Biography
Tony Conrad emerged as an innovator in the rise of minimalism, creating as a violinist and composer the concept of "Eternal Music," a sustained, hypnotic approach to performance built on extended lengths, volume, and exact intonation to open fresh sonic territories. Both independently and alongside figures such as LaMonte Young, John Cale, and Faust, he developed fresh artistic paths that exerted wide influence across later musicians from pop to experimental fields. Born in Baltimore in 1940, he pursued music studies at Harvard, encountering there the output of John Cage and David Tudor; his classmates included David Behrman, Christian Wolff, and Frederic Rzewski, each of whom went on to experimental music careers of their own.
Following his 1962 graduation, Conrad moved to New York and entered the city's growing underground music community. He soon connected with composer and saxophonist LaMonte Young, then directing an improvisational ensemble featuring his wife Marian Zazeela on voice-drone, Billy Name (later central to Andy Warhol's Factory scene) on guitar, and Angus MacLise on percussion. Conrad proposed joining, and by 1963 a revised group that also included Zazeela and the young Welsh musician John Cale began performing locally under names including the Dream Syndicate and the Theater of Eternal Music. Holding tones for hours, their spontaneous explorations of particular harmonic intervals set aside traditional composition in favor of shared performance ideas.
The Dream Syndicate ended in 1965, after which Conrad, Young, and Cale each asserted authorship of the "Eternal Music" approach; Young retained the ensemble's concert recordings. Conrad and Cale nevertheless sustained their partnership, teaming with young Pickwick songwriter Lou Reed and sculptor Walter de Maria in the rock group the Primitives, which toured behind its only single, Reed's "Do the Ostrich." Conrad supplied a further thread to early Velvet Underground history by passing Reed the S&M volume that supplied the band's name. He had meanwhile turned toward filmmaking, serving as sound engineer and technical advisor on the experimental works of camp figure Jack Smith, among them the 1963 landmark Flaming Creatures.
Conrad eventually directed his own films, such as The Flicker, Coming Attractions, The Eye of Count Flickenstein, and Film Feedback, while writing the music for each. A German filmmaker visiting New York introduced him to the emerging Krautrock movement of the early 1970s, prompting contact with Faust. He journeyed to the group's farm in the northern German village of Wuemme, where three days of recording produced the 1973 album Outside the Dream Syndicate, his debut proper release. Back in the U.S., he largely stepped away from performance to take a teaching post in the University at Buffalo's Department of Media Study, a role he held for decades afterward; future members of the noise-pop band Mercury Rev numbered among his students.
Only with Jeff Hunt's 1993 Table of the Elements reissue of Outside the Dream Syndicate did Conrad contemplate resuming live work; he and Faust both performed at Hunt's inaugural Manganese Music Festival in Atlanta, and in 1995 he recorded Slapping Pythagoras, his first new album in more than twenty years. Subsequent releases included the Gastr del Sol collaboration single "The Japanese Room at La Pagode" and, in 1996, Four Violins, a composition from 1964. The following year he issued Early Minimalism, a four-disc set containing Four Violins along with fresh recordings of earlier Dream Syndicate pieces. Further partnerships in the 2000s involved John Cale, Angus MacLise, Charlemagne Palestine, and Genesis P-Orridge. Conrad died in 2016 after prostate cancer.
Following his 1962 graduation, Conrad moved to New York and entered the city's growing underground music community. He soon connected with composer and saxophonist LaMonte Young, then directing an improvisational ensemble featuring his wife Marian Zazeela on voice-drone, Billy Name (later central to Andy Warhol's Factory scene) on guitar, and Angus MacLise on percussion. Conrad proposed joining, and by 1963 a revised group that also included Zazeela and the young Welsh musician John Cale began performing locally under names including the Dream Syndicate and the Theater of Eternal Music. Holding tones for hours, their spontaneous explorations of particular harmonic intervals set aside traditional composition in favor of shared performance ideas.
The Dream Syndicate ended in 1965, after which Conrad, Young, and Cale each asserted authorship of the "Eternal Music" approach; Young retained the ensemble's concert recordings. Conrad and Cale nevertheless sustained their partnership, teaming with young Pickwick songwriter Lou Reed and sculptor Walter de Maria in the rock group the Primitives, which toured behind its only single, Reed's "Do the Ostrich." Conrad supplied a further thread to early Velvet Underground history by passing Reed the S&M volume that supplied the band's name. He had meanwhile turned toward filmmaking, serving as sound engineer and technical advisor on the experimental works of camp figure Jack Smith, among them the 1963 landmark Flaming Creatures.
Conrad eventually directed his own films, such as The Flicker, Coming Attractions, The Eye of Count Flickenstein, and Film Feedback, while writing the music for each. A German filmmaker visiting New York introduced him to the emerging Krautrock movement of the early 1970s, prompting contact with Faust. He journeyed to the group's farm in the northern German village of Wuemme, where three days of recording produced the 1973 album Outside the Dream Syndicate, his debut proper release. Back in the U.S., he largely stepped away from performance to take a teaching post in the University at Buffalo's Department of Media Study, a role he held for decades afterward; future members of the noise-pop band Mercury Rev numbered among his students.
Only with Jeff Hunt's 1993 Table of the Elements reissue of Outside the Dream Syndicate did Conrad contemplate resuming live work; he and Faust both performed at Hunt's inaugural Manganese Music Festival in Atlanta, and in 1995 he recorded Slapping Pythagoras, his first new album in more than twenty years. Subsequent releases included the Gastr del Sol collaboration single "The Japanese Room at La Pagode" and, in 1996, Four Violins, a composition from 1964. The following year he issued Early Minimalism, a four-disc set containing Four Violins along with fresh recordings of earlier Dream Syndicate pieces. Further partnerships in the 2000s involved John Cale, Angus MacLise, Charlemagne Palestine, and Genesis P-Orridge. Conrad died in 2016 after prostate cancer.
Albums
Singles
