David Rosenboom’s Propositional Music at the Whitney

David Rosenboom at the Electronic Media Studios of York University, Toronto in the early 1970s. | Image: Courtesy the artist.

In conjunction with America is Hard to See, the inaugural exhibition in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s new Manhattan home, the museum has curated a number of events and performances in its new theater, including this weekend’s David Rosenboom: Propositional Music.

Presented by ISSUE Project Room in collaboration with the Whitney, the three-day concert series celebrates 50 years of groundbreaking work by Rosenboom, a noted composer, performer and dean of The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts.

From the Whitney:

As the series title suggests, his disparate artistic practice is connected by a relentless inquisitive nature, which has often placed Rosenboom outside the narratives of avant­garde composition, Minimalism, and free ­improvisation, though he has fundamentally contributed to and collaborated with these artistic communities. His work distinguishes itself by drawing from scientific, artistic, social, and cosmological thought, gleaning the potentials for music to apply and advance interdisciplinary organizing principles and research in revealing the collective knowledge that connects us to our universe.

Rosenboom taps many long­time collaborators and CalArts colleagues to perform several of his major experimental works—from Continental Divide (1964) through Ringing Minds (2014). Featured musicians in Propositional Music include I. Nyoman Wenten, Swapan Chaudhuri, Aashish Khan, Vinny Golia (all CalArts music faculty) as well as noted percussionist Bill Winant and the composer’s son Daniel Rosenboom (Music MFA 07). Other participating artists include CalArts School of Film/Video faculty member Maureen Selwood, alumnus Jinku Kim (Film/Video MFA 12), visual artist Tony Martin, neuroscientist-musician Tim Mullen, and cognitive scientist-composer-performer Alexander Khalil, among others.

The concerts begin on Friday (May 22) with Zones of Influence, followed on Saturday by the public demonstration Advanced Brain­-Computer Interfacing in the Arts
, and an evening concert Ringing Minds and Choose Your Universe. The series wraps on Sunday with Continental Divide and How Much Better If Plymouth Rock Had Landed On The Pilgrims, which includes a screening of a film that Selwood created for Rosenboom’s latter composition.