"Morton Feldman was born in New York in 1926 and died there in 1987. Just like Cage, a close friend, he was an American composer - an American artist - an American in the true sense of the word.

He identified himself by differentiating his views on composition from those of his colleagues in Europe. He was proud to be an American because he was convinced that it enabled him the freedom, unparalleled in Europe, to work unfettered by tradition. And, he was an American also in what may have been a slight inferiority complex in the face of cultural traditions in Europe, something he proudly rejected and secretly admired.

Like any true artist, Feldman was endowed with a sensitivity for impressions of a wide variety of sources, literature and painting in particular. His affinity to Samuel Beckett has enriched music literature by a unique music theatre piece, Neither, and two ensemble works. His friendship with abstract impressionist painters gave birth to a range of masterpieces, Rothko Chapel in particular. But even the knotting of oriental rugs gave Feldman musical ideas (The Turfan Fragments).

To the question as to why he preferred soft dynamic levels, he replied:

"- Because when it's loud, you can't hear the sound. You hear its attack. Then you don't hear the sound, only in its decay. And I think that's essentially what impressed Boulez . That he heard a sound, not an attack, emerging and disappearing without attack and decay, almost like an electronic medium.

Also, you have to remember that loud and soft is an aspect of differentiation. And my music is more like a kind of monologue that does not need exclamation point, colon, it does not need..."

Feldman also had an intriguing reply up his sleeve when it came to answering the question why he composed in the first place:

"You know that marvellous remark of Disraeli's? Unfortunately, he was not a good writer, but if he was a great writer, it would have been a wonderful remark. They asked him whydid he begin to write novels. He said because there was nothing to read. (laughs). I felt very much like that in terms of contemporary music. I was not really happy with it. It became like a Rohrschach test".

More than twenty years since his death, Morton Feldman's music is as alive as ever."

"Lucas Vis (born February 19, 1947 in Bergen(North Holland)) is a Dutch conductor and composer.

Vis attended from 1962 to 1969 the Musiklyzeum in Amsterdam, where he studied cello with Reinier Bresser and orchestral conducting with Jaap Spaanderman. After completing a master class in conducting at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, he was an assistant to Bruno Maderna from 1967 to 1973. He also attended courses with Pierre Boulez in Basel, Jean Fournet, Marius Constant, Dean Dixon and Paul Hupperts and took composition lessons with Jan van Vlijmen. In 1971 he received the Koussevitzky Tanglewood Composition Prize.

From 1976 to 1979 he was director of the Nederlands Ballet Orkest, then until 1983 chief conductor of the Brabants Orkest. From 1988 to 1996 he directed the Noordhollands Philharmonisch Orkest. He was also director of the Conservatory in Maastricht until 1998, then until 2005 rector of the Conservatory of Amsterdam.

Vis conducted the major orchestras of the Netherlands such as the Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and the Radio Philharmonisch Orkest, as well as orchestras in England, France, Austria, Denmark, Germany and Italy. He collaborated with composers such as John Cage, Mauricio Kagel, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Louis Andriessen and directed the Dutch opera premieres of works by Otto Kettings, Theo Loevendies and Guus Janssens."