It's an unlikely story: avant-garde cellist sees the light in a disco glitterball at New York gay club The Gallery and decides disco is the ultimate modern format for exploring minimalist composition. In the mid-'70s, Russell—conservatory-trained, a scholar of Eastern music forms, steeped in the ideas of Steve Reich and Terry Riley—was blown away by the engulfing quality of music transmitted over a massive club sound system and literally entranced by disco's use of repetition.
