groundbreaking sound experiments: Mills College where Subotnik was a teacher and Steve Reich a student in 1961 ; UC Berkeley’s Department of Music, home of the Noon Concerts series ; the San Francisco Conservatory organized its Sonics series in 1961-62 ; Charles Amirkhanian’s influential avantgarde music broadcasts on KPFA radio ; the Morrison Planetarium’s Vortex, etc.