Mauricio Kagel's seminar in Aix-en-Provence, France, in the summer of 1981, sponsored by the organization Centre Acanthes, was a turning point in my life. Two years out of grad school and wandering through Europe for the first time, I found my way to the Kagel seminar more or less by chance. It turned out to be not only an affirmation of some of my compositional ideas and goals and my introduction to the European new music scene, but also where I met my future (now former) wife.

Shortly before that summer, while I was working at the late, lamented Soho Music Gallery on Wooster Street, John Zorn, Charles Noyes and I had spent an evening wondering what had become of Mauricio Kagel. In the late '60s and '70s, Deutsche Grammophon had issued many fractious masterpieces on their Avant Garde series; these had gone out of print and since then there had been virtually nothing. The seminar was a unique opportunity to connect with the breadth of Kagel's oeuvre and to discover what he had been up to in the interim. His use of sounds, collage, unfamiliar instruments and aural theatricality was about as unacademic as contemporary classical music had ever gotten, and was an alternative to the churches of Cage and Stockhausen. Humor has never been far from the surface in Kagel's music. Zorn, particularly, found a lot of inspiration in his work.

This interview took place in Cologne, Germany, where Kagel has lived since 1957, on March 31, the day of my solo concert at Cologne's Loft. I was very happy to reconnect with Kagel and to try to fit in, as much as possible, questions and thoughts about his work that have come to me through the years.

to read the interview go to http://www.bombsite.com/kagel/kagel.html