Kyle Gann’s blog is reporting that James Tenney has died:

The great James Tenney died last night [actually, the night before, August 24]. Word went around a few weeks ago that his old lung cancer had returned after a long remission of many years. He was a great teacher, great drinker, great companion, and an interestingly odd personality. As a composer he was a kind of hard-core conceptualist driven by theoretical curiosity. As a result his music could be awfully dry at times, but in about half of it or more the conceptualism transformed in kind of an amazing alchemy to an extreme sensuousness, lovely, slow sound-metamorphoses that you just couldn’t believe.

If you’re not familiar with his work, you might want to check out this interview, courtesy of “milton parker” over at I Love Music. Lots of stuff to download is over there as well.