George Antheil

Thanks to his autobiography Bad boy of music, the American composer George Antheil was quite well-known for his anecdotes, but his music was virtually forgotten until the Holland Festival in 1976. Unfortunately, the Telefunken record with violinist Vera Beths, pianist Reinbert de Leeuw and the Netherlands Wind Ensemble that was made at the time has never become available on cd. Fortunately, there are more recent recordings of, for example, the Ballet mécanique, the Jazz Symphony, the violin sonatas, the piano sonatas and  Fighting the waves for the play by Yeats.
The mechanical component of Antheil’s music does not only hark back to the Bruitism of the 1920’s and Stravinsky Sacre, but also anticipates on the minimalism of the composers from the 1970’s. The style quotations from the second violin sonata betray the liberating effect of Charles Ives on American music. It is therefore only logical that Antheil  also could not get away from jazz influences.
(Source: Musicalifeiten.nl)