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This article examines Joan La Barbara's role in New York's Downtown scene, where her career was nurtured. By ‘La Barbara's Downtown’ I mean her perspective on Downtown as reflected in where she performed, who she collaborated with and what she wrote. Beginning with her involvement in the Steve Reich and Philip Glass ensembles in the early 1970s, I follow her through explorations in improvisation with Frederick Rzewski, Garrett List and Charlie Morrow. At the centre is La Barbara's development as an experimentalist composer in various Downtown venues, reinforced by her important collaborations with Alvin Lucier and John Cage. She wrote about the Downtown scene in the SoHo Weekly News in the mid-1970s and after leaving New York continued to write about it in Musical America until the mid-1980s. In all these contexts, I explore the different elements of her experimentalism, which is the overriding thematic of her aesthetic.
1 Many thanks to Joan La Barbara for her generosity in sharing her stories and perspectives with me in a number of interviews from 2007 to 2022.
2 Leibniz, G. W., Discourse on Metaphysics and the Monadology (Garden City: Dover Publications, 2005), p. 56Google Scholar.
3 Joan La Barbara, interview with the author, Zoom audiovisual recording, New York, 6 January 2022.
4 Joan La Barbara. interview with Libby Van Cleve, 17 February 1998, transcript, ‘Major Figures in American Music’. Oral History of American Music, Yale University, pp. 14–15.
5 Ibid., p. 16. For her work with the Trinity Church jazz musicians, see ‘Joan La Barbara rock concert, 74 Below Coffee House, 25 February 1972’, advertisement in The Village Voice, 24 February 1978, p. 26 (thanks to David Chapman for this reference). She worked with professional jazz musicians until 1973, appearing on albums by Jim Hall, Hubert Laws and Don Sebesky, all recorded at Rudy Van Gelder's legendary studio in New Jersey. joanabarbara.com.
6 Tom Johnson, ‘Steve Reich “Drumming”’, The Village Voice, 9 December 1971, p. 20.
7 For La Barbara's touring with Reich and Glass, see David Chapman, Collaboration, Presence, and Community: The Philip Glass Ensemble in Downtown New York, 1966–1976 (Ph.D. dissertation, Washington University in St Louis, 2016), especially the excellent chronology, pp. 247–90.
8 La Barbara sometimes remembers these sessions as taking place at the WBAI Free Music Store but also recalls them as happening at a ‘big old church in the 30s’, which describes the Space and approximates its address, 344 West 36th Street. Joan La Barbara, interview with the author, audio digital recording, 12 December 2007.
9 She performed on Garrett List's LP Your Own Self (Opus One, 1973) along with Rzewski and Clayton. She performed frequently with List at the Kitchen and elsewhere (sometimes with other MEV members). See especially ‘Democratic Vista’, performed by MEV and Friends at the Kitchen, 14 December 1974.
10 Willoughby Sharp, ‘The Phil Glass Ensemble, Music in Twelve Parts’, Avalanche, 10 December 1974, p. 42.
11 See Kerry O'Brien's article on Joan La Barbara and the New Wilderness Preservation Band in this issue.
12 For a fine account of La Barbara's ‘advocacy’ writing for the SoHo Weekly News, see Chapman, The Philip Glass Ensemble in Downtown New York, 1966–1976, pp. 216–39.
13 Joan La Barbara, ‘Living Music’, SoHo Weekly News, 21 March 1974, p. 18.
14 La Barbara, ‘Living Music’,’ SoHo Weekly News, 9 May 1974, p. 19.
15 La Barbara, ‘Living Music’,’ SoHo Weekly News, 16 May 1974, p. 19.
16 La Barbara, interview with Van Cleve, pp. 41–42.
17 Joan La Barbara, ‘Alvin Lucier: Sound Geographies’, SoHo Weekly News, 20 February 1975, p. 26.
18 John Rockwell, ‘Sounds the Thing in Work by Lucier’, New York Times, 23 February 1975, p. 42.
19 La Barbara, ‘Alvin Lucier: Sound Geographies’, p. 26.
20 Lucier, Alvin, Reflections: Interviews, Scores, Writings 1965–1994 (Cologne: Edition Musik Texte, 1995), pp. 159–63Google Scholar.
21 Zimmermann, Walter, Desert Plants: Conversations with 23 American Musicians (Vancouver: ARC Publications, 1976), p. 155Google Scholar.
22 Pauline Oliveros, ‘Poet of Electronic Music’, in Lucier, Reflections, pp. 11–15; Gann, Kyle, American Music in the Twentieth Century (New York: Schirmer Books, 1997), p. 166Google Scholar.
23 Joan La Barbara, ‘New Music’, Musical America, June 1978, p. 12.
24 See Ryan Dohoney in this issue, ‘Ekphrastic Voice: On Joan La Barbara's Sound Paintings’.
25 Sharp, ‘The Phil Glass Ensemble’, p. 42.
26 Zimmerman, Desert Plants, pp. 153–54.
27 La Barbara, interview with Van Cleve, pp. 76–77; Nyman, Michael, Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond (London: Studio Vista, 1974)Google Scholar.
28 ‘Into this open space came the experimenters – what I call the Steady State school’ (Young, Riley, Reich, Glass). La Barbara, ‘Philip Glass and Steve Reich: Two from the Steady State School’, Data Arte, 13 (Winter 1974), reprinted in Richard Kostelanetz, ed., Writings on Glass: Essays, Interviews, Criticism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. 39.
29 La Barbara, interview with the author, 6 June 2010.
30 La Barbara, interview with Van Cleve, pp. 26, 29; La Barbara, interview with the author, 6 January 2022.
31 Joan La Barbara, ‘New Music’, Musical America, July 1977, p. 11; Joan La Barbara, interview with the author, digital audio recording, 17 September 2008.
32 Cage, John, Silence, 50th Anniversary Edition (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2011), pp. 45–46Google Scholar.
33 La Barbara, interview with the author, 6 January 2022; La Barbara, interview with the author, 17 September 2008.
34 La Barbara, interview with the author, 17 September 2008.
35 Ibid.
36 Joan La Barbara, interview with the author, 26 June 2010.
37 Ibid.; Joan La Barbara, interview with author, 27 June 2008.
38 For example, Joan La Barbara, ‘The Wonderful Discoveries of Earl Howard’, Musical America, April 1982, pp. 13, 39, where the term ‘jazz/new music fusion’ is used.
39 Joan La Barbara, interview with the author, 26 July 2010.
40 Joan La Barbara, ‘New Music: Uptown and Downtown – Are Their Roles Changing?’, Musical America, May 1980, pp. 12, 18; Joan La Barbara, ‘New Music: Running the Gamut’, Musical America, September 1980, pp. 14–15.
41 La Barbara, ‘New Music: Uptown and Downtown’, p. 12.
42 La Barbara, interview with the author, 26 July 2010.
43 Ibid.
44 Joan La Barbara and Peter Gordon, ‘Tales and Mosaics’, for voice, saxophones, p'iri and pre-recorded sounds, premiered 27 February 1999 at the Forum at the College of Santa Fe (also performed at Roulette, 19 March 1999).
45 Joan La Barbara, ‘“Concerts by Composers” Illuminates Downtown School’, Musical America, May 1982, pp. 12, 14.
46 Joan La Barbara, ‘New Music America’, Musical America, November 1982, pp. 11–13.