Music

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.

Nick Yeck-Stauffer talks to lead violinist and founder of the Kronos Quartet, David Harrington.

Fast-advancing AI technologies are throwing our notions of authorship and creativity again into flux. In creating their seventh album, Blossoms, the electronic music duo Emptyset created a machine-learning system to interpret their back catalog and recordings of improvisations. The musicians sought to identify results beyond mimicry and which constituted unique sonic expressions in and of themselves. What emerged was a bizarre, alien logic. Tobias Fischer interviewed the duo about the process.

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."