Distribution

Ses propres compositions rassemblent des solos, des pièces pour ensemble, des pièces vocales. Cet enregistrement présente certaines de ses premières pièces ainsi que des compositions écrites par Philip Glass et Steve Reich à son attention.

Une des compositions de Jon Gibson figure sur le disque consacré à Thomas Buckner (" Full Spectrum Voice ").

• Merce Cunningham : " Fractions ".
  
• Lucinda Childs : " Relative Calm " (avec des décors de Robert Wilson).
  
• Margaret Jenkins : " Equal Time ".
  
• Elaine Summers : " Solitary Geometry ".
  
• Simone Forte : " To Be Continued ".
  

" Reed Phase was composed with me and my circular breathing skills in mind during one of the periods between 1963 and 1972 when I was working closely with Steve. It is his first "phase" piece involving a live performer - coming a few months before his more widely known and more developed "Piano Phase" and "Violin Phase". "Reed Phase" consists of a continuously repeated 5-note melodic pattern played on prerecorded tape (or at this point some other way) while the live musician performs the same melody, starting in unison with the tape and then gradually accelerating to a slightly faster speed, thereby "phasing" slowly across the recorded melody. A middle section becomes more dense with the addition of a second prerecorded saxophone track a beat ahead of the first, to phase across, which then returns to a single track, creating an overall ABA structure to the piece. "Reed Phase" is probably the first formal western composition to require circular breathing (a technique that allows a wind player to play continuously for a number of minutes without stopping for air) as a performance practice.

This is the first commercially available recording of this piece and to my knowledge, "Reed Phase" for some reason has never appeared on any list of Steve's compositions. I first met Steve around 1963 when he was in graduate school at Mills College and I was attending San Francisco State University. He was looking for a saxophonist to participate in one of his pieces at Mills, and the composer Larry Austin, with whom I had been working extensively prior to this time in an experimental improvisation group called the New Music Ensemble (a different New Music Ensemble than the one mentioned in the "Pat's Aria" notes), told Steve to look me up. We subsequently worked on many projects together, both in San Francisco and later in New York. During these years he was a major influence on my thinking about music and also very supportive of my work. "