...

2012-01-19T20:58:00.001-05:00

And the score

Reading

2011-12-30T12:19:00.000-05:00

"In fact, a book or a composition is not an end-product, not in itself a useful commodity. The end-product of an artist's work, the 'useful commodity' in the production of which he plays a role, is ideological influence. He is as incapable of producing this on his own as a blacksmith is of producing Concorde. The production of ideological influence is highly socialised, involving (in the case of music) performers, critics, impresarios, agents, managers, etc., and above all (and this is the artist's real 'means of production') an audience."

-Cornelius Cardew

Eunoia

2011-08-17T12:26:00.003-04:00

A list of words found in my copy of Christian Bök's Eunoia that are underlined in pencil.

ankhathwartamaranthvassalmannaMalahatshawarmacassabananastaramasalatagravlaxcrawdadvassalczardastandavasardanal'Afghan chantant a l'amant dansanttantarasbacchantphantasmatadamaskarrascasbahCranachCassattChagallabaftalgaltarnsphalanxatlatlabradantslandwrackexgetedrecksecededdemesneecht Weltschmerzen feteresplendenceeffeteeffervescentsveltelechersjezebelnepenthedecedentefreetsvervexebecskevelskedgesreftmettlefettlethewsEpeesfletcherscerementsglebeephebeseskerschertscreebestrewsveldtssedgesvetchgeldegretsgrebespetrelstercelsmeressveltenesssigilspriggishkibitzphilippicschistfinchsiskinibistitpipitswiftrillsVirgillichvivificdjinniphthisisdrisksigilInniskillinKlimtnihildicitfiniWordsworthprovostscolophonsrococomoroccodonjonskowtowMolochforsoothmondo dolorosomolto sordooxbowsmoonwortphloxsmoltsnookzoomorphsrocs OstrogothskoboldsChthonpoltroonscoxcombswrothpogromsLvovBrnoprotozoonsporozoonDogonoctoroonsbromotoothwortKomsomolNovgorodchronotronsbosonsthoronKnossosmonophthongsmonoglotThothCoptshornbooksOroonokoNostromoOrozcotondosbon motsKunstGlückmulctsusufructDuluthgrugrulugnutmundungusfulcrumsmuumuufugubulgurblutwurstbrühwursttunssputumRumdumdunburrsUrsusCursGnuskudzususurruscumulusSturm und Druck portents cuirass commingles glaives verdant venery oblivial calico Linseed beguile vocables

Jejune reliquaries canticles pentacles paroxysms SYZYGY PYX GYP SYNCH TRYST PTYX LYSYL BRR GLYCYL SYLPHS NYM WYRMS STYRYL FYRDS WYRDS WYCH MYTHY LYNX CWM CRWTH MYST WYNDS MYRRH valise residuum tautonym pewterers ewers cressets epergnes les eleves d'echecs vetements de Sevres kemp fezzes spencers serge cheverel les crevettes les entrees tres excellentes les entremets ephemeres les belles-Helenes degelees crepe de chevre et creme de menthe les cremes renversees shekels feckless welshers renege telexes pensees des esthetes lexemes E SERVEM LEX EST - c'est le reglement

Erik Satie: the Precursor

2011-08-02T09:10:00.003-04:00

"Their paired down music generated a new materiality: the substance of music."

Earth, observed

2011-07-08T01:39:00.006-04:00

Earth, observed

La barque mystique

2011-07-08T01:22:00.011-04:00

Odilon Redon | La Barque mystique

listen

Tristan Murail | La barque mystique

Vargtimmen (1968)

2011-04-10T02:18:00.003-04:00

Recent watching; one of Bergman's strangest efforts.

Watch The Hour of the Wolf (1968, Ingmar Bergman)

Klaus K. Hübler

2011-01-02T21:53:00.002-05:00

Klaus K. Hübler, a fascinating composer whose work and ideas are not easy to come by. Recent appearance of several recordings of his work on youtube definitely worth mentioning:

Alain Badiou- hardtalk

2010-11-14T13:48:00.002-05:00

Thanks to Matthew Chamberlain for the heads up on this video.

Varèse: (R)evolution

2010-07-21T23:39:00.008-04:00

Edgard Varèse puts many a contemporary music-maker to shame. Works such as Hyperprism and Integrales, composed in 1923 and 1925 respectively, still sound so radical in comparison to so much of today's music. This is especially true when performed by a group as dedicated to radical music as the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE).

The first of a two night retrospective of Varèse's complete works at the Lincoln Centre this month consisted of just that. Alice Tully Hall was sold out to a very young audience, a majority of whom seemed to be between 20 and 40 years of age. Attending concerts like this can be a confusing experience. A strange mixture of feelings... initial exhilaration at the thought of such a well attended concert of new music, followed by a biting cynicism when one realises that this "new" music was composed almost 90 years ago. This tangential discrepancy was enhanced as Poème électronique blurted out from the speakers, its synthesised groans and beeps creating waves of chuckling that moved throughout the audience.

Following a luke-warm rendition of Un Grand Sommeil Noir (soprano Anu Komski's voice was not well suited to either piece on the first night) ICE took to the stage in a variety of chamber ensemble combinations for the performances of Hyperprism, Offrandes, Intégrales and Ecuatorial. These four pieces, by far the highlight of both concerts, completely changed the way I hear Varèse's music. The sharply dissonant sonorities, radical syntax and rhythmically disjunct gestures were executed with a violence rarely heard in acoustic concert music. Peter Evans' trumpet solo in Offrandes turned the piece from a passive/polite chamber piece for soprano and ensemble into an urgent and chaotic affair, only just holding itself together. Throughout all four pieces the combined forces of ICE's wind section (Claire Chase, Joshua Rubin and Nicholas Materson in particular) delivered fortissimo sonorities in their collective altissimo registers at ear shattering levels of intensity, achieving a physical impact I had previously assumed was unique to amplified music.

The second half of the concert wasn't too spectacular. Dance for Burgess was brief and enjoyable but followed by the uninspiring Density 21.5 and the positively dreadful Étude pour Espace, which proved to be enough to drain my listening ears of the energy required to fully appreciate Déserts.

Part II, featuring the New York Philharmonic, was a more consistent evening, but a less spectacular one. Ionisation opened the concert and sounded great in Avery Fisher Hall. Taken at quite a fast tempo, much of the granular qualities of the work to be found in the two recordings I have heard (Chailly and Boulez) were subsumed into a macrostructure of textural shifting and swells. Octandre was also beautifully performed, both the performance and the composition lending itself to a more conservative interpretation than the larger chamber ensemble pieces of the previous night. Subtleties in orchestration and texture came through much more hearing this piece live than it does in recording. The clearly audible double bass part adds a lot of definition to the piece.

Tuning Up provided a nice break in the concert and much laughter before settling down for a long and loud rendition of Arcana before the intermission. A truly awe inspiring work for orchestra, the massed forces of the New York Philharmonic filled the Avery Fisher Hall with the sound of Varèse's "apocalyptic star."

Following the intermission, soprano Anu Komsi returned for Nocturnal, Varèse's final project. Ms. Komsi's voice was much more appropriate for this piece, her dry mid range fitting the context of the piece perfeclty, and her incredible control over the whistle register enabled her to blend with and emerge from the orchestra as required. This was an impressive and profound performance of a dark and disturbing work.

Following such a lengthy concert, the 25-minute Amériques was more a case of being absorbed into a frenetic and turbulent landscape than one of concentrated listening. Here Varèse clearly articulate his disposition for loudness, as the piece moves from dynamic peak to dynamic peak, reaching its catharsis in the final measures as the NY Philharmonic attempted to shake the bolts holding the auditorium chair's to the floor loose.

varèse: (R)evolution from ICE on Vimeo.

Rodin

2010-07-21T23:29:00.000-04:00

Chris Newman/Michael Parson/Richard Emsley/John White

2010-05-19T18:38:00.002-04:00

Recently uploaded interviews with British Experimental composers Chris Newman, Michael Parsons, Richard Emsley and John White. Interviewed by composer Tim Parkinson.

Chris Newman pt 1

Michael Parsons pt 1

Richard Emsley pt 1

John White pt 1

Bertrand Russell 1959 Interview

2010-05-02T22:34:00.002-04:00

Three Residencies: Keith Rowe

2010-03-29T00:16:00.015-04:00

THREE RESIDENCIES: part 1 of ?

Apologies for the lack of new material here recently. I've just finished my third module as a composition student at Oberlin Conservatory and I'm simply too busy during term time to write much. However, I have a week off currently and the plan is to write three times, each covering one of the three residencies we had at Oberlin so far this semester. I'll be working in reverse chronological order, so the most recent is Keith Rowe's 2 day residency.

Ideally, a write up of both Tim Feeney and Vic Rawling's workshop and concert and Seth Josel's 2 day residency will also appear within the week, but as I also have a significant amount of composing and reading to get done this week, on top of wanting to spend some time walking, recording, resting and listening, on top of the fact that the other two residencies are fairly distant memories at this point only partially supplemented with notes/recordings of the events, they may not get written.

KEITH ROWE at Oberlin Conservatory

*this photograph taken from the MMG website

Keith Rowe's visit to Oberlin on the 11th and 12th of March was by far the most eagerly anticipated residency of my stay at Oberlin so far, and proved to be one of the most thought provoking. Sponsored by both the modern music guild and the TIMARA department, he gave a master class on improvisation on the Thursday and performed a solo set in Fairchild chapel on the Friday. Following the master class I was fortunate enough to be one of four other Oberlin students to eat dinner with Keith Rowe, a situation that made me incredibly grateful of Oberlin's location out in the middle of nowhere, as this kind of direct experience with a visiting artist would, I imagine, be almost impossible to come by in a more urban location. As the conversations over dinner essentially functioned as a more intimate extension of the master class, I will be splitting the residency into two: masterclass/dinner, and concert.

Thursday night: master class and dinner.

The workshop on Thursday evening was predominantly dialogue driven. Keith explained that what he valued most from his days as an art student was the visiting artists they brought in who spent time with the students and shared their perspectives with them. The topics covered over the course of the two or so hours were fairly broad, covering everything from Keith's background/history as an improvising musician to concepts at the heart of his improvisational practices, including "The Room".

"The Room" was introduced by way of an anecdote about zen archers, whose abilities had been a powerful source of inspiration for AMM in the early 1960s. Keith spoke of how these men would enter a large space, not dissimilar to the orchestra rehearsal room we inhabited for the workshop, solemnly and slowly set up their equipment, before taking up their bows, loading an arrow, and without having looked at the targets since they had entered the room, release the arrow and have it hit the target. It was a thorough understanding of the room, a thorough awareness of their environment, that enabled the archers to place their arrows so accurately with only a single attempt. Keith argued that this concept was also of vital importance in improvisation. The need to place each sound so that it belongs in the room at that moment, to place each sound as if that were the only chance you had.

When coupled with the necessity to improvise exclusively with one's own creative voice (a condition KR assimilated from his experiences as an art student) it was emphasised that the creative act became HARD. Almost impossibly hard. He talked about the daunting experience of being seated before a blank canvas, required to make each stroke completely original and unlike the strokes of every other painter who came before him. In applying this to improvisation, the pressure became even greater, as a wrong stroke in a painting can be discarded, thrown away, but when improvising you cannot take back a sound. "Its terrifying" was Keith's summation of this experience. Absolutely terrifying, and yet it should not cause constipation. The creation of a sound should be an affirmative and strong action. "Grab the sound by the balls" was, I believe, the phrase he used.

Following this we (the ensemble, OINC) tried an exercise in which we were to each play a single, short sound over the course of ten minutes. We were later to try two sounds over the course of five minutes, but aside from this and five minutes of free improvisation at the end of the masterclass, we didn't play anything else. The first two exercises were very weak, although I feel this had less to do with the collective strengths/weaknesses of the constituent musicians as improvisers as it did with the large size of the group (15+). The final improvisation was a little more successful, with some passages that worked very nicely indeed.

In talking more about the difficulty of improvising, Keith asserted that it was of the utmost importance to feel honestly comfortable presenting your work alongside a Haydn String Quartet. He argued that, regardless of whether one is happy about the notion of 'masterpieces', one's work will inevitably be compared to those works that are considered masterpieces by society. He also asserted that, regardless of their status within society, these works are great musical accomplishments and improvising musicians as much as any other creative artist would do well to study the Bach partitas, Haydn's quartets, Shostakovich's quartets, etc. etc. all the way through to the likes of David Tudor's recording of Cage's Variations II, and experiment with translating the spirit/timing of these works into one's own contemporary medium. This belief is a controversial one in the world of improvised music, and Keith acknowledged that he was well aware of its controversy, as well as the apparent contradictions between this referencing of various traditions and the practice of attempting improvisation with a genuinely original voice. Indeed, this contradiction exists not only in Keith's thoughts but, for better or worse, it is the reality of our situation as improvising musicians [or, for that matter, as creative musicians/composers]. No matter what our intention with regards to the histories and traditions of music, it is those traditions of music that will shape a listener's perspective of our music in some way, shape or form. Keith did say that he was not insisting that an improvising musician should be comfortable with the idea of tradition taking such a strong place in his/her work, but that one should be aware of the influence tradition has on the listening ear.

Following the master class (and later, during dinner) I spoke to Keith regarding various questions I had pertaining to the performance of indeterminate scores (Christian Wolff's Edges, Cornelius Cardew's Treatise), the idea of improvisation in other composed contexts (e.g. the music of Richard Barrett), and potential expansions of "the room" as seen in projects such as Toshimaru Nakamura and Ami Yoshida's Soba To Bara record, and the MIMEO album Sight. Over dinner Keith spoke more about his involvement with Zen Buddhism (he discussed his years studying perception with a Buddhist monk), his involvement with Cornelius Cardew, and his thoughts on the music of Stockhausen (including a fantastic anecdote about a meeting Keith had with Karlheinz on a train).

Much of what was said over dinner is, even now (several weeks after the fact), being chewed over and considered. Perhaps the most immediately eye-opening discussion over dinner, however, was regarding the performance of Treatise. An aspect of performing Treatise that I had not considered before was that, even when performing a single page, one is automatically performing the score by default. Drawing on Wittgenstein's philosophy, Cardew constructed Treatise as a world that the musician reacts to. Therefore, if you are interpreting a small black circle on page 72 (hypothetically), one has to take into account that there are much larger black circles elsewhere in the score, and adjust one's scale regarding whatever that symbol represents accordingly. Of course, Keith was the first to admit that almost everyone (himself included) gets that wrong, and that the contradiction between knowing that everyone gets it wrong and living with it is one that should be embraced as a part of the piece.

Friday Night: Keith Rowe solo

Keith Rowe’s solo performance in Fairchild Chapel on Friday, March 12th was an impressive, challenging, precise and subtle 40 minute improvisation. This is the first time I have seen him play solo (second time I’ve seen him live in any configuration), and following the master class from day before, the strength of his ideas and their realisation had never been clearer to me. The reflective qualities of his instrument and music were the most striking aspect initially, only equaled towards the second half of the piece as the strength of the trajectory Keith was weaving became apparent.

Keith Rowe’s current sound world, then, for those who are unfamiliar with his recent work, is a fairly nuanced array of rustling, crackling textures generated from the use of various materials/preparations on his guitar and the use of a contact microphone. In addition to this, the shortwave radio provides snippets of radio talk show and pop music stations, perhaps the most consistent staple of Keith Rowe’s voice and technique. A significant aspect of Keith’s current working methods also seems to be re-visitation of previous techniques from his earliest days with AMM. From what I can gather this is an extension of his insistence on not becoming reliant on a specific technique as pure affectation, in that just as one should not become dependent on a technical crux, one should also not be afraid to return to previous technicques/ideas/sounds. During this performance the ominous sound of the infamous handheld fan, a nasally buzzing sound anticipating a deep and threatening drone as its (prepared?) fans rattle the constantly detuned strings of his guitar, made several appearances, a long side a variety of less (physically) obvious yet still clearly referential sounds that attach a strong sense of personal history to the performance.

*this photograph taken by mshiflet from the ihatemusic forums

The set started with page 72 of Cornelius Cardew’s Treatise, interpreted a la John Cage (I think… might have been Rzewski?), with the black circles representing radio grabs. Football game coverage after football game coverage, with the occasional pop music station, surfaced amidst the supporting rumbles of the table top guitar, providing an initial palette, a response to Treatise, with which to situate oneself. This opening section was by far the most difficult portion of the set. As Keith moved from radio broadcast to radio broadcast, underlying textures from his guitar cutting in and out creating a fairly rocky, unsettling macro-rhythmic gesture. The almost excessive use of the radio in this section became very apparent very quickly, leading my mind to question where and how he was going to take this material that would result in anything but further radio sampling.

Soon enough, however, Rowe’s guitar grew in prominence and the radio grabs came through less and less, bringing to an end the significantly lengthy opening section, leading into a good 15 minutes or so in which rattling guitar strings, electric fans, contact microphones, occasional brushed string tones and bursts of shrieking feedback became the prime sources of sound. In comparison with the opening section, this was an excellent example of the very direct narrative that is somewhat of a stable characteristic of Keith's creative voice (in both solo and most collaborative contexts). As fairly thick textures built up and changed over time Keith would, on occasion, pull a layer of sound that was doing a lot of fundamental supporting work out from underneath a developed and sustained sound-world, exposing a quite radically different world of sounds, changing the pacing of the music, and adding an element of rhythmic surprise. These moments for me are some of the strongest aspects of Keith's work (they occur not infrequently throughout his playing on record) and are very strongly indicative of the reflective quality of his music. They seem almost to prevent the listener from becoming too completely absorbed in an immersive, droning texture/soundscape. They very suddenly force a shift of perspective on behalf of the listener, very powerfully reflecting the location, both spatially and temporally, of the improvisation, causing the listener to consider these parameters in combination with the sounds. Sometimes these moments would be combined with the surfacing of a (now much more sporadic) sample from a radio station, or allow for the louder sounds from outside Fairchild Chapel (sirens, on a number of occasions) to come through.

*this photograph taken by mshiflet from the ihatemusic forums

The final section of the improvisation revealed the coherency of the trajectory mentioned in the opening paragraph. The sustained sound world was built upon and under a drifting cloud of mid-upper range, almost-tertian sonorities, possibly a result of looped feedback from previous radio grabs, recalling a very vague contour, register and harmonic content of the radio material from the beginning of the set. This was coupled with a couple of radio talk show samples as well as the extensive guitar work from the second section, gritty rustling and crackling from various objects pressed and rubbed into the strings over the pickups, the whirring and somewhat ominous drone of the handheld fan, and increasingly violent feedback interruptions. As the tertian-drones started to pick up and become more prominent the sudden cutaways mentioned above became less frequent and Keith allowed the sound world to build up into a more immersive composite sound. This was incredibly powerful, providing resolution as a result of a) allowing this immersive build up of sound, b) tying together and bringing to a logical climax the trajectory of the piece, and c) finishing a powerful 30 minutes of reflective and compelling improvisation with a 10-15 minute coda of sorts imbued with such a mournful, sad character, a simplicity of emotion rarely found in such a complicated and multifaceted music (that is no comment on the profundity of said emotional expression, merely on its method of transmission).

Coming away from hearing live music such as this I found myself incapable of even starting to make any coherent sense of what I had experienced until the next morning. Indeed, aside from a few very practical notes jotted down the next day regarding any formal divisions I perceived in the music as well as the progression of the sound world, many of my more significant thoughts and observations have been slowly arrived at over the course of the last few weeks.All in all Keith Rowe's residency, both workshop, dinner and concert, was an incredible experience, every minute of which was something to be learned from.

The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World

2010-02-01T20:38:00.002-05:00

Highly recommended watching. A 2 hour lecture. Click "Watch full programme" to watch the whole thing:

Agnes Martin interview

2010-01-22T00:02:00.000-05:00

Agnes Martin Interview (20:00 version, 1997) from Chuck Smith on Vimeo.

Maya Deren- A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945)

2009-12-10T23:57:00.001-05:00

From UBU

Worth watching... [Rothko]

2009-10-31T01:55:00.001-04:00

Sciarrino, Berio, Nono...

2009-10-18T23:15:00.009-04:00

A recital of solo violin music by three 20th century Italian composers performed by Oberlin faculty David Bowlin (violin) and Joshua Rubin (electronics), both Oberlin graduates and members of the ICE (International Contemporary Ensemble).

Few concert programmes are such that a piece by Luciano Berio comes across as a "breather" between the highlights of the concert, but this was the case here...

Salvatore Sciarrino is a new name to me, but one I will definitely be looking into. The concert opened with the first two of his Six Capricci per violino (1976)... virtuosic works inspired by Paganini's caprices. They apparently look very similar on paper, yet the sounding world could not be more different. Both pieces are almost exclusively constructed from quiet harmonics, played at improbable speeds, creating an incredibly delicate, subtle, evanescent atmosphere. The audience became absolutely silent as we watched a violinist go through the motions of playing the violin, motions easily associated with the music of Paganini, yet only hearing the highest partials of the vibrating strings, the full tones one might have expected from such a physical performance reduced to a thousand shades of string noise.

This sounding world drew you right into the depths of music... every nuance of every sound carried its own linear implications. Quick tremelos on high partials, arpeggiations of a variety of natural harmonics, and the occassional sul ponticello open (perhaps?) string all provided their own melodic structures that carried through both movements. By far the most compelling pieces for solo violin proper I have ever heard.

The intensity of these opening pieces was dispelled by Luciano Berio’s Sequenza VIII (1976), however. Along with the sense of Italian lyricism that all of Berio's music is infused with came the schmaltzy body language and, perhaps the biggest shock, the normal dynamic levels associated with the violin. This was my first experience with this particular Sequenza, however, after such refined, delicate music as the Sciarrino Caprices, I found I had little patience for Berio, and ended up letting the sound wash over me, allowing my listening ears a chance to relax before the final piece.

The final piece was the reason I had been so excited about this particular recital. A much-anticipated live rendition of Luigi Nono's La Lontananza Nostalgica Utopica Futura, Madrigale per più “caminantes” con Gidon Kremer for violin and 8-track tape. Luigi Nono is undoubtedly one of my absolute favourite composers and I had spent the week before hand preparing for this event, listening to various recordings of the piece as I obtained them. First the Irvine Arditti recording (which I'd had for a while), then the Clarence Merkel recording on the Wandelweiser label (courtesy of a promptly shipped package from erstdist), then the Kremer and Mellinger recordings from the library. I wish I had given myself longer before hand to come to terms with each of these recordings, but alas, I didn't, and my work load is such that it was impossible to listen well to all of these recordings in a single week, but they gave me a good sense for the variety of interpretations possible, and the many ways the violin and tape parts can manifest themselves in relation to each other.

While I am hesitant to say I enjoyed the live recital or the recordings more than the other, they certainly are very different ways of listening to this piece. The live situation really emphasises the theatrical element of the work... the wandering between the music stands (in this case only 6, all on stage, rather than spread throughout the audience as well), the sense of spatial disorientation and uncertainty as to the source of some sounds, and most profoundly, the sense of history and perspective that this weighty composition packs. At one point, towards the end of the piece (I think before the very last "Leggio" was played), David Bowlin took a seat on a piano stool left on stage, while the electronics (operated by Joshua Rubin) picked up in density and volume (they had been quite restrained throughout most of the performance), and filled the auditorium with the sounds of Gidon Kremer, and occasionally Nono himself, moving around the studio, their voices distant behind the sound of trains and multi-tracked violin. A review of this composition I had read recently mentioned the idea that, in including the tape part, and in writing the violin part as he had done (with the wandering, and the often overshadowing of the violin by the electronics), Nono had removed every aspect of the performer's ego from this piece... only leaving his own, as the composer’s, in tact. This was felt very strongly in this tape-dominated passage, as the violinist, seated before the audience, listens back to the voices of Kremer and Nono... but it goes beyond this. Embodied in Nono's warm, encapsulating persona are his overarching love for humanity and his strong, Marxist beliefs that stretch the historical perspective of this piece back further, covering much of the development of mankind, especially through the late 19th and 20th centuries.

Musically speaking, the wrath of electronics that picked up when Bowlin took a seat was structurally powerful too, as if the live violinist had been keeping the forces of history at bay. Most of the piece was fairly quiet. It was shorter than most of the recordings I have heard (closest to Kremer’s recording at around 35 minutes), yet sparser than most as well. The performers, on occasion, lapsed into silence, letting the sounds of the auditorium, as well as (once or twice) the sound of David Bowlin walking across the stage, work their way into the sounding world of the piece. It was a brilliant and riveting performance that has given me a radically different perspective on the work than any number of recordings could have done. It would be nice to take the time soon to listen properly to each of the recordings again and see how I listen to it differently, having now seen the piece live, but unless I get that done this week I doubt I'll have the time before winter break.

Evan Parker and Ned Rothenburg

2009-10-05T23:43:00.011-04:00

Continuing from last time... Evan Parker and Ned Rothenburg, an evening of purely improvised music in Fairchild Chapel. The location really played into the music here. Especially with the two solo pieces. Both musicians really 'played the room', with Evan sending multiple levels of screeching soprano saxophone harmonics bouncing off the walls and the organ pipes. His solo was by far the most enjoyable and least comfortable of the evening, the sheer volume (especially sitting in the front row) caused sections of my ears to vibrate and create tones and textures by themselves. Really stunning technique though, and a wonderful raga esque effect. Similar to Sibelius' 7th symphony, that was occurring at the same time not too far away, in that the speed of the music played on a deceptive duality... slow development on a macro level, very fast notes on a micro level.

Ned Rothenburg's solo was equally as impressive. He launched right into it with lots of momentum, quickly building 5 or 6 lines simultaneously on his clarinet. These lines slowly unravelled and fell apart, the momentum dropping, as the piece descended into a trough where it resided swaying back and forth for a good while before it picked up again to return to a similar density/intensity as the beginning.

The duets were, while still enjoyable, infintely less impressive/interesting. Fairly straight ahead conversations were had, the most impressive moments of each occurring in the first few seconds of each as the two musicians explored textures and tones on the edge of their instrument's capabilities before falling into a wide yet consistently busy array of acrobatics. A few stand out moments occurred when, while playing on bass clarinet, Ned Rothenburg would create the impression of cascades of sound falling around Evan Parker's bustling tenor saxophone through rapidly descending bass clarinet lines that spanned the instruments entire range.

Very enjoyable music all in all, although it left me with a thirst for more space... a desire to listen to the sounds in and of themselves, rather than the rough and tumble exchanges between tenor sax and clarinet/bass clarinet/alto sax/shakuhachi/etc.

Karelia Suite

2009-10-02T21:45:00.002-04:00

So. First real post from Oberlin. My plan for keeping this blog up and running while here is as such. Musically speaking, I will have two types of things to write about. The most frequent will be concert reports. There's an amazing amount of new music (and not so new music) going on here every week. My plan is to write about as many of these concerts as possible. The second type of post will be regarding the pieces of music that I am studying outside of my classes. With access to such a wonderful library here, I've made a promise to myself to find time every week to study a piece of music thoroughly, given that I have access to scores and multiple recordings of a large number of pieces that I would be interested in discovering. The two scores I have out at the moment are Michael Finnissy's English Country Tunes and Luigi Nono's A floresta e jovem e cheia de vida. Both of which I hope to write about here within the next month or so. Finnissy's music in particular will be getting a lot of attention from me this year, as I've started reading a fairly comprehensive book about him and his music entitled "Uncommon Ground". Its a fascinating read so far.

Anyway. This past week has been a pretty excellent one generally speaking. The weather has taken a turn for the better (temperatures consistently under 15 degrees celsius) and the apple cider is in good supply. This past week has also marked the start of an onslaught of excellent concerts.

First of all, two concerts on the 26th of September. Two concerts that couldn't be any different from one another. The first of which (started at 8pm, could only hear the first piece played as the second concert started at 9pm) featured the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra. The programme featured Sibelius' Karelia Suite and Symphony No. 7, and Beethoven's Triple Concerto. While I'm really very ambivalent about the Beethoven piece, the two Sibelius' pieces are two of my favourite works by one of my favourite non-modern/experimental/new-music composers. Unfortunately I couldn't afford to stay to hear the 7th Symphony, but I did get to hear the Karelia Suite.

It is a wonderful, brief, 3 movement work that for quite some time, a couple of years ago now, I was absolutely smitten with. The recording I have of this piece, on the Sibelius Edition 5 CD box-set, is stunning. Conducted by Sir John Barbirolli with the Halle Orchestra, it is a beautifully humble and "Finnish" recording of a work that I imagine is easy to get carried away with. The OCO did a fine job with it though. Aside from a few quasi-dodgy horn entrances, the first movement was perfectly delivered at a moderate tempo. The wonderful trumpet melody was articulated well, although with a little less bounce than the Barbirolli recoding. Although their bristling rendition of the third movement made up for this.

The second movement, "ballade", was taken at a surprisingly brisk tempo, especially in relation to the first movement which was, if anything, slightly slower than I'd have expected, but it worked really well and was by far my favourite of the three movements for this performance. The opening melody was less clarinet heavy than the recording I have, the blending of the ensemble providing a more generally woodwind choir texture, perhaps a little less characteristic that way but it worked well all the same. The single oboe notes that float above the second statement of the melody in the strings were absolutely stunning. Reminiscent, in my mind at least, of flashes of morning sunlight reflected in blankets of ice-covered snow drifts.

The faster tempo really came into its own with the delivery of the second main melodic theme that comes in roughly half way through the second movement. It was warm and encapsulating, supple, and had an incredible, uplifting momentum, pushing the ensemble through the subsequent changes in texture very smoothly. The final oboe duet (or with english horn?) had, again I feel due to the faster tempo, a wonderfully transcendent quality to it (the shimmering snow imagery returns) as the movement came to an end. Gives the Barbirolli (of which I am very fond) a good run for its money.

As the audience applauded I made a quick exit from Finney Chapel and made my way over to the more intimate Fairchild Chapel (a stunningly beautiful building that sounds as good as it looks) to see a concert of improvised music from Evan Parker and Ned Rothenburg. More on that soon.

Very Sick

2009-09-24T18:02:00.001-04:00

Concert reports coming soon.

Anecdote 120809

2009-08-12T00:25:00.005-04:00

I work in a bookshop. Mostly at the cash registers.

On occasion I see a child at the stage where they are just beginning to develop the ability to communicate. I watch them spewing words, asking fragmented questions, interspersed with counting, announcements and seemingly random words.

I think, "how wonderful it must be to be able to approach language from that fresh perspective."

It must be an incredible feeling, to discover the ability to communicate with others in so many different ways.

I felt slightly envious until I realised that that is what we try to pursue in improvising.

(Revelations in 'music' leak and bleed into 'non-music')

John Cage's Music of Changes. Such strange works. One of a number of cds of Cage's music that I've acquired recently. This one probably second only to the Cage Performs Cage disc on Mode Records. I do prefer these 4 pieces over the only (I think?) other Cage piece that I've heard that was completely determined using chance operations. The Freeman Etudes (for violin), while enjoyable, sound a lot less convincing than these really rather attractive piano pieces.

Absurd fragments of musical ideas are thrown across a canvas, appearing out of no where and disappearing just as awkwardly. Piano resonance cut off either with another chord or run, or the lifting of the damper pedal. Here, I do feel that Cage's chance operations open up the sound world to illogical, 'unmusical' patterns and textural layers that would otherwise never have made it into the work had it been left up to the composer's musical intuition. These unexpected, disconcerting patterns/arrangements do sound fresh, creative, and incredibly musical though, opening up an alien sound world, despite extended-techniques being kept to a relative minimum throughout the piece.

I was surprised by the generally fast pace of the music (perhaps to be expected, after becoming accustom to the pacing of the Cage performs Cage cd), although this impression may be exaggerated by the generally faster patterns of notes within each 'cluster' of sound.

No doubt more thoughts on this soon, as I come to term with the music more. I would like to try and write a bit about the Cage Performs Cage as well, although with less than two weeks until I move to Oberlin I don't know if I'll have the time. We will see.

Other listening recently has included Muhal Richard Abrams' Levels and Degrees of Light (incredible music... definitely the best AACM related music I've heard yet... more of that coming in the post soon though, including some Joseph Jarman and Wadada Leo Smith), Charles Mingus (variety of records), and Michael Pisaro's Harmony series 11-16.

Have yet to find the time to really sink my teeth into Keith Rowe and Sachiko M's contact yet. I fear that may well have to wait until I'm settled in at Oberlin.

I do wonder if this amazement/excitement works when applied to composition.

Or whether the loss of spontaneity removes a part of that sense of exploration.

2009-08-06T23:35:00.001-04:00

I seek new sounds
because new sounds
seek me
Why, please tell me
must I limit myself
to a saxophone or clarinet!
All the rhythm of All
the universe is flowing through me - through all
things, why must I become
"a master"- of anything
when all sound all movement
springs from the same
breath.

-Joseph Jarman

Thoughts on pacing and structure

2009-07-20T16:41:00.012-04:00

Listening to music in the summer is always more difficult...

As mentioned last time, some thoughts on the NJ Experimental Music Collective. First, a brief history: It began in early 2008 as an attempt on my behalf to create a free improvisation ensemble at my high school. Then most of those involved including myself graduated, and all of those except myself went off to college. Between that point in time and around late autumn/winter of 2008 the line up changed several times until it settled in the form of a trio. Mark Micchelli on piano, Jessie Downs on clarinet, and myself on trumpet/objects. The initial difficulties were fairly obvious, as Mark is a pianist who comes from a predominantly jazz-oriented background, Jessie is a clarinetist who comes from a predominantly classical background, and my main interest was in free improvisation. For several months there was a lot of musical tension as collectively our music pulled one way and then the other, attempting everything from free jazz to 'reductionism' to Coltrane-esque 4 part compositions.

Since around March/April of 2009, however, and with the addition since then of Spenser Reilly on electronics/guitar (coming from a strange background of indie/pop/rock etc. and experimental music) and Adam Parker-Lavine on piano/objects (coming from a background of jazz/free jazz/improvisation etc.) I/we have experienced first hand a long-term process of finding a common ground between each of our approaches, and within the past 2 months or so each collective session has yielded some genuinely interesting music, at least from our prospective... having worked through the difficulties in musical communication ourselves.

Much of the questions that have been raised on the recent collective sessions have also quite heavily affected the thoughts I have when listening. An ongoing conversation with Mark Micchelli about listening, specifically, has caused my to think a lot about listening as it applies to listening, improvising and composing. And certainly it is through listening that I have found links between my methods of improvisation and of composition, which has brought me to a better understanding of both and the ground between them.

With that in mind, some thoughts on recent listening:

blasen is an album on the Another Timbre label (same label that curated the Unnamed Music Festival I attended a month or two ago), featuring Sebastian Lexer on piano+ and Seymour Wright on alto saxophone.

I saw Seymour Wright live (performing with Martin Kuchen and Keith Rowe) at the Unnamed Music Festival a short while ago and was so completely enthralled by what he was doing (I had a clear line of sight) that I often found myself unfortunately distracted from the music at large. I have benefited from the experience, however, as listening to this record I do find that I can make a pretty good guess on occassion at how certain sounds are created... although that is still no more than 50% of the time. It also doesn't help that on the second of the two tracks on this album it is predominantly Wright's saxophone that is being manipulated by Lexer's electronics.

Sebastian Lexer's piano+ set up is an incredibly inspirational collaboration between acoustic piano and electronics. The electronically sustained harmonics/drones/crunching/crackling/booming creates a whole new soundworld from an instrument whose traditional soundworld is often difficult to break out of (also been listening to a lot of Xenakis recently... and his writing for piano in terms of techniques/sounds is fairly conventional compared to his writing for nearly all other instruments/ensembles).

The first improvisation on the cd, "blasen_37:18", is a very organically paced, brooding piece of music. Despite its beautiful sense of emotional structure, however, it is incredibly varied. The whole range of the piano is used, from growling low end rumbles and muted notes to electronically sustained, high pitched harmonics, to beautifully warm, mid-range chords that punctuate the music around the 26:45 mark. I do feel that this is also, perhaps, the reason why such a natural pacing of the improvisation was possible. In opening up the full range of the piano both acoustically and through electronic manipulation, Sebastian Lexer very early on opens up a deeply resonant space within which both he and Seymour Wright can then explore.

The second improvisaton on the cd, "blasen_25:34" (in which Wright's saxophone is predominantly affected by the electronics, not Lexer's piano), strikes me as being slightly more episodic initially. This time the space created, within which Wright and Lexer place their sounds and improvise, is at first achieved through intermittent use of some sort of drone or looped sound. For instance, within the first 4 or so minutes, gong-like harmonics and scrapes from Lexer (reminiscent of Takemitsu's Corona) and electronically processed/extended harmonics from Seymour Wright are dropped onto a predominantly 'blank canvas'. Then, at 4:20 a quiet (sub?)tone from Seymour Wright is (I assume) looped by Lexer's electronics to create a drone, over which Lexer's inside-piano work and I think further high pitched harmonics from Wright's saxophone are layered, while rattles that could come from either of the two musicians bubble underneath the drone. This drone disappears by around 6:40, leaving Lexer and Wright's sounds surrounded by digital silence. The drone returns again around the 12:30 mark, and has disappeared again by the 14 minute mark.

This second improvisation also has a delightfully strange "coda". The last couple of minutes contain strange high pitched electronic blips and whistling, reminiscent (at least for me) of the pianissimo glissandi at the end of Kottos and Embellie, Iannis Xenakis' pieces for solo cello and viola respectively.

And so coming back to the reasons for these thoughts... thinking about what constitutes engaging music from both the perspective of creating the music and listening to the music. The idea of structure and pacing, what those terms mean, and how they can work when executed well. blasen provides two examples of fascinating and excellently executed structure/pacing in an improvised setting. Each piece fluid, exploratory, and challenging yet cohesive and controlled. It is also interesting to consider the role each element of the duet plays in creating this music, and the role of electronic manipulation with regards to the methods used in opening up spaces to be explore by Lexer and Wright.

-------------------------

Other listening of late has included a fair amount of John Cage, including the Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano, the Freeman Etudes, and the mode recording of Empty Words with Music for Piano featuring Cage himself on voice. I've really taken to Cage's music over the past few months and will writing some more in depth thoughts, especially on the latter recording, soon. Thelonious Monk's Underground has been played a few times, as has Burkhard Schlothauer's ChamberEvents, one of three wandelweiser discs I've recently acquired.

One disc that I've been meaning to write about for a long time but now feel the time for a proper 'review' of sorts has passed, is a cd entitled Four Generations, that features solo piano music from four 20th century composers performed by Daniel Seel. The first two pieces' composers and the last two pieces' composers share a teacher-student relationship. First, Stefan Wolpe's Battle Pieces, second Morton Feldman's Palais De Mari, third Walter Zimmermann's Wüstenwanderung, and finally the pianist Daniel Seel's Nacht-stücke. All 4 compositions are wonderful, of course, but what drew me into this cd for at least a month was the programming. It provides a highly enjoyable listening experience, from Wolpe's dense and motific pieces, to Feldman's final, and shockingly concise, solo piano piece (I think?), Zimmermann's strange octave leaps, and finally Seel's fragile and delicate work that employs all manner of extended techniques to create a delicate and surreal ambience as the cd comes to an end. Highly recommended, and quite possibly on sale at the moment as a part of jazzloft.com's summer hathut sale.

Summer mushrooms

2009-06-01T23:02:00.010-04:00

Not sure what these are. By the time I had the time to take a sample home to dissect/make a spore print from, they had shriveled up and died. Lots of rain/thunder storms expected over the next two days, however, so fingers crossed there will be more mushrooms.

Hopefully some recordings of recent improv sessions will be available soon. Last Saturday's session went extremely well, with a full ensemble (Mark [piano] Jessie [clarinet/clarinet joints] Spencer [turntables] Doug [trumpet/objects]) I think we made some of our most convincing music yet.

Spent a lot of today pouring over a variety of sketches/scores/notes for the piano cello clarinet piece. Its coming together nicely. I am very excited about it, but it has taken a while to get to this point. Everyday, when I begin to sit down and start composing, I am always plagued by misgivings about the abstract nature of composing in this fashion. While they share similar processes, the music I compose is not the same as the music I improvise, and so I cannot write for myself. I'm also working purely with acoustic instruments (for the time being) and so I don't have the advantage of electronic instruments in terms of working hands on with actual sound. Instead I work on scores and diagrams. Abstractions of the sound itself.

But I do enjoy it. When I get into the right frame of mind, sitting outside with a cup of Russian Caravan tea, and composing (at any stage of the process), is an exhilarating experience. When my mind is freed from the defined avenues of thought imposed on it freshly each day by what I smell/read/hear/think, I do find that ideas flow smoothly from my mind onto paper.

But nothing comes close to the joy of working directly with sound. And for a composer composing for acoustic instruments that they themselves do not play, this only comes upon the completion of (at least) a draft score. To take a draft score and present it to capable musicians... to have them realise the score... opens up an infinite number of unexplored possibilities to the young composer.

Unnamed music

2009-05-17T11:36:00.014-04:00

Booked my first trip home to England in 2 years this week. I'll be heading back second week of June to spend a few days with each set of grandparents before heading down to London to catch the 2nd night (Friday 12th) of the Unnamed Music Festival before flying back to New Jersey the following day. Very excited to be able to see the trio of Keith Rowe, Seymour Wright and Martin Kuchen live. It will be nice to spend a day and half in London too.

Yesterday I made the hour long, $20-each train journey into NYC with Jessie to go to the final evening of this years No Fun Fest. This would have been my second year going to the festival. I went last year (on the Friday I think) and enjoyed the experience immensely. I was fairly excited for the Peter Rehberg and Marcus Schmickler set, despite not having heard their erstwhile release, and was looking forward to hearing Skullflower and Kevin Drumm/Prurient too. After an enjoyable train journey into the city (love the decaying and rotted landscapes of NJ/NY the train passes by) and a nice walk through Brooklyn to get to the venue we were promptly turned away at the door soon after I realised that Jessie didn't have any ID with a birthdate on her. So we came home and had some mushroom stroganoff before calling it a night.

--------------------------

Some thoughts on recent listening:

Rajesh Mehta's Orka: Solos & Duos featuring Paul Lovens contains some truly brilliant music. It was one of 3 or so blind purchases chosen to fulfill the requirements for jazz loft's recent "10 hathut releases for $35" sale, yet has been the most listened to album of that batch of 10 so far.

Rajesh Mehta is an experimental trumpet player, but he differs greatly from the likes of Franz Hautzinger. Unlike Hautzinger's Gomberg (another of my favourite albums of solo trumpet music) there are no doubts that the sounds Mehta creates come from a trumpet. There seems to be no amplification, no electronic manipulation, no layering on Orka. Instead, Rajesh Mehta combines the use of exotic trumpets, extended techniques, and methods of combining multiple trumpets into single instruments using rubber pipes, to create a music that is rich and varied in its use of timbre and texture, strong and gestural in its use of melody and rhythm, and cohesive in its structuring.

Orka has a quite remarkable feeling of whole-ness. Listening to it is not unlike listening to a composed suite consisting of multiple movements that each share various ideas and motifs, consciously structured so as to create a sense of compositional unity throughout the entire work. The 12 tracks are, for the most part, short bagatelle-esque
movements each functioning as a portrait illustrating a certain characteristic of Mehta's playing. Amidst these, there are 3 or so slightly longer pieces that carry more of a sense of narrative.

One of these longer pieces is the title track, "Orka", which also seems to function as the central kernel of the album. Both before and after the title track one hears various references and variations on the melodic and rhythmic themes that it contains. "Orka" itself sounds not unlike a short raga (and indeed, ignoring the obvious technical lineage from musicians such as Wadada Leo Smith and Bill Dixon, it is Indian music that has the most audible and profound influence on the musical content of Mehta's style), with its distinctive rhythmic and melodic patterns repeated and changed at various tempi, volumes, and degrees of syncopation.

The coming together of the rhythmic and melodic influence of Indian music and the textural and timbral expansion of the trumpet's sound world from trumpet pioneers such as Wadada Leo Smith and Bill Dixon has enabled Rajesh Mehta to create a very three-dimensional sense of melody. His obvious control over not just pitch and rhythm but also significant and sudden changes in timbre and tone quality through the use of his hybrid-trumpet technique and selection of mutes lends such an immense sense of colour and space to the melodic and textural lines.

Another point of interest is the communication between Lovens and Mehta on the duo tracks (9 of the 12). Their playing is very gestural, and the almost spontaneous decisions made between the two create rhythmic movements that would not sound out of place in the music of Luigi Nono or Helmut Lachenmann.

I also wonder if the watery farting sounds and muted yelps on the track "Vindaloo" are programmatic.

-----------------

Point of interest, youtube video of Rajesh Mehta with Paul Lovens and Rohan de Saram. Mehta's playing is much more abstract in this video than on Orka. His distinctive musical voice is still very apparent, though.

Outdoor composing

2009-05-16T12:31:00.003-04:00

Sitting on a chair in the middle of the garden. Gentle rushing of the wind, the deep and microtonal glissandi of lawn mowers, and the soft whispers of white petals of blossom falling from the three trees and landing on the overgrown grass. The sun and clouds casting a high contrast light upon it all.

The advantages and disadvantages of bird song.

Usual

2009-05-11T23:10:00.004-04:00

Been enjoying my mornings of late. Have managed to be asleep every night at a time that has facilitated waking up around 5 am each morning. At that time the house is at its quietest state, although the birds outside start making a racket not long after. I would like to shift things even earlier, but my work schedule this week means that won't be happening. Too many late evening shifts.

I did go for a walk this evening, between 8.30 and 9.30, along some of the local back roads between various fields, and was surprised to find a silence almost as deep as that of the winter months. Very unexpected at this time of year. I took the opportunity to sketch out some ideas in graphic-score format while what little light there was at that time faded, before trekking back home. It would be much nicer if I could walk through the fields, but private property laws in this country won't allow it.

I've been enjoying my reading a lot recently. Both Confronting Silence by Toru Takemitsu and Endgame by Samuel Beckett are proving to be excellent books that appeal to me in every sense. Takemitsu's writing I almost like more than his music.... I definitely appreciate it just as much, for both its content and style.

Endgame is the fourth non-poetry work of Beckett's that I have read. Samuel Beckett is by far the most influential non-musical artist on my own work. The piano cello clarinet piece's title is a quote from his novel Molloy, from which the aesthetic and structure of the piece is also taken (although Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light also heavily shaped the same piece). I find a warmth in Beckett's prose/plays that seems to balance everything perfectly. The closest anything else has come to giving me a similar feeling is AMM's Before Driving To The Chapel We Took Coffee with Rick and Jennifer Reed album.

Listening of late has been all over the place, mainly as the results of the arrival of around 17 new cds last week, plus a very badly timed craving to revisit a number of older favourites. Thoughts are still a little scrambled on most of what I've been listening to. I hope to type up some thoughts on the following over the next couple of weeks though:

Rajesh Mehta- Orka

(gives Hautzinger's Gomberg a run for best solo trumpet album I've heard yet)

Polweschel 2

Morton Feldman- Early Piano Pieces

Jo Kondo- Chamber Music

Jeph Jerman- Assemblages

Jeph Jerman- If/When

Graham Halliwell/Lee Patterson- Terrain

Additionally, I've been listening to a significant amount of Ligeti's work recently, as well as revisiting some Luigi Nono (Voices of Protest album on Mode) and AMM (The Crypt). I'll also be listening to Feldman's second string quartet (Mode recording), a disc a day for the next 5 days, and perhaps, shortly thereafter, a full 6 hour sitting. Which will be an interesting experience.

Mr. Lizard

2009-04-21T10:21:00.000-04:00

Mushroom

2009-04-19T11:00:00.020-04:00

I spent most of my day yesterday in the garden. A few weeks ago a rather violent storm ripped out some of the drain pipes from the roof of the house and broke a few segments of fence separating the front garden from the back, all of which needed to be fixed. So I spent a half dozen hours or so climbing ladders and fixing/removing crap from drain pipes, and shifting beams of wood around to fix the fences. It was very enjoyable. I enjoy gardening/garden work a lot... although I fear in much the same way that I enjoy the idea of fishing. What started off as quite a productive morning ended with an afternoon lying in the grass looking at a mushroom my father had found growing by the side of the house. I've become quite interested in mushrooms recently, to the extent that I bought a field guide to north american mushrooms last week (very good quality book, and for only $15 in store... can't beat the Barnes and Noble employee discounts). Despite all that I've been unable to identify this mushroom so far. Going by its shape I had initially thought it would fit into the "polypore, tooth fungi, and Crimped gill" category, but nothing specific in that category seems to be correct.

I'm not sure why I've developed this recent interest in mushrooms. Before this strange obsession I didn't even like eating the regular cultivated mushrooms, but two days ago I felt compelled to try a slice of mushroom pizza, and quite enjoyed it. I think the source of it all is musical. Part of that definitely related to the saprophytic nature of some (most?) mushrooms. May also have something to do with a fairly recent listening interest in field recordings/related use of amplified natural sounds. Although I do feel that that interest may have been as a result of mushrooms, and not a cause.

On Friday (17th) Jessie and I took a trip into NYC to see a performance of Verdi's Rigoletto. I've had an unfortunate history with opera. A couple of years ago I was given tickets to three operas for my birthday. I made it to see one of them, Verdi's Aida, missed the second (another Verdi I think) due to a pit orchestra rehearsal, and missed the third (Wagner's Die Walküre) by screwing the dates up (awoke one Sunday morning feeling very excited, only to look at the tickets and realise they were for the day before). Nothing of the sort happened this time, fortunately. It took me a while to acclimatise to listening to the music, and the first act left me thoroughly unthrilled. Perhaps partially due to the fact that I didn't turn on the subtitles and was fairly confused as to what was going on for most of it. Second and third acts were a vast improvement though, inducing some slight leg-tingling that I experience to a much greater degree when attending live music in much smaller venues.

The experience, while enjoyable, did confirm some of my already existing stigmas against opera as a form though. I still cannot shake the relationship in my mind between a male tenor at the top of his range and a bleating goat. I really detest such unsubtle use of vibrato.

Listening this week has been a little more varied than the past couple. The James Dillon CD has still been playing daily and proves to be a much deeper and more interesting selection of works with each listen. Found a couple of his other works on youtube as well, such as Helle Nacht. As I write currently I have some of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder playing against a background of mid morning birdsong and what sounds like two droning aeroplanes overhead. They are producing surprisingly round, full tones... sounds not unlike a pair of bass trombones playing interacting, microtonal glissandi.

About a week ago I burned myself a CD of three pieces of music to listen to in the car going to and from work, all from net labels. The first is Kevin Parks and Joe Foster's recent release, Prince Rupert Drops, the second a track called revenant : põdra, released on the Compost and Height netlabel, by Yannick Dauby, John Grzinich, and Maksims Shentelevs, and the third another compost and height download, Simon Whetham's Night of the Owl.

Prince Rupert Drops is, I have decided after 5 or 6 listens split between when I first downloaded it (shortly after it was released) and this week, an incredible piece of music. I remember there being a lot of excitement about Kevin Parks and Joe Foster's duet recording Ipsi sibi somnia fingunt a year or two ago, but at that point my musical focus was on other areas and I have not yet heard it. I will definitely be grabbing a copy if I can soon though. What I found most impressive about this music was the structural complexity of the recording. A real sense of multiple polyphonic structures following their own paths through the music, yet at the same time so closely linked and on a number of occasions crossing paths with each other.

This has been a recurring idea in my own compositional thought throughout the past few months. The idea of multiple structures undulating not unlike various transformations of trigonometric functions layered on top of each other on a graph. This concept has come to the forefront of my pre-compositional work on "Ungeschehengemacht" for two voices. Below is an image of a small segment of one of my reference sheets for the work, featuring a visual sketch of the structure of the piece, constructed over time as my ideas evolve and start to all come together.

I've also spent a lot of time listening to Webern's lieder. Anton Webern was and continues to be a primary influence on life and work. Since discovering his work a little under two years ago, and acquiring a copy of his complete works box set on the Deutsche Grammophon label shortly thereafter there has rarely been a week gone by when I have not spent at least a short while listening and marveling at his genius. Much of the feeling I get from Webern can be summed up with the anecdote of Webern writing the notes of the chromatic scale on a piece of paper during his first aphoristic forays into freely atonal music and crossing off each one as he used it.

As incredible as every aspect of his work and every medium he worked in is, Webern's songs do hold special significance as it was a form he had composed in throughout his career, and his song cycles provide a highly detailed outline of his progression as a composer, from his earliest years through to his latest. At each turn in his compositional thinking there is a song cycle to mark that shift in thinking. I also find that of all his early pre-atonal pieces, it is the early lieder that point most poignantly towards what was to come.

Berg (left), Webern (right)

In A Landscape

2009-04-14T00:11:00.007-04:00

Graham Lambkin & Jason Lescalleet- The Breadwinner: Lots of plays of this one this week. Lambkin and Lescalleet playing a house. Eight sound pictures of an upstate NY residence. Really makes for a very enticing and enjoyable listening experience. Creaks and bubbles, muffled pianos, baths, cups of tea being made, groaning and moaning... its all excellent stuff.

Cosmos- Tears: Difficult music. Listened to this release probably 3 or 4 times since I got it several months ago and while I've enjoyed it, it really hasn't 'clicked' yet, I don't think. I really love the sound of Sachiko M's click, scrathces and tones, whether she's playing empty sampler or contact microphone on objects. Ami Yoshida's voice is fascinating too. I think this album needs more careful listens as while I do pick up on some beautifully structured moments, the structuring of the three pieces as a whole (with possibly the exception of track 1, which I enjoyed the most), are passing me by at present.

I mentioned this CD last time. Five works spanning the career so far of Scottish New Complexity composer James Dillon. I really really love this CD. The first work, Dillug-Kefitsah, for solo piano, is a short, delightful work that jumps about from style to style and provides a light introduction to an album of dense music. The second work, Del Cuarto Elemento, is a chaotic, microtonal and difficult piece for solo violin. It does have a strong sense of narrative structure; however, as do the next two pieces. Traumwerk Book III for violin and piano is a series of 11 incredibly beautiful miniatures that conjure up a small world of private thoughts and desires (my impression...). Glistening chords decay, hanging above scratching, scurrying, frantic violin lines, the two voices playing off each other in a whole range of different manners. black/nebulae for piano duo is my favourite work on the CD so far. Inspired by the sight of black crows taking flight while on a visit to Japan, that imagery is powerfully portrayed through this mammoth 20 minute piece. The final work, the soadie waste for piano quintet, is a wild and rhythmic anthropological portrayal of Glaswegian "wedding receptions, dances and housie housie". Lots of microtonal fun.

Listening to this one now, for the first time. Promoted as an "ambient album", and containing the most beautiful of John Cage's music (not very familiar with alot of his work) I've heard so far, the album is rather haunting. Especially the organ piece I'm listening to currently, Souvenir. In A Landscape's decaying diatonic lines did provide a much needed rest for the ears after listening to Dillon and Cosmos earlier today though.

I also listened to Keith Rowe's "The Room" and "Shree Raga" performed by Ali Akbar Khan today. Both awesome cds but I didn't listen to them carefully enough to write much now.

Busy busy.

...is this the headquarters for something?

2009-04-09T00:36:00.011-04:00

The never ending possibilities and the creative dreams... epic stuff. I've finally finished Woolf's To The Lighthouse. Recommended book. I'd say a 4 out of 5. Next work of fiction I plan to read is Beckett's Endgame, probably followed by some Huxley, or maybe Cortazar's Hopscotch. I'm not sure.

Listening of the past few days has been more leisurely than intensive, once again. I did manage to read an article by Helmut Lachenmann on his second string quartet though, which, with some selective listening, was ear-opening. Provided much food for thought, and added some further avenues of exploration to a new piece I'm working on for two voices, called "Ungeschehengemacht" for two voices.

Today, however, I have done some better listening, although I've been busy while listening all the same. A new cd arrived today featuring five pieces by the Scottish 'new complexity' composer, James Dillon. I bought the album for the final work on the disc, "The Soadie Waste" (a piece for piano quintet, commissioned by Oberlin Conservatory in 2003), but have so far only listened to the first three works on the CD. The first a short piece for solo piano, the second a lengthier piece for solo violin, and the third a suite of 11 movements for violin and piano. The latter being my favourite so far. After only one listen its difficult to talk in much depth about the music, but it is all strikingly original stuff. Dillon's writing for violin is very distinctive, and the general feel of each of the pieces is rather dense and complicated. In several of the movements of Traumwerk Book III for violin and piano there were a number of incredible moments where, amidst the chaotic complexity and jagged violin lines, moments of serene beauty emerged and became sustained above the turbulent structures of the music. More on this at a later date, most definitely.

Graham Lambkin and Jason Lescalleet's The Breadwinner received further spins today as well, for the first time in just over a month. I wish I had more time to spend with this music. I will have to make that time in the coming weeks. Listening is going to become a busier activity over that time span, however, as I've just taken advantage of the Jazz Loft's incredible Hathut sale, and ordered 10 Hathut releases for only $35. A selection of Morton Feldman, James Tenney, Polweschel and Jo Kondo, amongst others, will be on its way to me soon. There are also a series of Erstwhile and erstdist albums that are piling up in my 'to experience' list, so I will undoubtedly be dropping more money than I can really afford to drop there in the near future. Anxious to hear the Keith Rowe/Toshimaru Nakamura collaborations on the label, as well as the recent Toshimaru Nakamura/Ami Yoshida release.

A short while ago (March 28th to be exact) I went into NYC to see a solo Cecil Taylor concert at Merkin Concert Hall/Lincoln Centre. Now that I think about it, it may well have been the intensity of that live performance that has resulted in my more relaxed listening since then... Anyway, the performance was in two halves, the first half, an hour or so of Cecil reciting his poetry; the second half, an hour or so of Cecil playing the piano. This was the third time I've seen Cecil improvising. The first time at the Lincoln Centre with his AHA Trio featuring Henry Grimes and Pheeroan AkLaff (and opened for by Zorn's Masada Quartet) was the most exhilarating music experience of my life so far. The second time was at the Village Vanguard where he spent a week performing every night with British improviser Tony Oxley. This was also an incredible experience, I was sat right at the front, about 5 feet from Cecil himself. I have been a fan of Cecil Taylor's piano playing for a few years now, however this concert was my first experience with his poetry. The concert programme included a quote from Cecil Taylor, talking about the conceptual continuity of living, and this concert emphasised the reality and accuracy of his statements:

"Practice, to be studious at the instrument, as well as looking at a bridge, or dancing, or writing a poem, or reading, or attempting to make your home more beautiful. What goes into an improvisation is what goes into one's preparation, then allowing the prepared senses to execute at the highest level devoid of psychological or logical interference. You ask, without logic, where does the form come from? It seems something that may be forgotten is that as we begin our day and proceed through it there is a form in existence that we create out of, that the day and night itself is for. And what we choose to vary in the daily routine provides in itself the fresh building blocks to construct a living form which is easily translated into a specific act of making a musical composition."

If the two halves of the performance were to be analysed in terms of material, form and structure, the only significant difference is in form. The structure manifested through the concepts, aesthetics and perspectives, redefined the idea of material. It all flowed, quite organically, from the same natural source. The mark of a truly experienced artist with a deep understanding of himself as himself, and himself as he relates to the world he is a part of.

From my own perspective (and musically speaking) I found his poetry much more aesthetically pleasing. The sound of Cecil's voice, the spaces and silences it permits as well as the earthy nature of his tones and textural spectrums held my interest and concentration with much more vigour and excitement than his piano playing did (not that his piano playing wasn't spectacular). This also perhaps the reason for increased listening to Captain Beefheart and Phil Minton (see below) this past week or two.

The same ideas apply.

A shapeless nurturer, distilled...
Australopithecus, pebble culture...
A convergence and continuum...
Emerging lunar-tidal-circles...
Primal waters of pure consciousness...
Oblivious to a centimeter squared...
CYMA, CYMA, C-Y-M-A- Cecil Taylor

The kinetic energy of molecular motion...
Way beyond causation...
Denizens of apocrypha...
The quasi-parallelogram becomes a true parallelogram with opposite sides equal to pi...- Cecil Taylor

Statements

2009-04-02T15:54:00.007-04:00

Sometimes disregarding a more complex understanding of the mechanisms of society can lead to surprisingly enlightening conclusions... and a way forward.

Not much intensive listening of late. I've been taking it easy. Aside from a really enjoyable listen to Helmut Lachenmann's "Dal Niente" for solo clarinet last night, I've been enjoying more Beefheart and Zappa than usual. Especially Beefheart. The album Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) gets better everytime I hear it. The song "Love Lies" is one of his best. It has me thinking alot about non-standardised instruments. Instruments/voices that have not been tempered so as to fit into a universal mold... the way that many western instruments are tuned to equal temperament tuning, and have wolf tones and excessively lush harmonic timbre's removed.

Another vocalist that has inspired these thoughts is Phil Minton.

I am composing again. The Piano Cello Clarinet piece is back on the table after I realised last week what the piece is "about", which inspired fresh enthusiasm and ideas. I need to have it finished soon though. Additionally I have freshly sketched ideas/reference sheets/etc. for 3 or 4 new pieces.

Goat Key

2009-03-26T00:17:00.006-04:00

Today has been a rather good day. I spent the earliest hours of the morning, probably midnight through to around 4 am, reading a good portion of Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse. The first section of the book (that covers the afternoon and evening of the first day) is very good, but nothing compared to the second and third sections. Some of the most poignant and violently critical literature I've ever read. A thorough condemnation (at least so far) of the state of western civilisation (post World War I), and the perception of existence that pervades this rotting society. The way Woolf treats time across the three sections, for me at least, creates a feeling of intense objectivity and pessimism. Comes to terms with, in a very immediate way, the concept of real consequence on a massive scale. It is also fascinating to see where Beckett drew some of his influence from, especially in terms of his portrayal of man, and use of time.

After all that I caught some sleep before being woken up around 8.30 to do some chores. So I spent my morning ironing my clothes and washing windows in the alcove off the kitchen. While washing windows I listened to one of my favourite cds that I acquired late last year. It features five works for string quartet by the Swiss composer Jürg Frey. Everything about this cd is enticing. From the initial packaging (as with all recent Wandelweiser releases) is very clean, very simple, and reflects somewhat the stripped-down, minimalist nature of the music. On the inside, a few paragraphs of text discuss the concepts of 'anonymous material', the translation of Agnes Martin's paintings sense of 'visibility' to a similar 'audibility' in music, and the point at which "concentration on what is essential becomes possible, and allows one to feel that he is starting from zero."

Each of the five pieces follows a similarly careful, thoughtful, and reduced aesthetic approach. Rather than talk at length about all five pieces, I will mention specifically on the last piece, Streichquartett II (1998-2000), which is quite possibly the most stunningly beautiful work for string quartet I have ever heard. Structurally the piece consists of 2-3 seconds of sound, followed by 2-3 seconds of silence, followed by 2-3 seconds of sound... and so on. This goes on for the full 28 minutes and 59 seconds. Harmonically the piece uses beautiful yet seemingly conventional tonal harmonies. The beauty of this music, then, comes from the textures used. The extended techniques are used in such a way that the string quartet actually sounds like a choir. No joke. Variations on what might be tremelo bowing very close to and directly on the bridge create an eerie timbre, with micro-fluctuations from 'chord' to 'chord', in which the pitches are heard faintly through a mist of toneless string noise and faint overtones. The pitches themselves sounding, as I said, more like a very distant choir singing ominous chords in a quiet manner. I recommend this cd to anyone and everyone. It can be ordered from the wandelweiser website or erstwhile records distribution (for orders in the US).

I also found out, while washing windows, that the small segment of fence that I destroyed in December when I crashed the car is going to cost me US$2000 to 'fix'. Thats almost as much as it cost to repair the car... to repair a fence. Added insult to injury being that it is a fence... a false border... an ideologically detestable object.

Following all that, I put together my new shaver (old one broke a while ago) and cleaned up my hairy face, took a shower, and went to a jazz festival at my old high school. My girlfriend was singing and playing with the jazz band and such. After that we (Jessie and I) spent the evening dancing in various forms to Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica and Shiny Beat (Bat Chain Puller) and eating ice cream sandwiches. Opposite aesthetic to the window-cleaning/Jurg Frey, but such is our post-post-modernist predicament. Or something.

Now I am home and once again listening to Frey's Streichquartett II (1998-2000). Before which I listened to Radu Malfatti and Taku Unami's Goat Vs. Donkey, their second duet release this year, this time on that Taumaturgia label. It is available for free download from both the labels website and here: http://www.archive.org/details/goatvsdonkey

It, on the surface, is very similar to the previous release, Kushikushism. I have yet to give the two a good comparative listen, however. Doing so is something I'm going to be anxiously awaiting over the next few days. The music on both discs is sublime.

To finish off this rant, I would just like to say that the current economic situation and the political response to it has been pathetic and shameful. Yet another example of our corrupted and rotting species showcasing its obedience and slavery to that which it has created. All this talk of 'dangerous toxic assets' makes me laugh. Economic growth is a fickle measurement of human exploitation. Significant change is not coming. I can only hope the system as it is continues to falter and fall until we have no choice but to abandon it. Until then the possibility of a 'succesful reform/revamp/re---' of the world economy hangs heavy over the fate of every living thing on this planet.

Heavy

2009-03-19T03:17:00.002-04:00

Its quite early. 3.18 am. I'm very tired and have work in 4 hours or so. Symptoms of worrying disturbances have woken me up and kept me up.

This would be an optimal time to be up otherwise. The sky outside has just started to glow, as daybreak is only a couple of hours away now. Sets the outline of the tree outside my bedroom window into blurred relief. It is these early days of Spring that I enjoy almost as much as the late days of Autumn. It is difficult to maintain a sense of momentum (?). Although Beckett-esque moments of between-ness are easily obtained, so they are easily lost. And losing them is often turbulent. And very fucking counterproductive. If I had the luxury of time I would like to be up at this time everyday. It is a good time to compose. The best composing I have done these past 9 (pushing 10) months was probably done at this time of day, and involved various greyscale shadings of wedges and lines. It was an exciting morning.

To sleep now (?), with the window open, and Mark So's music playing quietly in the background.

Placement

2009-02-24T23:47:00.004-05:00

Tired and ill of late. Auditions for Manhattan School of Music and Oberlin Conservatory are next week and I really need to have my latest chamber piece finished by then. More work on it today. More problems. Each small segment needs placing... each small segment needs placing with some semblance of reason... or at least rhyme. And yet the overall claritus of the piece hovers just out of sight. Lachenmann's "Allegro Sostenuto" has helped and not helped.

So many ideas that need further in depth exploration. Placement and juxtaposition of sounds. Which yields rhythm. Personal rhythm. And at the same time the same old conflict between foreground and background. The question and concerns over musical poetics. A constant to and fro. In and out. With brief moments of calm and understanding at one end, only sustainable for a very short while before one must inhale again.

Listening to a lot still. Helmut Lachenmann's Allegro Sostenuto/Pression/Dal niente/Interieur I and Cornelius Cardew's Chamber Music 1955-1964 both came in this week and have both been listened to once or twice. Most of this weeks listening has revolved around improvised music, though. Jean-Luc Guionnet and Seijiro Murayama's duet Le Bruit De Toit (mentioned last time) is revealing itself to be a very rich album. Especially at increased volume levels. John Butcher's Resonant Spaces solo saxophone album on the Confront label also contains some superb music and will no doubt deserve further mention once I've absorbed its sounds and structures more. Graham Lambkin and Jason Lescalleet's The Breadwinner on erstwhile records has also provided an intimate soundtrack to a few train journeys into NYC this week and is proving to be a favourite, while Cosmos' Tears is a beautifully constructed duet featuring Sachiko M and Ami Yoshida. Definitely some of the most interesting yet challenging music I've heard in a long time.

Most enticing album for this week, however, is by far Kushikushism, a duet between Radu Malfatti and Taku Unami in two parts. It is a beautiful example of the construction of a personal time-less space... rhythm... constructed out of the careful placement of the simplest of musical materials. In this case Unami's trademark rattling of objects and Malfatti's quiet muted trombone bathed in warm ambient noise on the first track, and sine-wave tones and perhaps heavily muted or processed trombone bathed in digital silence on the second. Both tracks are quite busy, containing an almost bubbling quality I would usually expect from an album featuring Franz Hautzinger (Gomberg, A View From the Window, etc.) yet the bubbling here is implied. All in all, wonderfully warm music. Definitely a disc that will be staying on my desk for another week or two. I am looking forward to Malfatti and Unami's second improvised duet recording to be released later this month.

Abstaining from mentioning politics.

Time

2009-02-19T00:45:00.011-05:00

Never enough of it. I have been working on my current piece, Piano/Cello/Clarinet, for 8 months now and I still don't have a draft score that I am happy with. Whenever I have clarity of vision of the piece as a conceptual whole I struggle to get musical ideas down on paper. As soon as I am able to get musical ideas down on paper I lose the clarity of vision. No matter what I do, whether this piece works or fails, I don't think I will ever understand it. It has been composed during a time of immense change on a musical and conceptual level for me. The inspiration for the piece is therefore drawn from all the new ideas and frames of mind that I have been through since June of 2008.

----

February has been an expensive month for me. Spent a lot of money on CDs. Over the past week alone 11 new albums have come in. Plus 3 more on their way and at least 3 before hand. Its going to take a while to digest all of this music. I hope to write about it a little as I do make my way through them all though.

While 4 of these most recent batch of cds have been listened to all the way through so far, only one has been given my full attention on more than one occasion. It is playing currently. It is Le Bruit Du Toit. A cd of improvised music by saxophonist Jean-Luc Guionnet and percussionst Seijiro Murayama. This album was recorded in the hon gaku temple in Mishima, Japan a little over 2 years ago.

The cover boasts a corner of the roof of the temple set against a pale blue sky and bare winter trees, and the music echoes the crisp, fresh nature of this image. Guionnet utilises various extended techniques, predominantly on long tones, to vary the textures and timbres of the pitches he emits one by one, interspersed by silence and creating reactions from or responding to Murayama's array of percussion instruments. It is Murayama who really makes the CD an exceptional piece of music, however, with his placement of sound in relation to Guionnet's saxophone, and his choice of harmonies and textures. The crisp attack of his instruments create ruptures in time and space, drawing the listener into an intensely personal rhythmic experience.

Another CD that I've enjoyed a lot this month has been John Zorn's Madness, Love and Mysticism. All composed around the same time, the three compositions on this album ("Le Mome", for violin and piano, "Untitled", for solo cello, and "Amour Fou", for piano, cello and violin) represent Zorn's strongest chamber music compositions to date. The solo cello piece, dedicated to the artist Joseph Cornell is an especially beautiful and touching piece of music, yet leaving none of Zorn's transgressive intensity out of the mix.

Talking of Zorn and transgression, John Brackett's new book, John Zorn: Transgression and Tradition, is a very interesting read and provides a lengthy analysis of a number of Zorn's piece, including "Untitled" for solo cello.