WILLIAM WINANT ON CONSTANCE DEJONG’S MODERN LOVE

Ugly Duckling Presse is celebrating our 25th anniversary this year! To mark this milestone, Sara Wintz is inviting artists and writers to write about their favorite UDP titles for our new backlist blog series From the Vaults. Our fourth contributor is percussionist William Winant, with an appreciation of Constance DeJong’s Modern Love (2017).

Ms. DeJong’s words speak to me as in a dream-like stream of consciousness, reflecting very poetically the way I saw things as an artist coming of age in that time period. She sums up the whole thing for me beautifully with one sentence “That’s modern love: short, hot, and sweet.”

WILLIAM WINANT is an avant-garde percussionist who has performed and collaborated with musicians musical acts as diverse as Sonic Youth, Mr. Bungle, John Zorn, and Oingo Boingo. He has studied with James Tenney, Steve Reich, and John Bergamo, played music with The Kronos String Quartet, Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor, Roscoe Mitchell, Keith Jarrett, and Yo-Yo Ma, and has recorded music with Christian Wolff and Danny Elfman. Composers who have written works for Winant include Fred Frith, Peter Garland, Lou Harrison, Terry Riley, Wadada Leo Smith, and John Zorn.