Jonathan Glasier

Music was with me from birth. My father John Strong Glasier was a composer, violinist and violist and Professor of Music at The University of Arkansas. My mother Alletah was also a violinist in her early school years and sang in several choirs. Among my first memories was playing with my toys at the feet of my father while he composed music at the piano. Later in my late teens, I began improvising music with my father. That activity grew and for the rest of his life (until 1985), we played concerts and made recordings. Those experiences were one of the major factors in my musical education.

The other was the influence of Harry Partch. When I was three, microtonal music pioneer Harry Partch lived with our family for a short time in El Centro California. That experience of playing on his instruments and hearing just intonation intervals changed my perception forever. Yes, I grew up playing traditionally tuned instruments (guitar and piano), but when Harry would leave his instruments with us from time to time, I was reconnected to the microtonal memories from those very early years.

Then, in my early twenties, Partch lived in San Diego and I was his assistant and gofer. I also was in his ensemble and played the Harmonic Cannon for his Plectra and Percussion Dances composition at UCLA’s  Royce Hall. Then, he was chosen as a Regent’s Professor at UCSD and I enrolled as one of that first group of students at UCSD’s Department of Music in the Fall of 1967. Partch was only there that one year and although we did perform one of his larger film scores, Daphne of the Dunes, I stayed on and soaked up the new music vibe that permeated the UCSD Music Dept.

After a couple of years in Graduate Studies I realized that academia was not my future, but I was passionate about music education so in 1972, with my friend and grad student Joe Friedman, started Making Music, a music school which used some of the ideas from UCSD.s Music 1 program. The core class for kids was The Beginning Music Experience, a grassroots class, whose premise was the “We are all musicians as we speak.” So we are already composing beautiful improvisations as we converse with one another. If we take a look at all the parameters of music that are going on simultaneously, we can use those elements as tools for composition.

This brings my story up to the ID Project of 1975. At this time we started making instruments and actually creating new sounds which were wholly improvised creations. During the ID Project I met Erv Wilson and then shortly after, Ivor Darreg and then Interval Magazine happened in the Fall of 1978.

In the Fall of 1979, Interval Foundation was formed and the Interval ensemble of musicians and dancers had its life until our last concert in 1982. During that time in 1978 Dance Jam, the free spirited, shoes off, Friday Night meet-up and get-your ya-yas-out party continued at least for 10 years although I left the Dance Jam process after 1984. It was that year that I went to SF to become an Artist in Residence at the Exploratorium and created the Pentaphone which has survived until this day and been replicated in 7 Museums across the planet.