This year is the centenary of the birth of Iannis Xenakis, the Greek composer-architect who called himself an ancient Greek stuck in the contemporary world. His instrumental music at times suggests an alien species trying to communicate with us through our musical instruments, his electronic music a distressed animal on the receiving end of amateur
Born in 1923 in Clementon, New Jersey, Wayne Beam Morrell graduated from Lincoln Preparatory School in Philadelphia, PA, and attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art. At the suggestion of his grandfather, he took a fourteen-week course of a government-sponsored evening course on aeronautics and drafting at Drexel University in Philadelphia. He also took a correspondence course through the Famous Artists School, a well-known and respected correspondence school for commercial .
He fell for it as a boy on holiday in London – and American author Ethan Mordden is still obsessed by this whimsical show. Why? ‘It’s a lesson in being openly what you are’