October 11 and 14, 2025 at 7:00 pm

MELA Foundation Dream House

275 Church Street, New York

MELA is pleased to present a live concert performance of La Monte Young’s Birthday Blues in celebration of Young/s 86th birthday and the 180-degree half cycle of Marian’s 81st birthday. The Theatre of Eternal Music Ensemble will perform this historic and extraordinary piece, which is one of Young’s earliest works in a new configuration.

The two legendary vocalists (La Monte Young and Jung Hee Choi) and three virtuoso just intonation performers (Jon Catler, fretless guitar; Hansford Rowe, fretless bass and Ben Neill, trumpet) will improvise harmonically related frequency ratios over Young’s Birthday Blues accompanied by highly acclaimed tabla master, Naren Budhkar.

La Monte has written about his blues: “Young’s Blues is one of the ancestral lineages of my music and, as such, I hope it can be an introduction to lead even broader audiences to the complete spectrum of my more complex works.” It may come as a surprise to some to find that I consider much of my music either to be blues-based, or to have a strong relationship to blues. Even such complex works as Map of 49’s Dream The Two Systems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Lightyears Tracery, The Well-Tuned Piano, and some of my most recent sound environments have this characteristic, and it speaks for the enormous vitality and power of the blues and its contribution to music.

THE THEATRE OF ETERNAL MUSIC

La Monte Young · voice

Marian Zazeela · light design

Jung Hee Choi · voice and light design

Ben Neill · just intonation trumpet

Jon Catler · electric fretless guitar

Hansford Rowe · electric fretless bass

Naren Budhkar · tabla