![]() ![]() ![]() Our positions and convictions on many issues are by no means identical, as should become clear through reading, but the interaction was deeply fruitful and stimulating.įor myself, having known and conversed with Gordon Downie for quite a number of years now, I have so often found our dialogues force me to rethink various slightly banal assumptions I might have previously made, and sharpened up my thinking on many matters, though I choose to maintain my own positions often (for example on jazz!). Through this dialogue, Gordon Downie and I attempt to offer an alternative discursive possibility, in part as a strategy to find a way beyond the prison-house that more conventional writing on music frequently imposes, laden as it is with so many aesthetic and societal assumptions that are tacitly accepted and never questioned. Discourse about music and cultural matters in Britain in particular is notoriously woolly, over-laden with tired metaphorical clichés and rather quaint biographical reductionism. The type of language used, drawing extensively upon ideas and methodologies from Marxism and the Frankfurt School as well as elevated levels of technical musical discourse, may seem difficult and a little esoteric to some, but has both a beauty and an objectivity of its own. This extended and in-depth interview has been conducted over several months by e-mail, and delves deep into issues of complexity, modernism, the role of culture in late capitalist society, and the current state of new music. His music (and visual art) demonstrates a ferocious commitment to the possibilities of complex abstraction and a pronounced resistance towards passive, habitual listening. Gordon Downie is a unique figure in British new music, or indeed anywhere, with whom I have had the pleasure to work on multiple occasions. Composer Gordon Downie and pianist Ian Pace discuss music, visual art, culture, modernism, Marxism and Britain
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