| James Tenney |
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Tenney was born in Silver City , New Mexico , and grew up in Arizona and Colorado. He attended the University Of Denver , the Juilliard School Of Music , Bennington College (B.A., 1958) and the University Of Illinois (M.A., 1961). He studied piano with Eduard Steuermann and composition with Chou Wen-chung , Lionel Nowak , Paul Boepple , Henry Brant , Carl Ruggles , Kenneth Gaburo , Lejaren Hiller , John Cage , Harry Partch , and Edgard Varèse . He also studied Information Theory under Lejaren Hiller , and composed Stochastic early Computer Music before turning almost completely to writing for instruments with the occasional Tape Delay , often using Just Intonation and alternative Tuning s. Tenney's notable students include John Luther Adams , Larry Polansky , and Peter Garland . He performed with John Cage , as well as with the ensembles of Harry Partch , Steve Reich , and Philip Glass . Tenney's work deals simply and artfully with perception (''. His pieces are most often Tribute s and subtitled as such. As his friend Philip Corner says, ''For Ann (rising)'', "must be optimistic! (Imagine the depressing effectiveness of it — he could never be so cruel — downward)..." Tenney wrote the seminal ''Meta (+) Hodos'' (one of, if not the, earliest applications of Gestalt theory and Cognitive Science to music), the later ''Hierarchical temporal gestalt perception in music : a metric space model'' with Larry Polansky, and other works. An entire issue of the academic journal ''Perspectives of New Music'' was devoted to Tenney's music. Tenney also wrote the in-depth liner notes to Wergo's edition of Conlon Nancarrow 's Studies for Player Piano. (Nancarrow, as a favor, punched the roll for Tenney's ''Spectral Canon for Conlon Nancarrow''). Tenney also starred nude in a 1965 silent film of collaged and painted sequences of lovemaking between him and his then partner, Carolee Schneemann called ''Fuses''.1 He taught at the Polytechnic Institute Of Brooklyn , the California Institute Of The Arts , the University Of California , and York University in Toronto . He died on 24 August 2006 of Lung Cancer in Valencia, California. TRIVIA Tenney was one of the four performers of the rarely performed , Richard Serra and Bruce Nauman . FURTHER READING
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