>Calling any modern regurgitation of Glass's very-listenable minimalism "avant-garde" is misleading and shuts out the contemporary listener to an entire world of avant-garde music - much of it, very listenable.

I'm not convinced that someone simply using the word "avant-garde" shuts anyone out of anything.

For example, if I type "Taylor Swift is avant-garde" did this suddenly shut out listeners from an entire world of pop music?

> Calling any modern regurgitation of Glass's very-listenable minimalism "avant-garde" is misleading and shuts out the contemporary listener to an entire world of avant-garde music - much of it, very listenable.

I think that's reinforced by the anecdote from the original poster, though.

There's still a significant fraction of the audience who dismisses his work out of hand. Yes, they're shut out of even more stuff, but they aren't even open to him, yet.

I could see my mother being the upset person in the first story...