Jon Gibson (minimalist musician)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Jon Gibson (March 11, 1940 – October 12, 2020) was an American flautist, saxophonist, composer, and visual artist, known as one of the founding members of the Philip Glass Ensemble and as a key player on several seminal minimalist music compositions.
He also performed in the premiers of In C (by Terry Riley) and Drumming (by Steve Reich). He has also performed and recorded with a number of other minimalist composers, and is an accomplished visual artist.
Education
Gibson studied at Sacramento State University and with Henry Onderdonk and Wayne Peterson at San Francisco State University, where he earned a BA in 1964. His earliest work as an improviser and composer also dates from around this time, when he performed in the New Music Ensemble with composers Larry Austin, Richard Swift, and Stanley Lunetta.
Career
Gibson used various instruments from around the world in his performances of jazz and classical music. He was a founding member of the Philip Glass Ensemble , and his mastery of circular breathing techniques made him crucial to the development of Glass' sound. Gibson performed in the premieres of In C by Terry Riley and Drumming by Steve Reich, as well as Reich's 1967 composition Reed Phase, which Reich wrote especially for him. For a time in the 1960s, alongside Philip Glass & Steve Reich, Gibson performed the music of Moondog during weekly sessions with the composer, recordings of which were made by Reich. He was briefly a member of the Theatre of Eternal Music with La Monte Young, and in the 1970s Gibson studied with Pandit Pran Nath.
He also performed and recorded with other composers, some of them minimalists, as well as composing for choreographers, including Christian Wolff, David Behrman, Harold Budd, Alvin Curran, Arthur Russell, Annea Lockwood, Robert Ashley, Lucinda Childs, Robert Wilson and Frederic Rzewski.
In 1973, Gibson's debut solo recording Visitations was released on the Chatham Square label, run by Philip Glass. Visitations is a departure from the structured repetitions of his minimalist contemporaries, instead using field recordings, ambient flutes, synthesizers and free-flowing percussive textures. In 1977 Two Solo Pieces was released, also on the Chatham Square imprint, consisting of the droning organ composition Cycles and Untitled, a piece for solo alto flute.
Gibson was also an accomplished visual artist. Throughout his career, he created numerous graphic text based works laden with musical information. He also created the cover artwork for albums such as Two Solo Pieces and Criss X Cross.
Gibson died on October 11, 2020 from complications of a brain tumor.
Discography
Gibson's recordings include:
- Visitations (1973, Chatham Square)
- Two Solo Pieces (1977, Chatham Square)
- In Good Company (1992, Point Music)
- Criss X Cross (2006, Tzadik)
- The Dance (2013, Orange Mountain Music)
- Relative Calm (2016, New World Records)
- Violet Fire - An Opera About Nikola Tesla (2019, Orange Mountain Music)
- Songs & Melodies, 1973-1977 (2020, Superior Viaduct)
