Search - Peter Zummo :: Peter Zummo: Zummo with an X

With accuracy and humor, Peter Zummo often describes his unique music as "minimalism plus a whole lot more." He is an important exponent of the American contemporary classical traditiion, whose compositions explore the methodologies of not just minimalism, but also jazz, world music, and rock, while seeking to create freedom in ensemble situations. Zummo's realization of the contemporary urge to make music that behaves like "Nature in its manner of operation" (John Cage) is to encourage spontaneous, individual decisions within a self-structuring, self-negotiating group of performers. His scores provide unique strategies (such as the "matrix of overlapping systems," freely modulating repetition rates, etc.) and materials for achieving that aim. Zummo has always felt impelled to make music that engenders a social situation reflecting modern society and not nineteenth-century German society. He feels that his job as composer is to provide material for the musicians and sufficient instructions, so thay don't feel they have to make arbitrary but rather logical or heartfelt decisions. "I'm looking for something more elegant: the idea of composer as band leader, and band leader as the unsung hero. I used the phrase 'composition of ensemble' rather than 'composition for ensemble'. It wasn't that I heard music for specific instruments, but instead I looked at personalities, people I knew well and could work with. And that's always been overriding, the persons rather than the instruments. I guess I am unwilling to compose in any conventional sense, you know, to spell it out." This CD release of the much-sought-after LP Zummo With an X contains a previously unreleased quintet version of Song IV.