Gordon Monahan

condition (cassette/cover): M / NM

A private-issue VHS compiling video documentation of five Monahan sound installations and performances from his Toronto-to-New-York transition years: A Magnet That Speaks Also Attracts (1986, a loudspeaker catapult), Long Aeolian Piano (1986, an upright piano with 120-foot wires set vibrating by Edmonton wind), Speaker Swinging (1987, three performers swing live wave-generator-fed speakers around their heads, Doppler-shifting the tones), A Piano Listening to Itself (1989) and Aquaeolian Whirlpool in Northern Hemisphere Rotation (1990).

Monahan is the Canadian composer-pianist John Cage described, with no irony, as producing sounds at the piano that had not previously existed. His ear runs to physical processes (wind, water vortices, magnetic fields, the human arm) used to drive acoustic systems; the speaker-swinging piece in particular is now sometimes performed by his successors as a piece of classical repertoire. The video documentation was distributed privately in tiny numbers and circulates almost exclusively through artist-direct sale and Vtape (Toronto). Authorised reissues on DVD followed in the 2000s.