Six years later, there is word that Brant has passed away. As Kyle Gann says, it's a little hard to know what to think exactly of Brant's music. He wrote enormous music, too big for most concert halls, and certainly too big for a CD. His music dealt with space, usually involving many musicians or ensembles positioned carefully around a particular environment. The work honored by the Pulitzer folk was Ice Field, which involved 100 musicians sprinkled around Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco.
I saw Brant once, in 1998, my first semester of college at Wesleyan. Neely Bruce had arranged for Brant to come to campus for a performance, and to pick up an honorary degree. The degree was awarded at the fall convocation, for which Brant did an outdoor performance of some piece (my recollections aren't more specific) that involved bits of gamelan scattered around the audience. Later that night, he did a more formal concert indoors that made considerable use of various world music ensembles at Wesleyan. It was noisy and chaotic, and lovely. He was this little wizened old man, constantly wearing a funny little sun visor, bobbing around the place with a big grin. I wish I could be more analytical about the music, and say something more concrete about the carefully attuned spacial dynamics. But you know, sometimes it is just fun to listen to a pile of noise, and be cheerful about it. The fact that he was awarded a Pulitzer before he died makes me think better of the world.
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