Photo: Buffalo Evening News

Winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award

“A glorious celebration of the other Buffalo, the aristocratic, innovative city in which a cultural miracle took place … [and] became home to some of the most adventurous musical minds in the world…. This is that treasurable rarity in cultural history — the right book by the right person for the right reasons.” —Jeff Simon, Buffalo News

“In the 1960s a lively New Music scene began at the State University of New York at Buffalo which culminated with the appointment of Morton Feldman as director in the 1970s. He began the June in Buffalo festival which continues to this day. Renée Levine was there at the very beginning as Managing Director and her highly informative book is undoubtedly the best primary source we will ever have about New Music in Buffalo and its offshoots during this tumultuous period.”—Steve Reich

“I had long known that the Creative Associates at Buffalo in the 1960s and ’70s were an unprecedented hothouse of wild musical exploration, but Renée Levine Packer’s insightful and eye-opening eye-witness account makes me realize that I had underestimated the case.”—Kyle Gann, author of Music Downtown: Writings from the Village Voice and No Such Thing as Silence: John Cage’s 4’33”

“Renée Levine Packer has written a compelling and valuable account of an important moment in the history of modernism in America and the many worlds of the avant-garde. It is an indispensable document for students of the history of twentieth-century music.”—Leon Botstein, President of Bard College, Music Director of the American Symphony Orchestra and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra

“The first in-depth account of the history of the Center and the Buffalo scene, and the factual aspects alone of her account make it invaluable…Anyone interested in new music, American art movements, or the history of the 1960s and its art institutions stands to benefit richly from this thoughtfully crafted research.” —American Music