Premiere screening of David Tudor’s Bandoneon!, which was performed as part of the legendary experimental series 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering in 1966 at the New York 69th Regiment Armory. Bandoneon! is Tudor’s first full-length concert work as a composer that uses the bandoneon to activate a complex sound and visual modification system. Post-screening discussion with director Julie Martin and composer David Behrman.

Produced by E.A.T. and ARTPIX

Photo by Frances Breer

David Tudor (1926-1996) studied piano with Stefan Wolpe and became one of the leading performers of avant-garde piano music. He gave several highly acclaimed first or early performances of works by
contemporary composers including Earle Brown, Pierre Boulez, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff. He had a life-long association with John Cage, giving the premiere of Cage’s Music of Changes, Concerto
For Piano and Orchestra and 4’ 33”. During the late 1950s he began working with the electronic amplification and modification of sound. Tudor increasingly moved towards live electronic music, ended
his work as a pianist, and by the end of the 1960s became fully involved in the composition and performance of live electronic music, connecting modular electronic components, many of which he made or modified himself. Beginning with his first full concert work, Bandoneon !, Tudor incorporated visual elements into his performances: lights, video, film and four-color laser projections, activated by sound; or sculptures or other objects that functioned as speakers. Tudor was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) from its inception in 1953, performing live music with the company for more than 40 years. MCDC commissioned more than ten of his electronic works including RainForest I (1968), Toneburst (1974), Neural Synthesis (1992) and Soundings: Ocean Diary (1994) for John Cage’s last work, Ocean.