Your iconic summer

TRIBE CALLED QUEST | JOÃO GILBERTO | BUTTHOLE SURFERS | B-52’S
STEELY DAN | ALAN AND RICHARD BISHOP | GEORGE MICHAEL | “KIDD” JORDAN
WIRE | TEENAGE JESUS & THE JERKS | THE FEELIES | CHARLIE HADEN | YAZ
THE EX WITH GÉTATCHÈW MÈKURYA | RHYS CHATHAM | JUDAS PRIEST

Rhys Chatham

Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Damrosch Park; August 15 FREE

Landmark achievement: Native New Yorker Rhys Chatham didn’t create a middle ground between punk rock and avant-garde composition—he brought the two worlds together with staggering force in his 1977 piece Guitar Trio. Chatham reached a minimalist high point 12 years later with the 100-guitars work An Angel Moves Too Fast to See.

Why see him now: What comes after 100 guitars? In 2005 Chatham was commissioned to compose a piece for 400: A Crimson Grail, which is actually being halved to 200 axes for this Lincoln Center Out of Doors event—a “leaner and meaner version,” he quips. Don’t think these works are only about volume, though: “I could just play ‘Louie Louie’ with 100 guitars and it would sound great!” he says. “But I wanted to use the sonority of 100 guitarists playing together in a way that would justify the large forces.”

Photograph: Imogen Brown

I’m officially obsessed

Meghan Dzyak, 24, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn; musicology student

“I’ve searched for crazy music since I was ten, when I started listening to Radiohead. Radiohead basically led to Sonic Youth, Sonic Youth led to Glenn Branca and Glenn Branca led to Chatham. Listening to something that’s classical makes you kick yourself and say, ‘Hey, I didn’t realize this music came first.’ Every time I listen to Chatham’s music, it’s kinda the same thing over and over again, yet I always find something new in it.”