Kurt Gottschalk

Robert Ashley is widely considered one of the great American composers of the post-Cage generation. Ashley created radical new forms of opera, incorporating electronic music and pioneering the use of opera in television. His multimedia projects expanded upon the form in surprising, often perplexing ways. Kurt Gottschalk spoke to Ashley in 2013 for a major feature in the 13th issue of White Fungus. At the time, Ashley was working on his opera Quicksand, which he completed before his passing in March 2014. The article can now be read online.

Avant-garde jazz group The Art Ensemble of Chicago has been breaking boundaries for more than five decades. Kurt Gottschalk takes a deep dive into the group's history and its continuing evolution in the present. "A revolutionary who’s unwilling to change won’t likely be revolutionary for long," Gottschalk writes. Read an extended excerpt from the author's feature which runs over 30 pages in the new 17th issue of White Fungus.

Kurt Gottschalk attended Max Richter’s SLEEP in New York—an overnight concert where audiences are invited to sleep through the performance. Reflecting on the experience, he considers what it means to listen to music while unconscious, revisits historic works inspired by sleep, and speaks with other composers about sleeping through concerts.

Kurt Gottschalk speaks to Charmaine Lee about her ever-expanding musical practice.

Kurt Gottschalk talks to artist and composer Aki Onda about receiving messages from the spirit of Nam June Paik through mysterious radio waves, and how these transmissions led to the creation of his album "Nam June’s Spirit Was Speaking to Me."

Kurt Gottschalk dives deep into the mythos of the legendary San Francisco avant-garde collective the Residents, who for decades protected their anonymity behind iconic eyeball masks. He peels back the layers of their conceptually loaded, groundbreaking work and their Theory of Obscurity, asking: does it even matter who they are?