ARCHIVE

Laura Kuhn talks with Bill Dietz and Amy Cimini on the subject of the extraordinary American composer Maryanne Amacher, best known in Cage circles for her contributions to two of Cage’s works: Empty Words (1974) and Lecture on the Weather (1975). Amacher (1938-2009), who taught in the MFA Program at Bard College for the last decade of her life, worked extensively with a family of psychoacoustic phenomena called auditory distortion products (also known as distortion product otoacoustic emissions and combination tones), in which the ears themselves produce audible sound. Dietz and Cimini are co-editors of the new publication, Maryanne Amacher: Selected Writings and Interviews, published last year by Blank Forms Editions in Brooklyn, New York. Dietz is part of the formative team that created the Maryanne Amacher Foundation, which successfully placed the Amacher Archives at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.