PROFILE: CATHERINE LAMB

• Published in: Tempo (London) Vol. 77; no. 305; pp. 92 - 94
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.07.2023
• Subjects: Harmony (Music); Klee, Paul (1879-1940); Learning; Listening; Music; PROFILE; Teachers; India
• ISSN: 0040-2982; 1478-2286
• DOI: 10.1017/S0040298223000104

An older friend showed me how to develop jazz chords to Thelonious Monk tunes and I listened to and played a lot of music; that was how I learned theory, not from a composition teacher. The third compositional shift was when I turned my focus towards the study of rational intonation. Unfortunately, Tenney passed away when I was 24 and at that time I was just starting to utilise ratios in my compositions, and so I dove further into an idiosyncratic practice on the subject, solidifying my focus. The experimental filmmaker and dhrupadi Mani Kaul became my mentor at that time, but he was mostly back in India, so this consisted more in the form of long telephone conversations around philosophy and art, certainly influential to what I was trying to do but in a parallel stream. Not that it is incorrect, but just that the subject is entangled in their own experience when listening, different from mine.