StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Spotlight on Tony Conrad

This week, let's look at some video clips of musician, composer and multimedia artist Tony Conrad, who will be in St. Louis for a performance sponsored by New Music Circle next Saturday, December 3 at White Flag Projects.

Conrad, 71, originally is from New Hampshire and has a background in math and computer programming. He has been making music and art since the 1960s. His film The Flicker (1966) is considered an important early example of the structural film movement, and his work around that same time as a co-founder of the Theater of Eternal Music helped pave the way for the minimalist composers of the 1970s and 80s.

He currently teaches at the State University of New York at Buffalo's Center for Media Studies, and in recent years has developed a repertoire of solo performances for specially tuned, amplified violin. Today, we've got several examples of those performance for your audio-visual delectation, starting up top with a complete hour-long concert recorded in January 2011 at the University of Chicago's Renaissance Society.

Down below, you can see three excerpts from a 2006 performance by Conrad at the Emporium in Knoxville, TN. Below that, there's a clip in which Conrad comes out from behind the curtain, so to speak, at a performance in May of this year in London. Finally, for a glimpse of Conrad's offstage persona and working methods, we wrap up with an excerpt from the work-in-progress documentary Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present that shows Conrad preparing to take his mobile recording setup on location in NYC.

For more about Tony Conrad, check out this 2011 interview from Frieze magazine, this 2005 interview from Bomb magazine, and this 1996 interview from EST magazine.