If you live in New York and have never visited the Church Street Dream House—the continuous light and sound installation that composer La Monte Young and long-time partner Marian Zazeela, a light artist, have been operating out of their TriBeCa apartment building since 1993—you're missing out on a potentially life-changing experience. You walk up the stairs, take off your shoes, plop yourself on a pillow, and then spend an hour just "being" inside a vibrating bath of slowly modulating light and sound waves, contemplating life or snuggling with your date or basically just letting whatever it is that's happening run through you. (Note: as the New York Times recently reported, a new version of the Dream House project will soon be on view at the Dia Art Foundation.)



Now 79 years old, La Monte Young has been exploring the meditative potential of the drone since the early '60s, when he started experimenting with creating his own musical systems based on combining tones of different frequencies. Although he's most widely known as the father of minimalism, his CV includes playing saxophone in a 1950s jazz ensemble with Billy Higgins and Don Cherry in Los Angeles; curating a Manhattan concert series for Yoko Ono in the Fluxus era; starting legendary New York performance ensemble the Dream Syndicate; and studying raga music for 26 years under the tutelage of Indian vocalist Pandit Pran Nath. To give you some idea of his influence on avant-garde music in his lifetime, Brian Eno once called him "the daddy of us all."



This past Thursday, a sold-out crowd huddled inside the basement of Red Bull Studios New York to catch the grandfatherly composer discuss the long-view about his nearly six-decade-long career, accompanied by Zazeela, as well as long-time pupil Jung Hee Choi. He struck an unforgettable silhouette with his long white beard, Canadian tuxedo, and black felt hat, and his words included many a sage kernel of wisdom for the young musician looking to make his or her own mark on the world. Here's nine of them that we couldn't resist sharing.