Phil Winsor (1938–2012)

Gena describes Winsor’s musical and educational philosophy from his work with Winsor in Chicago in the late 1970s, placing Winsor’s background in the San Francisco Tape Music Center (to 1965) as an important formative experience. Childs and Winsor discuss Winsor’s experiences in San Francisco and Tanglewood; open style, and New Romanticism. They talk of Winsor’s experiences in Rome and Milan, Darmstadt and a new regard for American music. Compositional issues include quotation versus collage; Melted Ears; McLuhan and the electronic revolution; indeterminacy and performer choice; synthesizers and electronic music studios; linguistic analogies and “non-linguistic composition.” They discuss Cage, education and its relevance, comprehensibility of musical process, competition and differences between eastern, midwestern, and western composers. They end with masterworks, critics (which Winsor calls “crickets”), bad performances, musical expression and meaning, film and multimedia.