-J. D. Salinger, Nine Stories, page 123 sentences 6-8
So I got tapped by one of the “internet memes” floating around the literary and now musical blogs. Not really a fan of these but once tagged…well I’ll play along. As an aside I dunno if I really consider the chain letter aspect of this really letting this aspire to meme level. It seems like an artificial way to spread to me, OTOH I guess one could think of that as “memetic engineering”. The spreading it to five people part, I can’t say I’m up for that. In the same way that I haven’t spread any genetic material I think perhaps I’ll be a non-breeder of this meme. Oh all right fine I’ll play along, but like a more responsible parent I’ll keep my reproduction near replacement levels ;)
The meme rules are:
1) Pick up the nearest book.
2) Open to page 123.
3) Find the fifth sentence.
4) Post the next three sentences.
5) Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.
As one can see my pick was from Salingers, Nine Stories the story that page falls on happening to be Pretty Mouth and Green Eyes. One could argue that Gert Jonke’s Geometrical Regional Novel was closer at hand, but I have yet to read it and page 123 is right near the end. I for one refuse to read a bit of the end of a book before I’ve read it! Nine Stories, was only a couple of inches further away anyway, perhaps it would even win under strict measurement. It just happened to be out here in the living room at this time as I’d wanted to reread The Laughing Man a couple of weeks back and had yet to refile it. I have to say I rather like those three sentences; posted out of context of this “meme” they’d be pretty inexplicable.
I was tagged by Bruce Hodges at the always interesting Monotonous Forest Blog. I’ll tag Brian Olewnick at Just Outside and Richard Pinnell at Learning to Listen. That seems like a reasonable amount.
For the last three years I’ve been attending the annual All Bach Concert at Saint Marks Cathedral in the Capital Hill neighborhood of Seattle. They have a beautiful pipe organ and wonderful acoustics there and they do a series of organ recitals every year. The final concert of the series is always the All Bach concert which is as the name denotes a concert of works soley by Johann Sebastian Bach. I really should start attending more of the concert series but making just the Bach concert has been quite rewarding. It appears that next year in celebration of Messiaen’s 100th anniversary that they will be doing two concerts devoted to his works which personally I love, so I’m going to try to make those. But for this year it was only the All Bach show I made and this year it was performance of the Goldberg variations.
This year the featured organist was Daniel Sullivan playing his own arrangement of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Normally at these recitals I get to hear a number of pieces from Bach’s vast oeuvre that I’m unfamiliar with. Anyway with even a passing interest in Bach, or for that matter classical music in general has heard the Goldberg variations. A piece that I’ve loved since childhood I have actually been reengaged with it of late thanks to Richard Egarr’s fantastic historically informed harpshichord recording. Considering the ubiquity of this piece I really can’t imagine that anyone who reads this not being at least of passing familiarity of it. So I’m not going to go into much detail or background on the piece, the incredibly thorough Wikipedia page is recommended for those who want more information in that regard.
The concert began at 7:30pm so as usual I was hard pressed to leave work at a normal hour and still make it there. Shockingly I made it across the notoriously choked with traffic 520 bridge and to the church in a mere 20 minutes from my home arrive 15 minutes early. I definitely prefer to have a bit of time to relax and read the program before a concert so this was ideal circumstance. I’ve been making a point of picking up a CD from each of the All-Bach organists so I took this chance to acquire Sullivan’s recently released recording of the Goldbergs.
Soon enough Daniel Sullivan was introduced and the concert began. When transcribing a piece from one instrument to the other there are a lot of choice to be made. Going from the harpsichord to the organ provides quite the panoply of choices when you consider its vast dynamic range, the huge number of stops and voices. The temptation certainly exists to go to one extreme or the other: minimalist in trying to emulate the harpsichords sound and range, or in the opposite direction fully utilizing that range and all those stops. I’m happy to report that Sullivan took the wise middle ground. He stuck more or less within the range of the piece only using the immense power of the organs low end for emphases on some of the more dramatic variations. He kept to a set of stops that seemed almost thin for the organ, yet much richer then the harpsichord. At times he’d pull out some stops that I’d certainly not heard before but always in a very tasteful way. In general he’d do this to emphasize the kaleidoscopic nature of the counterpoint on some of the variations. At times these almost clashed which provides something akin to the frisson of a touch of dissonance in an otherwise harmonically straight piece. All in all the choice of sounds and dynamics was restrained, yet interesting always adding to the piece and never descending into showy gimmickry.
While I don’t think that organ transcriptions of this piece will replace the harpsichord for me I have to say I greatly enjoyed this. The resonance of the church and all the variety and range of the organ are why I love to go to these performances. The maze like qualities of Bach compositions is wholly engaging and a piece like the Goldbergs pushes that to the limits. Another great All-Bach recital which merely strengthens my resolve to continue my tradition of attendance.
April 17th 2008 at the Chapel Performance Space
Seattle WA USA
As I’ve mentioned previously this has really been a good year for 20th Century Composition in the Pacific Northwest. The string of great performances continued on with a rare visit of Stephan Drury to Seattle thanks to the Washington Composers Forums Transport Series. What with the Feldman Marathon and Frederic Rzewski’s recent performance, his selection of works from those composers seemed almost a continuation of those events. The concert had been listed on the Chapel’s blog for a while but with just the Rzewski piece listed. As this is such a great piece I had already planned to attend and when with a late update to the listing the Feldman piece was added it was just gravy. Alas at the same time they also changed the concert start time to 7:30 which means I’d have to leave work early to make it. Compounding this situation was an incredibly rare mid-April snowstorm. Luckily things are a bit slack for me at work this week and I was able to leave early enough that I made it to the show a few minutes before start time. What with the foul weather they ended up starting around 7:45 so it wasn’t quite as tight as I feared.
I: Palais de Mari (c. Morton Felman)
I’m quite familiar with this piece having heard several recordings of it and having seen Ivan Sokolov perform it earlier this year as part of the Seattle Chamber Player’s Feldman Marathon so this would be an interesting comparison. Drury gave us a brief introduction to the piece mainly mentioning that this was Feldman’s final solo piano piece and that like the bulk of his works was instructed to be played softly. He also mentioned that one of Feldman’s primary concerns in his late works was patterns often constructed from repetitions of short segments inspired somewhat by oriental rugs. This is something that is definitely present in Palais de Mari, which prominently features short little arpeggios and broken chords that seem to slowly iterate though a self similar pattern. Every so often in the piece there is a discordant chord in the lower register which hangs in the air until it mostly fades away. This always makes me think of how in an oriental rug there is always a ldeliberate flaw so as not to be an affront to Allah.
Drury’s performance was very well paced taking around twenty-five minutes to transverse the piece and his touch was light but sure. I thought that one of those aforementioned chords was out of place at one point toward the end but it is hard to say, as they are irregularly spaced and I wouldn’t claim to know the piece that well. As promised the dynamics were uniformly soft, though those discordant moments provided a nice contrast. The excellent acoustics of the chapel allowed even the faintist of sounds to be heard with a crystalline clarity. Ambient sounds would leak in from time to time, though always at an even softer volume, a dopplering siren at one point being particularly nice. In comparing the two recent performances I’ve witnessed I would say I found Drury’s superior to Sokolovs. Sokolov I thought rushed through the piece a bit, which isn’t all that surprising as it was the last piece of a nearly four hour concert that prominently featured his playing. While I think that Drury’s performance is excellent I would say that I still prefer my recording of John Tilbury playing it.
Interval Series: Ghost Light Trio (c. Matt Sargent, film by Mike Gibisser)
Apparently part of each of Washington Composers Forum’s Transport series is a short film made to the music of a local composer. This film is shown at the end of intermission before the second half of the concert. The film we saw tonight was Ghost Light Trio which overall I wasn’t that impressed by. There seemed to be odd technical difficulties, which as it was just a DVD playing through a projector seemed a bit odd - it could be they were part of the piece, which if so was wholly uninteresting. The music was made up of three sounds, each heavily processed at times. These sounds were recordings of water, traffic and bells. The film was two images with dividing line as if there was two projectors. The film began with the sound of surf and corresponding imagery of blurry ocean. The chimes came in, often overlayed and at times quite dense. The imagery was blurred windows, a mostly empty room and water. The music was uniformly ambient with the bells being the most dramatic aspect. It wasn’t very interesting music and the filmmaker seemed to have responded likewise. There was two overwhelmingly loud blasts of sound that came across as a technical error but again its hard to see how that could happen. Additionally there was a bit where it looked like the video signal went down which is certainly possible but as it was just a DVD again seems unlikely. Especially as one of these times half of the video went to a “no input” screen but considering that there wasn’t two inputs seems like it was staged. If so this was visually and conceptually uninteresting and didn’t redeem the overall tepid affair.
II: The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (c. Frederic Rzewski)
Shortly after the film, Drury again took the stage and again began with some explanatory remarks. This piece, which is thirty-six variations on the Chilean song ¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido! by Sergio Ortega and Quilapayún, takes nearly an hour to perform. So Drury explained he wanted to give us a roadmap as it were to the piece. The organization of the piece is nicely laid out in its Wikipedia page but he explained several features to the structure of the variations that I wasn’t aware of. The piece is 36 variations which are organized in sets of 6. Each set of 6 is 5 unique variations with the 6th being constructed of the previous 5. This principle continues one level high in that the 6th set of variations is made up of the corresponding sets of the unique variations. That is to say that variation 31 would be made up of variation 1, 7, 13, 20 and 27. Variation 32 would be made up of variation 2, 8, 14, 21 and 28 and so on through variation 35. Variation 36, following the structure, then is made up of the previous 5 which being constructed from the preceding 30 means that it is a microcosm, a reflection of the entire piece.
The People United Will Never Be Defeated! is a rousing piece based on a catchy theme that one can completely understand being used as a revolutionary anthem. As I walked out from the show I overheard at least three different individuals independently humming the theme. The variations, as variations do, present this theme in myriad ways, but in classic 20th Century style it deconstructs it further and further to the point that some variations would only be recognizable as derived from it via analysis of the notes themselves. Yet it always maintains the propulsive energy of the piece even in the softer, slower sections. Drury performed the piece from memory which I found quite impressive. Variations do make aspects of memorization easier, but at the same time their self-similarity can make it easy to get lost. Especially at that great a number of variations over such a length of time. Having seen Rzewski perform just a couple of months ago I can say that Drury captured his energy and the strength of his attacks quite well. The piece while having a fairly romantic feel to it, does incorporate a variety of extended techniques, including whistling along with his playing and one point slamming the lid down over the keys. Another part I liked quite a bit was a sequence of vigorous one finger oscillationg playing way up in the upper register. This was done at great force with his hands as fists with just the pointer finger extended hammering at the keys. This created layers of overtones and reverberations that reminded me of nothing so much as the techniques I’d seen used in the Lachenmann performance a couple of weeks back. In fact the very concept of using a popular melody and exploring, exploiting and deconstructing it in this way was a connection between these two, one that I have to assume Lachenmann is doing after Rzewski.
It was a bravura performance as powerful and as well executed as the recordings I’ve heard of this piece. After pounding out the thirty-six variations Drury delivered on the optional improvisation with a short bit of reference to the them and them of course the rousing reprise. At the conclusion he lept away from the piano and received a well deserved standing ovation at the conclusion.
AMM with the Gunter Hampel Group
March 26th 1972
Deutsches Jazzfestival, Frankfurt Germany
This is without a doubt the single strangest recording in my AMM archives. It basically is a huge jazz group that ranges from bop to fairly free with AMM buried somewhere in there. Prévost seem relatively content with to throw in some serious drumming along with his more percussive work, and Gare mixes his sound oriented sax with some more tonal lines. The first time I heard this I just assumed this was the duo AMM, which as they broke up in early 1972 made sense. But on doing some research and some close listening it does seem that Rowe and Cardew are present. Rowe seems to be laying out or perhaps just completely buried for nearly the first half, but then those scrabbling manipulated pickups of his can be heard coming and going depending on how much else is played. As for Cardew, well it’s impossible to really say, there does seem to be some of his dry bowing now and again, but impossible to say that it wasn’t the bass player or even another instrument. March 26th 1972, is right on the cusp of the disintegration of the quartet AMM; by the end of the month Rowe would have left the group with Cardew to follow shortly.
What is particularly bizarre about this recording is that if it is the quartet AMM it seems diametrically opposed to all that they espoused. The jazz that they had turned away from is the primary form here with continuous scatting from Jeanne Lee dominating this performance. Evan Parkers playing is a bit more sympathetic to AMM but here it leans toward tonal lines or fiery blasts, two poles this group swings wildly from as if they were a revue of the last decade of jazz. Rowe’s completely non-idiomatic guitar just sounds like noise on the tape and I suspect would be dismissed as such by your average jazz fan. Speaking of which your average jazz fan, one who could find nothing to like about AMM could get right behind this recording.
All in Together Now (G. Hampel)
Günter Christmann (trombone); Gunter Hampel (soprano sax, bass clarinet); Lou Gare (tenor sax); Evan Parker (soprano sax, tenor sax); Perry Robinson (clarinet); Alexander Von Schlippenbach (piano); Cornelius Cardew (cello); Keith Rowe (guitar, etc.); J.B. “Buschi” Niebergall (bass); Eddie Prévost (drums, percussion, etc.); Jeanne Lee (vocals); Unknown (announcer)
The recording begins with an intro in German that announces AMM “from London” and then the members of the Gunter Hampel group. The music comes right up with a bit of brushes on a ride cymbal and then some piano chords kick in. Melodic sax line over the top of this and then a bit of vamping background sax. A bit of discord between the saxes and then everybody is playing in this swirling miasma of sound. Very free jazz, nothing super out but only loosely connected. And then begins the vocalizations. Jeanne does either abstract vocalizations or scatting for pretty much the rest of the set with only a few short breaks. Lots of right up front drumming, a feature that runs through the bulk of the set it no matter how abstract it gets. The drums and the vocalizations are a constant and it really grounds the piece and keeps it from exploring new territory. Trumpet bleats come and go, some odd squiggles in the background, probably from Gare. Around thirteen minutes in things mellow way out, with the drumming at its most sedate, long vocalizations from Jeanne, and drawn out tones on the horns. But as is always the case in free jazz the mellow parts just serve to emphasize the active parts and it picks right back up with wailing sax, maddening drums and vocal wailing. This continues apace for some time, leading to a section with some real upfront scatting. Then another drop out, with just some cymbal work, low volume snare rolls (Prevost?), sax squeaks (Gare?) and a splattering of piano, under the scatting.
Finally she drops out and it is just piano and very quiet trombone. Some bass plucking comes into this, almost a solo with scattered drums and a almost mechanical sound very quiet. Some electronic-ish sounding squiggles, the first obvious sign that Rowe is actually present. Then the scatting comes back up. The electronic scrabbling becomes a bit more aggressive, piano now being constantly played, though fairly low in the mix, Gare style abstract sax-work also fairly quiet. After this more down-tempo, almost AMM-ish interlude things explode again. Off the hook trombone, the scatting fast and furious, piano chords being pounded out, a drum “solo” level freakout, scrabbling on the guitar a total miasma of sound. Very dense now, the vocals drop out and there is some serious sax work. recognizable as Parker. Then as the vocals come back in, everything drops out but piano tinkling and a low plaintive horn. A lazy baseline drifts through, a bit of scrabbling guitar. One sax line comes in, then goes, then another and so on. Runs on the piano, some skronks and squeaks, the scatting now right up front and rather guttural. The energy isn’t so high but everyone seems to be coming back in for one last go around as the piece is in it’s final minutes. The track then ends with just as honking horn as Jeanne gives us a “Thank you very much”. Then applause and one last bit of sax probably from Parker.
This recording really raises far more questions then I have answers for. It could be that at this festival the organizers threw all these people together in the end for a “large group” and they all played along. Perhaps in the end this quote from John Tilbury is what we have to be satisfied by:
-John Tilbury (3)
Thanks to Brian Olewnick for further information about this period of AMM.
References
1) Gunter Hampel: Website, Wikipedia
2) Notes on AMM: Entering and Leaving History Stuart Boomer, CODA Magazine no. 290. 2000
3) Meta Machine Music, Rob Young, The Wire Issue #132 (February 1995)
4) Edwin Prévost, No Sound is Innocent, Copula, 1995
5) The AMM page at the European Free Improvisation Home
6) Keith Rowe interview by Dan Warburton at Paris Transatlantic
Eye Music
Friday April 4th, 2008 | 8:00 PM
$5 - $15 sliding scale
Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center
50th & Sunnyside, in Wallingford
So the group that I did that performance of Treatise w/ Keith Rowe is
doing a performance this Friday of some of the other Graphic Scores
we’ve been working on. Info about the group can be found here and info on the venue can be found here.
We’re going to be playing the following pieces, in various combinations of the ensemble:
Mike Shannon Matrix
Toshi Ichiyanagi Sapporo
Cornelius Cardew Treatise (pages 72,73 and 76)
Bob Cobbing Chamber Music
Robin Mortimore Very Circular Pieces
Clifford Burke Upside Down & Backwards
Michael Parsons Piece for 1 or More Guitars
David Toop Lizard Music
Saturday March 29th, 2008 | 8pm
Helmut Lachenmann
UBC School of Music Recital Hall
This has been a pretty great year for composed music in the Pacific NW, with performances of Feldman, Rzewelski and now Helmut Lachenmann. Apparently Lachenmann is doing a year residency at Harvard and has taken the opportunity while he is in the States to visit a number of colleges and present some of his music.Vancouver New Music along with the UBC School of Music and the University of Victoria managed to have him come up for a week or so and present programs at both colleges. I of course jumped at the chance to not only see rarely preformed works of a modern composer, but the composer himself.
It’s been odd weather here this last week, where it would go from 65 (f) one weekend to snowing the next. Snow in late March is very rare in this region and the fact that it was doing so the day before I had to make the three hour drive north was a bit worrisome. Luckily the weather was fine here, the snow hadn’t lasted, but as I made my way further north there was a lot more evidence of this weather. The border also proved to be a challenge causing me to wait an hour to get through. Combine that with a bit of wandering to find the campus and then the recital hall I made it in around 7:20pm. Just as I walked in they finished introducing Helmut Lachenmann who was going to do a little pre-concert Q&A with a UBC faculty member.
The Q&A was pretty interesting, basically Lachenmann was asked about the style of his music, the critical reaction to it and then some details on the pieces that were to be performed that night. Lachenmann apparently refers to his music as Musique Concrète Instrumentale, by which he means he tries to approximate the sound world that was explored in Musique Concrète via electronic means with traditional acoustic instruments. He talked of industrial sounds, the noises of the everyday and how he wanted to uses those as materials. Thus he worked with such extended techniques, extremes in pitch and unorthodox methods of playing. This he said often brought a negative critical reaction, which he implied came from people seeing something they loved used in such a way. He gave the example of a ‘cello, and how if you loved the ‘cello seeing how it was abused in Pression, would bring about that negative reaction.
After a bit of a break Giorgio Magnanensi of Vancouver New Music came out to introduce the performance and note a program change. He said that Lachnemann had agreed to perform one of his pieces and that was added to the beginning of the second half. So with that the show began with the one non-Lachnemann piece.
Post-Prae-Ludium per Donau, composed by Luigi Nono
performed by Max Murray on Tuba and Daniel Peter Biro, Randy Jones and Kirk McNally on live electronics.
Luigio Nono was Helmut Lachenmann’s teacher in the late ’50s so it was appropriate that the concert began with this tip of the hat to his old mentor. This piece was for solo tuba and live electronics. The soloist sat on stage with just his head and the tuba peeking up behind two music stands. Three electronicians sat in the midst of the audience with a table full of laptops and electronic effects. The piece began with this dry gasps and burbles of air through the tuba with a pretty good separate in time. The electronics kicked in with rather lower level echos, stereo panning and what seemed to be very distant murmuring voices. The tuba’s sounds became increasingly more longer, continuous tones to which the electronics echo would merge and create shifting patterns. The murmur went away about half way through and it just seemed to be shifting layers of delay. The end was very beautiful with this wash of sound as the tuba played a continuous tone that was echoed and interfered with by the electronics.
Serynade, composed by Helmut Lachenmann
performed by Jee Yeon Ryu, piano
This was a solo piano piece and was in a pretty stark contrast to the Nono piece that preceded it. Massive attacks on the piano, from huge two handed chords to an entire arm crashing down on the keys began the piece. Usually these would played with massive force and seperated in space. Not lengthy gaps but enough to really focus on the resonances of the piano. This seemed to be a major aspect of what Lachenmann is exploring, how the piano resonance can be setup, altered and worked with. The sustain pedal was used a lot, often coming in or cutting out post the sound event to modulate and alter this resonance. Other components of the piece included quick arpeggios and glissando’s that again seemed to be done for the resonance that remained afterwards or layered above a lingering roar from one of those smashed chords. The piece concluded with single notes hammered with a lot of force fully spaced out to allow their sound to die out.
Franklin Cox
performed by Franklin Cox This solo ‘cello piece had been moved out of the second half to allow for the added Lachenmann piano performance. This piece is a full exploration of all the varieties of sound that can be eked out of a ‘cello. It began with this dry half scrape of the bow across the strings and then continued with two fingers rubbing up a set of strings in an ascending whining sound. The body of the ‘cello was rubbed and then the bow itself which was still motionless across the strings. The bow then came into play underneath the strings, generating dry crackling, sounds as it was rubbed against them. Then more percussive sounds as it was slapped against the strings. Some staccato bowing beneath the bridge created with staggering guttural sound before the strings themselves were bowed in the normal position but with his hand muting the strings just above the bridge. A bit of slow bowed strings, dry and with no vibrato faded in and out in the last couple of minutes. This was a really great piece and I really enjoyed the vast soundworld that was revealed by the instrument.
Helmut Lachenmann
There was a short intermission after and then Helmut Lachnenmann walked on stage and took a seat at the piano. He began to play this jaunty little melody way high in the upper register. After he had gone through this tune he stopped and turned to the audience and said that he should give us the titles of the pieces. This piece is made up of seven German children tunes and he gave us all the titles and then said he would begin again. So again with the nearly one fingered tune eked out in the upper register with the sustain pedal down. The next little tune was similar but midrange on the piano. Then a super short one also about in the midrange followed by one that he played with one hand crossed over the the other. This seemed to be the melody played in both hands clashing with each other. The next piece seemed to take this a step further and was just chords by the overlapping hands in this dense wall of sound where I could pick out no melody. The sixth little tune was back to the simple one finger melody but this time way down in the lower register. The final part began in the low end but quickly moved to the extreme upper register where those dry tones with little resonance eked out the simple melody a note at a time. An odd piece, I think the point was how these simple melodies could generate the same odd colliding resonances on the piano as his extreme and more abstract pieces. It was good fun overall and neat to see Lachnemann playing his own compositions.
Jee Yeon Ryu, AK Coope and Franklin Cox
performed by Jee Yeon Ryu on piano, AK Coope on clarinets and Franklin Cox on ‘cello.
The final piece of the even was a trio for clarinet/bass clarinet, ‘cello and piano. This was the longest piece of the evening and the only real ensemble piece. Each of the three instruments seemed to work through a bunch of different sounds and techniques with only the most oblique reference to each other. The piano was most sounds seperated in space, short chords and runs, mallett work on the strings and body of the piano and some inside/outside playing. The ‘cello explored a lot of the extended techniques and sounds that we had heard in
Pression, with quite a bit of very dry bowing. The clarinet mostly did short little sustained tones and little runs. At several points she would stand up and emit a blast into the pianos cavity. About half way through the piece the clarinetist switched to bass clarinet and began generated wispy breathy sounds through it. After a bit of this she again transition to short continuous tones. The group interaction was hard to determine, it really seemed like three simultaneous explorations of sound. However at several points they stopped completely for nice little silences that demonstrated them working together very well. This piece in many ways sounded the most like stereotyped twentieth century composed music, with this myriad short passages, wide variety of sounds and that feeling of disconnectedness. It was though a nice contrast to all the solo pieces and constantly engaging.Another really well put together event from Vancouver New Music and a really rare opportunity that I’m glad I got to experience.
There are a couple of events coming up in the Pacific NW over the next week that are well worth your time if you are in the area. The first is a performance of the compositions of Helmut Lachenmann and Luigi Nono up in Vancouver. Note that Helmut Lachenmann himself will be there, though I’m not sure in what capacity (conduction? supervising? there was a rumor he was playing piano…). The second is a performance by Eric Lanzillotta’s Graphic Score Group that I myself am part of. This performance will include a wide selection of graphic and textual scores performed in various combinations of the the group. Should be a good time with a wide variety of music.
Saturday March 29th, 2008 | 8pm
Helmut Lachenmann
(co-presented by Vancouver New Music, UVic School of Music and UBC School of Music)
UBC School of Music Recital Hall, 6361 Memorial Road
Free admission
Friday, April 4th, 2008 | 8pm
Eye Music - Graphic Scores
Chapel Performance Space at the Good Shepherd Center
4649 Sunnyside Ave. N, 4th Floor, Seattle, WA
US$5-15 sliding scale
This is the last of the early boots that have been leaked to the nets. This set occurred about two weeks after the previous one and would still be the lineup of Cardew, Gare, Prévost and Rowe. While that set had that chamber feel to it with multiple bowed string instruments, this one differs in many ways yet feels informed by it. It has a very electronic, controlled noise feel in the beginning with the percussion sounding mechanical and various statics, pure tones and electronically amplified scrapes, buzzes and the like. It then enters a very spacious period, where drumming (very traditional jazz style), isolated piano clusters and a murmur of bowed instruments come in and out. Quite a bit of radio or tape or both in this one especially toward the end. Overall there is that uneasiness and tension from the previous set, but the variety of sounds used is a lot wider.
This one begins tentatively, with a rattling metallic percussion, static and this intermittent high whistling sound. The occasional beat of a drum accentuates this rather mechanical noise. A bit into this a warbling bowing sound can be heard now and again pretty buried below the other sounds. A piano note or two. Then it drops dead. A bell rings out and then some squeaky bowing comes in and rises in volume.This doesn’t last and the playing becomings bursts of sound in space. Quiet piano chords, short snare rolls, guitar hum comes in and goes. Some faint radio at one points rises almost inaudibly in a fairly quiet place, so not much volume. Eddie then seriously picks up the snare rolls, not so much playing loudly as continuously and to this the piano responds accordingly. Again they break off and it becomes more pointalistic; electronics swelling via volume pedals, percussion effects, choppy bowing. More aggressive piano chords.
Things become very spacious, the piano plays short melodic figures, a persistent electronic hum, squeaks as of rubbed drumheads, the radio or tape coming in and then fading away, a cymbal crash. Things meander for a bit before picking up again, once again led by the drums, this time a furious assault on a tom or bongo. Some kind of Cecil Taylor-ish figures on the piano, fingernails on chalk bowing and muffled radio. Again the dense part doesn’t last and fades to a persistent low volume wail, like an ebow’d string, quite piano notes, bowed metal, the occasional voice from the radio. After a bit of this a real beat driven thing come on the radio, to which the piano responds with a ragtime fragment of the Ode to Joy, and everyone else does this holding pattern of sounds - quite rattly percussion, low bowing and so on. The radio doesn’t last long but this uneasy, persistence does. Some louder percussion is brought in and the bowing becomes more aggressive. Things really quiet down from here, a background of humming, quiet percussion very steady state. Radio again briefly appears, with a snippet of the Beatles as does bowing of a sliding nature. Very electronic sounding in this bit almost like an ambient fadout -if it was done on a factory floor with some of the machines winding down. In the last minute again the drums go crazy, almost in a full on drum solo. Clearly a full kit was present at this session. The piano tries to fight through this, with low end chord crashes, and there is a persistent electronic buzz and then the tape ends.
- Edwin Prévost
The feeling to me of this one is that of a desire to not develop anything too far where too far is defined by the individual player. For some things this may be only a fragment of sound for others it may take a minute or five but nothing overstays its welcome. Now you might argue that this is what makes improvised music good in general, but as a deliberate strategy it creates something markedly different then just sensitive playing. Not to mention that this is quite different from later AMM with its layers of continuous sound. This constraint (if it really is one beyond my speculation of course) curtails droning, overuse of the same sound world, reliance on established gestures and so on. When allowed those things can all be great and used well and thus argued to not overstay their welcome. But in this piece it feels like a deliberate strategy and it gives a markedly different feel to it. At times it can kind of hint at insect music with a variety of short sounds coming and going, but as other sounds can last a few minutes or longer this is never a dominate mode. Especially as the individual players may not be synchronized in how long the develop what they are playing, so you get a nice overlapping of short quick events, with longer more developed ones. Overall an interesting effect that gives this a brooding feel but with a prickly surface.
References
Cornelius Cardew, Towards an Ethic of Improvisation Cornelius Cardew(1936-1981): A Reader, Copula 2006
Notes on AMM: Entering and Leaving History Stuart Boomer, CODA Magazine no. 290. 2000
Meta Machine Music, Rob Young, The Wire Issue #132 (February 1995)
Edwin Prévost, No Sound is Innocent, Copula, 1995
The AMM page at the European Free Improvisation Home
Keith Rowe interview by Dan Warburton at Paris Transatlantic
Frederic Rzewski at the Chapel.
The Chapel was far more packed then I have ever seen it before. They normally setup two columns of half a dozen seats going back for 10-12 rows. This time they had added an additional “wing” to each of these nearly doubling the seating. These were nearly all filled and seemed like some additional seating was set up in the back. All those bodies warmed it up pretty well. They gave us a nice handout which detailed the pieces that were going to be played in depth, including the old folk songs that a couple of them were based on. A note on that, this is a fairly common component of Rzewski’s compositions, where he’ll take a folk song and riff on it, most famously in People United Will Never be Defeated! with its 36 variations. Not too much passed the published start time the lights dimmed and Frederic ambled up to the stage and without preamble began to play.
Johnny has Gone for a Soldier (2003)
Rzewski, as he sat down, immediately attack the piano with the opening chords of this piece. Lots of big chords, dramatic runs, propulsive density. Rather romantic I felt, with powerful emotions directly channeled into the music and a deliberate attempt to communicate this to the audience. There’d be these more plaintive, brooding sections as the lull between attacks and then back to the dramatic attacks on the piano. His precision and power in these dramatic sections was impressive, especially as he looks like this slight grandfatherly figure. The whole thing slowed down and by the end was softer, more contemplative. Pauses began to appear, tentative feeling like there was some criteria he had to meet before he’d start playing again. Three of four of these variable length pauses and then it ended with a few quiet chords.
Afterwards he stood up to the applause and when it died down said a few words. He pointed out that all of these pieces tonight were about war. I knew this and this was pretty obvious in the program notes but I have to say that I could really feel it in the pieces. I didn’t do a very close reading of the program notes until after the show and about the above piece he said this: “I simply allowed my thoughts on war, and the current one in particular, to spin themselves out, always following the structure of the song”. This is definitely how it felt to me, the bits of the theme poking up here and there. He describes that tentative ending thusly: “The ending seems inconclusive, just like the ongoing war now.”
War Songs (2008, premier)
Continuing with his comments at the conclusion of the previous piece, he informed us that the next pieces were a work in progress and that this in fact was the first time he’ll perform them. “I don’t know how to play these yet” he concluded as he sat down. These feeling definitely went through the performance of these, as it felt hesitant, rawer a bit careful. At times he’d lean forward and his big bushy eyebrows would raise almost in surprise, a “what was I thinking” kind of look. And yet I felt this all really added to the piece. The war we are in now is such a mess and the reactions are so odd. People are mostly opposed and yet they aren’t really invested and don’t do anything. To someone from the ‘60 where popular uprisings and protest was the norm and the conversation was always dominated by the war it must just seem confusing. Confusion is what cam through to me in this piece, interspersed with some anger and genuine pain.
Fragments of popular war melodies would seem to arise here and again, spaced out, sometimes almost played a note at a time with one finger and then collapsing into the miasma of the piece. Some of this almost had a serial feel to me and the program notes do reveal that they were highly structured. “Writing these things was a little like doing crossword puzzles.” Again I think the unpracticed nature of this performance helped out with this deeper structure, it might feel a lot less emotional if played with perfect precision. Afterwards he genuinely asked for comments on the piece.
Mayn Yingele (1988)
The finale piece from the first set was also the oldest composition. It felt a lot closer to the first piece, with loud romantic sections and sparser more intricate bits. It felt more structured almost a combination of Liszt and Webern in its mix of romance and structure. Or perhaps a throwback to that period in the early twentieth century where certain modern composers were using the techniques of the day adapting the folk songs of their youth. This piece is a set of twenty four variations on a Yiddish tune to which a poem by Morris Rosenfield had been set. The theme concerns a father who works so much in a sweatshop that he never sees his son. Rzewski wrote this piece on the anniversary of Kristallnacht and of it his says: “My piece is a reflection on that vanished part of Jewish tradition which so strongly colors, by its absence, the culture of our time”. The most powerful part of this piece was it’s conclusion where after a more contemplative section he switches to these repeated pounded chords with the sustain pedal down. These built up in power and volume and reverberated in the space and clashed with his other in a violent cry.
Frederic Rzewski at the piano
Four Pieces (1977)
There was a short intermission during which they (blessedly) opened the windows of the chapel and let in some air and ambient sounds. Not a very long break, fifteen minutes or so and then the lights dimmed and Frederic came back onto the stage. The final piece was the oldest of all the pieces he played and the longest. The notes inform us that it was written as a “kind of sequel” to The People United. Structurally it is pretty different from that piece and not being a set of variations doesn’t quite have that feel. But you can tell that stylistically it is of that period. The notes describe the structure thusly: “It is a kind of sonata in four movements, with a single theme that keeps returning in different forms and moods, vaguely reminiscent of traditional music of the Andes, but without actually quoting anything.” The theme threading through it does tie it all together and the four parts are pretty recognizable distinct. It has the elements of the earlier piece; romantic runs, big chords and softer more introspective sections. It’s connection to the war theme wasn’t as apparent to me, but the notes inform me that it is a “meditation on Chile four years after the coup d’etat”.
Musically my favorite part was the fourth and final piece was began with a repeated figures in both hand in the very upper register. Almost minimalist in nature these slowly worked their way down to the low end of the piano and then began working their way up again. A pause in the mid range with almost variations on the repetitions and then it was back up again. Once reaching the upper register he almost immediately headed lower again this time a pretty rapid transgression down and back up. These repeated again and once in the low end began a slower, but inevitable migration back upwards. The piece concluded with single notes, spaced out on the very highest keys. Really stunning and a nice way to conclude the evening. Frederic concluded his stay in Seattle with a well deserved standing ovation.
I really enjoyed this performance and the music. I hope I have the stamina and strength of Frederic when I’m 70! I really appreciate how he has stayed true to his politics and they way his concerns for the world have not diminished. Politically music is a tricky thing, done wrong it is no more then propaganda or club songs. Too abstract and it is totally opaque. Obviously things like the program notes help bring this clear but I think that at least in a couple of the pieces the message is clear. Like a well chose album title, just telling us that the nights theme was war related was enough. The notes just gave us the specifics.
February 15th-17th 2008
at The Chapel Performance Space and Gallery1412 in Seattle WA
I got home from the last night of the second half of SIMF and seven hours later left for a business trip in Austin. As I was actually sent there to work and the travel was pretty exhausting I wasn’t able to get to blogging this second half of the SIMF until now. Plus I left my notes at home. So with such a passage of time I am going to forgo the more in-depth writeup of the previous three days and just present a rough overview of each set from the final three nights here.
One aspect of the festival didn’t really reveal itself to me until the second to last day of the fest: the first half was string oriented and the second half was horn oriented. Perhaps dictated somewhat by the vagaries of the traveling musicians this was clearly a reinforced choice and an interesting one. I have to admit that for me horn players have a much higher threshold to cross, the range of sounds that have typified these instruments hold little interest for me in an improvised context. True, the guitar is pretty much a walking, talking cliché machine but a lack of creativity on the guitar tends to evoke boredom in me, with a horn it tends to make me cringe. That being said some of the most creative current music is being done by wind instruments and as always it is the sound that interests me not the source.
SIMF day 4: February 15th 2008
Chris DeLaurenti / Liz Albee
Wade Matthews / Liz Allbee / Greg Sinibaldi
Stéphane Rives
I’d seen Liz play trumpet at No West last year and I thought in general her performance was mixed. Too much reliance on the easy route of volume and overly theatrical for my taste. Christ DeLaurenti, whose Favorite Intermissions from last year was a favorite was more of a wild card; just what would he do in an improvised music context? Well he had a mixer with a bunch of things plugged into it but he almost exclusively played a pocket trumpet (or cornet) along with Liz’s trumpet. Chris stayed pretty tasteful throughout on the trumpet working with long low hisses, sputters and rattles. Liz though did not and while she would use sound oriented techniques they were just another thing to work through as she moved on through Donald Duck sounds, flatulence, ironic melodic segments and so on. Ironic detachment and a lack of genuineness is what I really felt in her work and that’s not really what I’m there to experience.
The second set completely moved away from any sort of restraint with Wade adding in the most clichéd quick cut DSP sounds and absolutely trite field recordings. Add to this Liz, in pretty much the same mode as the previous set, but with all restraints gone. Greg is pretty much a free jazz guy and makes no bones about it. So IMO that’s fine, I may not be so into that but its his thing and he’s good at it. However this set was soul crushing with what seemed just like a cacophony of egos.
The night had been grim so far but it was totally redeemed by this last set. Stéphane put a chair right in front of the audience and sat down with his soprano saxophone. With the bell pressed firmly against his leg he proceeded to produce and intense continuous sound. This pure tone, modulated by his circular breathing, taps on the keys, slight movements and his very endurance was entrancing. He stopped only to change reeds once and then another time when he decided to change techniques. He wrung incredible sounds out of this sax and in displayed incredible control and stamina. Really a great set and I went home and ordered his solo CD the next day.
SIMF day 5: February 16th 2008
Gust Burns / Stéphane Rives
Liz Albee / Jonathan Sielaff / Tyler Wilcox
Wade Matthews / Stéphane Rives
This night opened with its strongest set and which was one I’d been waiting fore. Gust was working his doweled piano as usual and Stéphane mixed up his long tones of the last night with blasts, gasps and messed with tones. Some incredible parts where Stéphane’s tones merged with the rougher tones of Gusts doweled piano or when the rustling leaves sound from Gust would provide a base for the guttural gasps where Stéphane would slap his keys while forcing air through his trumpet. Not too long a performance, but one where every sound counted and the movements between sound formed a structure that captured my attention.
Trumpet, Clarinet and Soprano Sax was what this trio was made up of. This was the point where I figured out the horn orientation of this half of the festival. It seems to be an obvious programming choice but I never am a big fan of the like instruments pairing. This was well utilized in this half of the fest; duo trumpets from yesterday and now the wind trio. Things are more interesting in my mind when contrasting sounds are paired, but like I said it is so often done, I must be in a minority. Anyway this set was definitely not to my taste. Liz played pretty much the same stuff as before which I’ve already expressed my distaste for. Tyler was much more tonal and worked with longer tones and more traditional extended techniques then Stéphane on the same instrument. A pretty good player, but two soprano saxes seemed a bit much for the weekend I think. Jonathan’s playing I have seen a number of times and he is a creative, sensitive player whom, I always enjoy seeing play. In this conflict of horns he was more aggressive then I’ve seen him before, though in the only redeemable part of this set he played long continuous low drones on a bass clarinet.
I was very curious about this final set as Wade and Stéphane are an established duo and seem to be touring the states. Wade only had one laptop for this set and the other one appeared to be the one with the field recordings. In general his Reaktor playing was much more tasteful, restrained and complementary to Stéphane’s playing. This set was quite nice, with the digital warbles, tones, ticks and statics blending interestingly with Stéphane’s long tones, gasps, rattled winds and sharp blasts. You could tell they’d played together, they brought in sounds they knew the other could play off of and the worked together to construct a piece of music that was engaging, rich and complex. Definitely one of the better sets of this half if not as appealing to me as Stéphane’s solo and his duo with Gust.
SIMF day 6: February 17th 2008
Greg Campbell / Lesli Dalaba / Wade Matthews
Liz Albee
Wade Matthews / Tyler Wilcox / Stéphane Rives / Chris DeLaurenti
This evening began with basically a free jazz trio. Greg had a full drumkit and while he began with a subtle playing of gongs a full on jazz freakout was in the offering. Lesli, who is a stalwart in new music circles, laid out for some time before ripping it up in various ways once she joined in. Wade was back on the dual laptop setup was pretty much like he been in yesterdays trio: aggressive DSP quick cuts and that same collection of trite field recordings. For what this was this seemed okay, just not my kind of thing. One of the reasons for this is the reliance in free jazz (actually I’d say this was more EFI) of these quiet sections almost exclusively to emphasize the chaotic freakouts. This gives all pieces like this the same feel and a boringly predictable structure.
For her solo Liz mixed it up by beginning with Lesli and herself on non-trumpet, wind based noisemakers, Lesli on some sort of long twisted tube and Liz on conch shell. They walked up the side of the audience with their skronks, bleats and gasps. Lesli sat down and Liz moved into her usual theatrical trumpet playing, working with her blasts of air, ironic melodic fragments and humming through the horn. After a bit of this she then switched to laughably bad electronics. A collection of pedals, a CD player and what looked like some of those low-run pseudo-DIY devices was her tools for some of the most trite looping, cheesy noise and damaged CD faux circuit-bent sounding stuff. Amateurish and rather dreadful, but thankfully short.
The festival ended with duo soprano saxes, Wade’s laptoppery and Chris no playing what looked like a homemade turntable plus various other gee-gaws. This had some real interesting textures to it though I’m not sure I’d say it ever really gelled. Chris put in some serious rumbling noise and Stéphane and Tyler would emit blasts and skronks to compete as Wade mixed in his usual combination of sound. It had a nice factory like effect at times, and never fell into a rut. The duo sopranos wasn’t very necessary and it seemed like Tyler was often following what Stéphane was doing. They played two pieces the second one quite short but I think more successful. It was very textural and for once Wade’s sample of traffic on a highway really fit in well. The saxes just provided sheets of air along with the traffic sounds and Chris put in this very mechanical sound from hand cranking a record on his homemade turntable. This piece was quite nice and a good way to end the fest.
This second part I didn’t find to be as strong as the first half, but still there was four solid sets in the nine and that really is a decent percentage. Others I’m sure found a lot more in the other sets as well and lord knows I don’t expect these festivals to cater directly to my tastes. Considering how much of the first half I enjoyed I’d say I got more then I deserved. For all of my photos check out my SIMF 2008 set on Flickr and for all of my SIMF reports click here.