The Avant Garde Project is a series of 20th-century classical, experimental, and electroacoustic torrents digitized from LPs whose music has in most cases never been released on CD, and so is effectively inaccessible to the vast majority of music listeners today. This is wild stuff, so check it out if you've never heard this sort of music before. The analog rig used to extract the sound from the grooves is near state-of-the-art, producing almost none of the tracking distortion or surface noise normally associated with LPs.

AGP1-154 are now available for direct download in the archive at www.avantgardeproject.org
AGP155-161 and other AGP installments are also available at http://thepiratebay.org/user/loudav

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AGP162 is the fifth and (for the time being, I think) final installment in our long-overdue celebration of the work of the legendary pioneering minimalist composer La Monte Young. This one features an unauthorized release of what sounds like a concert recording of excerpts from Just Charles & Cello In The Romantic Chord (2002-2003), with Charles Curtis on cello (who is in fact the only cellist authorized to perform this work). The concert performances of this work lasted about four hours, of which about two hours are included in this recording. Professor Curtis plays cello over pre-recorded drones that he controlled on stage by means of foot pedals. The lighting composition was created by Marian Zazeela.

This may be my favorite of the La Monte Young installments. The harmonic explorations are akin to those in The Well-Tuned Piano, but the potential for unlimited sustain in the cello and the softer edge of the instrumental sound better enable me to drink in the slowly explored tonal relationships. If you could imagine a two-hour alap performed by a very self-effacing sarangi player, you'll have some idea of the sound. Listening to it again just now, I found myself imagining arrangements for vielle a roue or bagpipe. Both would entail some modifications of the instruments to accommodate Young's just intonation and the changing drones, but with a suitably fit instrumentalist you could recreate the piece without having to pre-record the drones. 

The FLAC files for this release were provided through the generosity of a dedicated AGP partisan. Both discs come with log and cue files (and don't you just love the idea of a cue file for a CD consisting of only one track?), but once again I have no scans of whatever liner notes may have accompanied the CD. I did find a low-res image of the cover. 

For more information on this work, check out the Mela Foundation annoucement of two concert performances in France in 2004:

http://www.melafoundation.org/justcharles_2004.htm

Here is a blog review of one of the concerts:

http://ericedberg.blogspot.com/2005/12/just-charles-cello-in-romantic-chord.html

Professor Curtis' page at the UC San Diego web site is here:

http://musicweb.ucsd.edu/people/people.php ?cmd=fm_music_directory_detail &query_Full_Name=%20Charles%20Curtis &query_Active_Status=Faculty

For more information on La Monte Young, see the Wikipedia article on him, or visit his website at:

http://www.melafoundation.org/lmy.htm

This information is from discogs:

La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela - Just Charles & Cello In The Romantic Chord (2002-2003)
Label: Not On Label (La Monte Young)
Catalog#: none
Format: 2 x CDr, Album, Unofficial Release, Limited Edition
Country: Japan
Released: 2006
Genre: Classical
Style: Contemporary

Tracklist
1.1 	  	Just Charles & Cello In The Romantic Chord 	68:45 	
2.1 	  	Just Charles & Cello In The Romantic Chord 	49:20 	

Credits
Cello, Tape [Pre-recorded Cello Drones] - Charles Curtis
Other [Light Show] - Marian Zazeela
Written-By - La Monte Young

Notes
Subtitled 'in a setting of Abstract 1 from Quadrilateral Phase Angle Traversals (2003) in Imagic Light'.
Edition of 100.

NOTE: To the best of my knowledge, these recordings are not currently available commercially. If you know otherwise, please let me know ASAP, as I do not wish any artists to be deprived of the royalties that they so richly deserve.