Here I go again, reviewing my own concert...
This concert came up rather abruptly (as regular readers of this blog will already know); there was a cancellation of a concert at the Chapel, so I grabbed it and pulled in two other musicians – Beth Fleenor and Bruce Greeley, both clarinetists. We played what we could on short notice (for what audience showed up at the last minute), and at least the two clarinetists pulled it off admirably.
We did three pieces (two relatively short, and one longer) from my StormSound Cycle.
First up, Beth played “Desert Bloom” (#3 in the Cycle). Essentially a drone piece more or less in the manner of Phill Niblock, it features microtonal variations on a single chord. Over the prerecorded sound of the kaen (Thai mouth organ), the clarinet is supposed to improvise more microtonal variations. I emailed the instructions and the prerecorded part to Beth, but there was some kind of a glitch in the email and she didn’t receive the instructions. For the warm-up, she played a beautiful modal cadenza over the prerecorded drones. I actually liked that better than how I’d originally conceived it; so (after we realized what had happened) we combined the styles: she began with microtonal drones, then gradually added pitches (with their microtones) and finally let the music blossom into melody. It was strikingly beautiful, and I think I will make sure that the piece is performed in this way every time (it will only take a minor adjustment of the written score). There is now a co-composer of one movement of the Cycle.
The second piece was “Frogscape” (#18 in the Cycle), which I played on piano almost to break the tranquility with something humorous. The piano simply plays rhythmic chords over prerecorded frogs; in a sense, it acts like another frog. The piece perhaps sounds trivial, particularly after the deep peace of “Desert Bloom”, but it occupies a similar space in the complete Cycle: coming on the heals of the only other piece in the set that doesn’t use processed nature sounds, “Song from Deep Silence”, it serves as a reminder that not all is well in nature… It is a slightly comical interlude no matter when it is played, and, as an audience member pointed out later, frogs (like chickens) are inherently funny.
We followed with a free improvisation. Here, the clarinets worked out counterpoint with one another, ranging from melodic to chaotic; for my piano part I mostly commented on what they were doing, or provided a momentary tonal center. One of Bruce’s friends got a video of this; if it came out well, it may make it onto YouTube – I’ll keep readers posted on this.
After the intermission, we played “Spherics” (#8 in the Cycle). One of the Cycle’s “medium long” pieces, (about 40 minutes), this one alters the prerecorded nature sounds to such an extent that they sound like, well, outer space. Yes, I know that there are no actual “sounds” in space that can be detected by the human ear (despite the din that things always make when they blow up in Star Trek), but these deep drones and strange reverberations always sound like they’re from somewhere else in the universe. Over this, the instrumentalists play scores based on the planets: cloud decks become long held tones; craters become single points of sound; the terminus of a night side becomes a sudden shift in the tone; the swirling cloud bands of Jupiter become a flurry of trills (Beth played these with particular flair). I thought the clarinetists ran out of steam a little before the end, but that could also be the fault of the prerecorded sound (which simply loops back to the beginning to finish up). I actually had originally written it for ‘cello and/or trombone anyway (rather than bass clarinet) but I liked the overtones and breathy sounds that Bruce was able to produce on his bass clarinet. I will admit, though, that altogether it was not as successful a piece as I would have liked (this was not the fault of the other two players). The prerecorded sound is from a different sound world than that of the "live" music, and the two don't blend as well as I had hoped. I have an idea, though, to fix it...
Anyway, as always, I’m going on too long about my own concert. I’ll sign off for now.
(This posting is Nov. 23, 2010; 181 days until the first performance of the complete StormSound Cycle)
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Monday, November 22, 2010
Concert Review: Seattle Phonographers Union; Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center, 11/19/2010
"The Seattle Phonographers Union convene to explore the ways in which we recognize, differentiate, map and navigate our sonic environment. Our intent is to move beyond habitual experience of sound and uncover what is foreign in the familiar and familiar about the foreign; to explore what we hear and relearn what we know." - from the Seattle Phonographers Union Facebook page.
This was presented after a meeting of the Pacific NW Chapter of the American Society for Acoustic Ecology. I wanted to go to that meeting, but due to a series of snafus I only got there in time to hear the last half or so of the concert. At any rate, this was one of the more interesting takes on music I’ve heard in a long time, and it used (what I think) the meeting was about as a starting point.
There were six people in the band. They played five laptops and one MP3 player. That is, they actually play prerecorded material as an instrument (much in the way that hip-hop artists play turntables) – the difference being that all of the prerecorded material is their own, and none of it is “music” in the conventional sense. It is all field recordings. And, I might add, this performance is improvised. They interact with each other, adding and subtracting layers based on what the others are doing.
The result is a mishmash of environmental sounds. Some of them contrast with one another, but most often they blend into a continuous low murmur that is intrinsically beautiful and interesting. Traffic sounds (ugly in their usual form) are played quietly against ocean and river sounds, and they become indistinguishable. Rain in the forest (with birds) echoes in the infinite distance, morphs into hail on metal (on a screen door?), then overlays with rain on logs over an electric hum. A foghorn sounds, suddenly loud (causing one of the members of the Union to smile, nearly laughing) against steady, rhythmic, metallic dripping. A clock chimes 3. khht khht khht scratches appear from the end of a vinyl record, then a hollow metallic whoosh (unidentified) scatters into the sound of crows. A loop of birds (and monkeys?) repeats at half volume below this. Gongs bong out a steady rhythm. A plane goes over, growing louder, but not in the way that it would if it were actually passing by – the sound grows very slowly, then suddenly crescendos to a climax (the loudest sound of the concert) and then abruptly – click! Silence, for half a second. A coda of car sounds, repeated, strangely musical, fading into water.
All sound is music, here; and all sound (even ugly sound) becomes exquisite in this context. I’ve heard the Phonographers Union before, and I’ve heard their CD – but these live performances shed a different light on their sound (particularly in the echoing resonance of that space) and shed a different light on the concept of music in general.
This was presented after a meeting of the Pacific NW Chapter of the American Society for Acoustic Ecology. I wanted to go to that meeting, but due to a series of snafus I only got there in time to hear the last half or so of the concert. At any rate, this was one of the more interesting takes on music I’ve heard in a long time, and it used (what I think) the meeting was about as a starting point.
There were six people in the band. They played five laptops and one MP3 player. That is, they actually play prerecorded material as an instrument (much in the way that hip-hop artists play turntables) – the difference being that all of the prerecorded material is their own, and none of it is “music” in the conventional sense. It is all field recordings. And, I might add, this performance is improvised. They interact with each other, adding and subtracting layers based on what the others are doing.
The result is a mishmash of environmental sounds. Some of them contrast with one another, but most often they blend into a continuous low murmur that is intrinsically beautiful and interesting. Traffic sounds (ugly in their usual form) are played quietly against ocean and river sounds, and they become indistinguishable. Rain in the forest (with birds) echoes in the infinite distance, morphs into hail on metal (on a screen door?), then overlays with rain on logs over an electric hum. A foghorn sounds, suddenly loud (causing one of the members of the Union to smile, nearly laughing) against steady, rhythmic, metallic dripping. A clock chimes 3. khht khht khht scratches appear from the end of a vinyl record, then a hollow metallic whoosh (unidentified) scatters into the sound of crows. A loop of birds (and monkeys?) repeats at half volume below this. Gongs bong out a steady rhythm. A plane goes over, growing louder, but not in the way that it would if it were actually passing by – the sound grows very slowly, then suddenly crescendos to a climax (the loudest sound of the concert) and then abruptly – click! Silence, for half a second. A coda of car sounds, repeated, strangely musical, fading into water.
All sound is music, here; and all sound (even ugly sound) becomes exquisite in this context. I’ve heard the Phonographers Union before, and I’ve heard their CD – but these live performances shed a different light on their sound (particularly in the echoing resonance of that space) and shed a different light on the concept of music in general.
Concert Review: Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, and Neal Meyer; Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center, 11/18/2010
The concert began with a set of solo piano pieces, Aaron’s “Bagatelles”, played by Keith. Aaron introduced the pieces, saying that he’d written them as relaxation but Keith said learning to play them was like “trying to build a house of cards in a tight space”. One misplaced movement could topple the whole construction. Anyway, I heard them as relaxed, but with an undercurrent of slight nervousness. Though melodic in a standard (almost Baroque) sense, they were harmonized modally (sometimes chromatically) and with rhythmic ambiguity. More than once the tonal center was lost, though it always reappeared. There were hints of Bright Sheng’s “My Song” or Jo Kondo’s sen no ongaku style, particularly in the last piece, with its heterophonic crosscutting of fragments of the same melody in different variations.
Aaron’s “Foliage”, the next piece, was altogether different. Aaron introduced it as an electronic piece without visual elements (by which he meant there was nothing to see on stage) derived from common sources – few of the sounds were altered in any way except that he’d put them together to make the piece. However, most of the sounds were unrecognizable (at least to me). Curious whistle/creaks gave way to wooden sounds; suddenly gongs appeared, which bridged to a deep silence. Then end returned, slowly, to the beginning: the whistles reappeared, at first distant and with echoes, then moving back to the front of the sound field. As a piece of musique concrète, and as a composition, the piece worked: it had a beautiful overall shape, but the sounds were interesting enough in themselves regardless of what they did.
Then came the shocker. I’ve heard some of Keith’s music before, but still wasn’t ready for “Blood and Fire: Alleluia”. After the half-hour performance for piano (Keith) and “canned” sound, all I could say was, “One word: INTENSE.” Neal put it better: “Charles Ives meets Samuel Beckett.” The Charles Ives Americana was there in the form of the prerecorded sound: processed percussion, and Keith’s own voice singing an old hymn in a style that sounded like a fusion of shape-note singing and a Gaither revival. But despite the Gospel element, this was a musical portrayal of damnation: the piano seemed to act as a demonic force, playing a clatter of fortissimo wrong notes (or occasionally landing on a chord that fit the tune), acting on the recorded sound (!), cajoling it to reject its own message of harmony and move instead into “blood and fire” – chaos, violence, noise, and finally nothingness (the nihilism of Beckett). The hymn’s many repeats were altered only in timbre, and thus it seemed to focus only on itself – and it eventually lost its identity as it became grotesquely distorted. Several times it disappeared completely, leaving the piano hammering at the extreme registers as if in malevolent triumph. In the end, I heard it as a soundtrack to Dante’s “Inferno” by Merzbow…
The entire second half of the concert was given over to an hour-long version of Neal’s “Gradus for Fux, Tesla, and Milo the Wrestler”. I’ve reviewed performances of this piece before (see the 7/31/2010 posting) but this was a chance to hear it in an even longer version. Of course the entire piece would, as Aaron pointed out before Neal began playing, if it could truly explore all of the possible combinations of all the possible notes on a piano, be longer than the age of the universe… Though titled “Three Rungs from ‘Gradus’”, this performance was a full hour of A’s, interspersed with long silences and randomly occurring “extra” sounds from the audience or outside the performance space. In such a long, austere, version, the piece became theatrical; Neal was like an actor, the piano his speaking voice, reciting lines from an abstract play against stark lighting. There were several moments where he froze, hand in the air, endlessly ready to play the next set of A’s, but not finished with the silences created by the last set…
This was a concert that featured the extremes of avant-garde piano music, from the silence of “Gradus” and the tranquility of some of the Bagatelles, to the horror of “Blood and Fire”. An interesting program.
Aaron’s “Foliage”, the next piece, was altogether different. Aaron introduced it as an electronic piece without visual elements (by which he meant there was nothing to see on stage) derived from common sources – few of the sounds were altered in any way except that he’d put them together to make the piece. However, most of the sounds were unrecognizable (at least to me). Curious whistle/creaks gave way to wooden sounds; suddenly gongs appeared, which bridged to a deep silence. Then end returned, slowly, to the beginning: the whistles reappeared, at first distant and with echoes, then moving back to the front of the sound field. As a piece of musique concrète, and as a composition, the piece worked: it had a beautiful overall shape, but the sounds were interesting enough in themselves regardless of what they did.
Then came the shocker. I’ve heard some of Keith’s music before, but still wasn’t ready for “Blood and Fire: Alleluia”. After the half-hour performance for piano (Keith) and “canned” sound, all I could say was, “One word: INTENSE.” Neal put it better: “Charles Ives meets Samuel Beckett.” The Charles Ives Americana was there in the form of the prerecorded sound: processed percussion, and Keith’s own voice singing an old hymn in a style that sounded like a fusion of shape-note singing and a Gaither revival. But despite the Gospel element, this was a musical portrayal of damnation: the piano seemed to act as a demonic force, playing a clatter of fortissimo wrong notes (or occasionally landing on a chord that fit the tune), acting on the recorded sound (!), cajoling it to reject its own message of harmony and move instead into “blood and fire” – chaos, violence, noise, and finally nothingness (the nihilism of Beckett). The hymn’s many repeats were altered only in timbre, and thus it seemed to focus only on itself – and it eventually lost its identity as it became grotesquely distorted. Several times it disappeared completely, leaving the piano hammering at the extreme registers as if in malevolent triumph. In the end, I heard it as a soundtrack to Dante’s “Inferno” by Merzbow…
The entire second half of the concert was given over to an hour-long version of Neal’s “Gradus for Fux, Tesla, and Milo the Wrestler”. I’ve reviewed performances of this piece before (see the 7/31/2010 posting) but this was a chance to hear it in an even longer version. Of course the entire piece would, as Aaron pointed out before Neal began playing, if it could truly explore all of the possible combinations of all the possible notes on a piano, be longer than the age of the universe… Though titled “Three Rungs from ‘Gradus’”, this performance was a full hour of A’s, interspersed with long silences and randomly occurring “extra” sounds from the audience or outside the performance space. In such a long, austere, version, the piece became theatrical; Neal was like an actor, the piano his speaking voice, reciting lines from an abstract play against stark lighting. There were several moments where he froze, hand in the air, endlessly ready to play the next set of A’s, but not finished with the silences created by the last set…
This was a concert that featured the extremes of avant-garde piano music, from the silence of “Gradus” and the tranquility of some of the Bagatelles, to the horror of “Blood and Fire”. An interesting program.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Abruptly, a concert of pieces from the StormSound Cycle
This is rather spur-of-the-moment, but I suddenly have a concert coming up this weekend. There was an opening at the Chapel Performance Space, so I grabbed it. I have no idea whether anyone will want to hear live music, with such little notice, in the evening the weekend before Thanksgiving; so I think mainly I'm doing it for the fun of it... But anyway, here are the details:
S. Eric Scribner (composer; piano, inside piano, percussion) in concert
With Beth Fleenor, clarinet
and Bruce Greely, bass clarinet
8:00 PM, Saturday, November 20
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center
50th and Sunnyside, in Wallingford (Seattle)
Sliding scale: $5.00 to $15.00
Yes, it sounds like something of a clarinetty concert. I've reviewed clarinet playing by both Beth and Bruce before in this blog (see "2nd New Music in the Library Concert", 10/24/2010) and "Double Yoko", 10/3-2010). Should be fun. We're playing "Desert Bloom" (a drone piece) and "Spherics" (something of a dark ambient piece), both from the StormSound Cycle; as well as a group free improvisation and some solo piano work by me; and maybe a couple of shorter StormSound pieces too.
A slightly more detailed description:
"Desert Bloom" is one of the only two of the 21 pieces in the Cycle that isn't based on electronic processing of nature sounds. Its room-filling drone-chords come from the kaen (Thai mouth organ), processed for microtonal variations of pitch and timbre. "Spherics" slows the nature sounds down hundreds of times and adds massive reverb, resulting in an immense, cosmic sound; the graphic scores used by the performers are based on the planets. There is a long section, near the beginning, of a "deep space" sound (originally made from the songs of crickets) that always makes me think of hovering in space somewhere near Jupiter. (I don't really know why this is so; I've never hovered in space anywhere near Jupiter.) Anyway, the piece suggests, to me at least, the old concept of the "music of the spheres", though I change the idea slightly to mean music of the planets.
(This posting is Nov. 15, 2010; 189 days until the first performance of the complete StormSound Cycle)
S. Eric Scribner (composer; piano, inside piano, percussion) in concert
With Beth Fleenor, clarinet
and Bruce Greely, bass clarinet
8:00 PM, Saturday, November 20
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center
50th and Sunnyside, in Wallingford (Seattle)
Sliding scale: $5.00 to $15.00
Yes, it sounds like something of a clarinetty concert. I've reviewed clarinet playing by both Beth and Bruce before in this blog (see "2nd New Music in the Library Concert", 10/24/2010) and "Double Yoko", 10/3-2010). Should be fun. We're playing "Desert Bloom" (a drone piece) and "Spherics" (something of a dark ambient piece), both from the StormSound Cycle; as well as a group free improvisation and some solo piano work by me; and maybe a couple of shorter StormSound pieces too.
A slightly more detailed description:
"Desert Bloom" is one of the only two of the 21 pieces in the Cycle that isn't based on electronic processing of nature sounds. Its room-filling drone-chords come from the kaen (Thai mouth organ), processed for microtonal variations of pitch and timbre. "Spherics" slows the nature sounds down hundreds of times and adds massive reverb, resulting in an immense, cosmic sound; the graphic scores used by the performers are based on the planets. There is a long section, near the beginning, of a "deep space" sound (originally made from the songs of crickets) that always makes me think of hovering in space somewhere near Jupiter. (I don't really know why this is so; I've never hovered in space anywhere near Jupiter.) Anyway, the piece suggests, to me at least, the old concept of the "music of the spheres", though I change the idea slightly to mean music of the planets.
(This posting is Nov. 15, 2010; 189 days until the first performance of the complete StormSound Cycle)
Thursday, November 11, 2010
11/7/2010: Three Concerts -- Wayne Lovegrove; Jack Wright and Gust Burns Large Ensemble; St. Mark's Organ Recital
It’s been over a week and I’ve finally gotten some time to add a posting to this thing. Of course it’s about music…
Sunday evening I went to three concerts. Yes, that’s quite a few…
Wayne Lovegrove, at Little Red Bistro, Seattle WA
I’ve heard Wayne play before, of course; both at open mikes and with me in concert (Tim Noah’s Thumbnail Theater, Snohomish, WA, last month). This was a chance to hear him play his guitar a longer period of time.
The Little Red Bistro is a French/Italian/Spanish restaurant just north of Seattle’s downtown. I found it easily on Google Maps, but couldn’t get there as easily as it looked because several of the streets that looked drivable in the satellite view were blocked off for construction (and an annoying number were one way the wrong way or marked “no turns”). But I finally got there, and found that there was abundant street parking. The restaurant itself is a small space, suitable for intimate dining or for groups of four to ten or so (there was one group of eight there and several groups of two). Having already had dinner, I just sat at the bar, ordered a dessert from the friendly wait staff, and listened to Wayne play the guitar.
While I was there, he played five pieces. These are in his usual “new acoustic” style; though as I’ve written before, to label them as such misses the point of the music. He is one of those rare musicians who manages to do “background music” that is much more than just background – if one ignores it and treats it as wallpaper, then it is wallpaper; but if one pays attention, there’s enough to listen to that it really is foreground music. There are some interesting rhythms (including polyrhythms), beautiful melodies, intricate counterpoint (interlocking of parts, not “fugues” in the baroque sense), and always, those alternate tunings that create spacious sounds with open fourths and fifths. There are also little bits of dissonance snuck in; two of the pieces have slight blues tendencies and use the genre’s characteristic flat notes to create tension (only audible to the careful listener) which always resolves into those open sounds.
I listened for about forty minutes, then wandered back out to my car to go to the next concert.
Jack Wright and Gust Burns Large Ensemble, Poncho Theater at Cornish Institute, Seattle WA
Nothing could be more different from Wayne’s guitar styling than this. Presented as part of the Earshot Jazz Festival, this was four lengthy pieces of free improvisation.
“Free Improvisation” and “Large Ensemble” are terms that can be at odds with one another. I remember a “free improv” open mike (at Beanbenders Concert Series, Berkeley, CA) where, after several sets of two or three players, they let everyone who’d played all play together (including me). Mistake. There were about twelve players, mostly on electric guitars and saxes of various sizes, all playing as loudly and quickly as possible, and paying absolutely no attention to what anyone else was playing. It would have been fun for a minute or two – but nobody wanted to quit, and it kept going at full frenetic howling, snorting and screeching volume for twenty-five minutes. Finally I added even more volume by playing several crescendos on the suspended cymbals (at least to give some sense of one different sound in all that chaos) but it really didn’t help. The audience was long gone by the time any of the players (including me) thought to admit defeat and quit.
So it was with some trepidation that I went to see this “large ensemble” at Earshot. I wouldn’t even have gone if I hadn’t remembered Gust Burns’ “silent” music from several months ago (see my 6/28/2010 posting) and wanted to see how that aesthetic would work for a larger group.
I was not disappointed. The “large ensemble” was a sextet, consisting of Jack on sax, Gust on piano, two basses (Mark Collins & John Teske), another sax (Wilson Shook), and electronics (Doug Theriault); the latter provided strangely non-tonal drones and small tinkles, scratches, pops, and clunks that seemed to be derived from little percussion implements under high amplification (though I couldn’t see exactly what he was playing). Gust did not use the “dowel” technique I’ve blogged about before (though one of the bass players used it); he played the piano “conventionally” (meaning on the keys) if atonally. He added flurries of notes, or, occasionally, single pitches dropped in right where another player paused. Having two basses was an interesting concept; particularly since neither played “bass parts” but explored the timbre of the instruments.
Then we come to the sax parts themselves. Jack was listed by Gust as a “legend” in his field; and I wasn’t disappointed when I heard him play. During the two large ensemble pieces he added to the textures in such a way as to be indistinguishable from the other players. A lesser talent would have insisted on blasting at least one “solo” here or there; he was content to provide the basis for the playing but melt into it – one senses that, if he weren’t there, the entire ensemble would fall apart. And yet, while listening, the sounds he provided were almost subliminal. In a sense he played the “spine” of the music – inside of it, not visible on the outside, but vitally necessary and providing support.
He also played two solo pieces, without the other players. I made the following notes during the performance:
(Alto sax)
Squawks, pops, evolves into notes, vibrating buzz –
Adjusted a valve (!)
Overtones
Uses knee as mute
Percussive fluttering – I’ve never heard this before!
Attack, whimper, wa-wa effects with “mute” and keys (valves)
Has “hollow” didgeridoo-sound when muted
Vocalize into sax – dog woof or scary/comical “Ghostbusters” effect
Changes mouthpiece – clicks, deeper pops, wails (Coltrane/Coleman) – loud!
(Soprano sax)
Clear notes emerge from pink noise, but “noise” continues
Very smooth – almost as if notes were overlapping
After these pieces, an audience member in sitting in front of me said to someone next to her, “It was too long, and it wasn’t very thoughtful of him to play another solo after the first one – it was too taxing on the audience.”
I countered that the first solo didn’t seem to be finished (Jack seemed so have left it unresolved in anticipation of the second solo) and I preferred to have the second part. Judging from the reactions of the audience, I think most (though certainly not all) heard it the way I did.
I made a similar set of notes about the ensemble pieces:
Piece 1:
Bass bowed the bridge of the instrument
Electronic “shell chime” sounds
Bass bow with hair wrapped around it in a spiral – adjustable – makes several different timbres
Gust’s “dowel” technique works on bass too!
Microtones (sax vs. piano)
Trio (two basses, piano) – sax joins
“Harsh” drones over chaos – Art Ensemble of Chicago style
Trills (sax) over piano
Piano pedal techniques (half-released)
Sparkles, clouds from sax; thumps, clunks (electronic)
High overtones (reed buzz) strangely calm, not strident – crescendo into all instruments – now loud, Klaxon – drones become violent (!) – quiet – dog whimpers (sax) – electronics gonglike
Whhhhhhfffft! (sax)
Tiny electronic murmur, high, pulsating – “a still small voice”
Piece 2:
Bass – bowed the rosin box! Squeeeee!
Spasmodic motions, scattered sounds
Wraps and unwraps hair on bow
Massive drones – Vvvvvvvvvvvvv!
Sudden “cosmic” reverb in electronics opens the soundspace
Piano – one clear, bell-like tone in midst of fluttering, flapping chaos
Electronic clang-drones (Roger Reynolds’ “From Beyond the Unreasoning Mask”) – these abruptly stop while other instruments continue
Sax changes from soprano to alto with no change in mood…
Near the end, the piece seemed to lose focus; several times it should have ended but one player kept starting it up again. Then, Jack led the ensemble into thirty seconds (or less) of “conventional” jazz (improvised melody over chords), and a crescendo – and it ended having been “brought back” from near death.
The concert ended refreshed, despite its length (and of course I’m guilty of overly long concerts myself…) and I headed over to hear the third concert.
Organ Recital – St. Mark’s Cathedral, Seattle, WA
I had intended to get there for the Compline Service – the (by now) world-famous plainsong service held there every Sunday evening at 9:30. I missed it, the Earshot concert running longer than I expected, but was there for the organ recital that always follows at 10:00. This time the organist’s name was Bill Giddings. He played a concert of mostly 19th and 20th-Century Scandinavian pieces – many were variations on the same hymn tune (which I didn’t happen to know, so I could listen to it objectively as a concert performance without any preconceived ideas). The Flentrop organ is truly an acoustic marvel, particularly in that vast cathedral space where its sounds hang in the air for what seems like a minute each, before trailing off into the realm of the spirit. The most surprising effect was – as always – the set of pipes that’s located on the balcony just above the congregation – when played, they make the music suddenly sound as if it’s located much closer in space than it “should” be, almost as if it were coming from only a foot or two in front of the listener. Almost shocking, and yet beautiful.
So that was my evening of concerts. I don’t recommend anyone to attend three in rapid succession like that, but I’d do it again if I got the chance…
(This posting is Nov. 11, 2010; 193 days until the first performance of the complete StormSound Cycle)
Sunday evening I went to three concerts. Yes, that’s quite a few…
Wayne Lovegrove, at Little Red Bistro, Seattle WA
I’ve heard Wayne play before, of course; both at open mikes and with me in concert (Tim Noah’s Thumbnail Theater, Snohomish, WA, last month). This was a chance to hear him play his guitar a longer period of time.
The Little Red Bistro is a French/Italian/Spanish restaurant just north of Seattle’s downtown. I found it easily on Google Maps, but couldn’t get there as easily as it looked because several of the streets that looked drivable in the satellite view were blocked off for construction (and an annoying number were one way the wrong way or marked “no turns”). But I finally got there, and found that there was abundant street parking. The restaurant itself is a small space, suitable for intimate dining or for groups of four to ten or so (there was one group of eight there and several groups of two). Having already had dinner, I just sat at the bar, ordered a dessert from the friendly wait staff, and listened to Wayne play the guitar.
While I was there, he played five pieces. These are in his usual “new acoustic” style; though as I’ve written before, to label them as such misses the point of the music. He is one of those rare musicians who manages to do “background music” that is much more than just background – if one ignores it and treats it as wallpaper, then it is wallpaper; but if one pays attention, there’s enough to listen to that it really is foreground music. There are some interesting rhythms (including polyrhythms), beautiful melodies, intricate counterpoint (interlocking of parts, not “fugues” in the baroque sense), and always, those alternate tunings that create spacious sounds with open fourths and fifths. There are also little bits of dissonance snuck in; two of the pieces have slight blues tendencies and use the genre’s characteristic flat notes to create tension (only audible to the careful listener) which always resolves into those open sounds.
I listened for about forty minutes, then wandered back out to my car to go to the next concert.
Jack Wright and Gust Burns Large Ensemble, Poncho Theater at Cornish Institute, Seattle WA
Nothing could be more different from Wayne’s guitar styling than this. Presented as part of the Earshot Jazz Festival, this was four lengthy pieces of free improvisation.
“Free Improvisation” and “Large Ensemble” are terms that can be at odds with one another. I remember a “free improv” open mike (at Beanbenders Concert Series, Berkeley, CA) where, after several sets of two or three players, they let everyone who’d played all play together (including me). Mistake. There were about twelve players, mostly on electric guitars and saxes of various sizes, all playing as loudly and quickly as possible, and paying absolutely no attention to what anyone else was playing. It would have been fun for a minute or two – but nobody wanted to quit, and it kept going at full frenetic howling, snorting and screeching volume for twenty-five minutes. Finally I added even more volume by playing several crescendos on the suspended cymbals (at least to give some sense of one different sound in all that chaos) but it really didn’t help. The audience was long gone by the time any of the players (including me) thought to admit defeat and quit.
So it was with some trepidation that I went to see this “large ensemble” at Earshot. I wouldn’t even have gone if I hadn’t remembered Gust Burns’ “silent” music from several months ago (see my 6/28/2010 posting) and wanted to see how that aesthetic would work for a larger group.
I was not disappointed. The “large ensemble” was a sextet, consisting of Jack on sax, Gust on piano, two basses (Mark Collins & John Teske), another sax (Wilson Shook), and electronics (Doug Theriault); the latter provided strangely non-tonal drones and small tinkles, scratches, pops, and clunks that seemed to be derived from little percussion implements under high amplification (though I couldn’t see exactly what he was playing). Gust did not use the “dowel” technique I’ve blogged about before (though one of the bass players used it); he played the piano “conventionally” (meaning on the keys) if atonally. He added flurries of notes, or, occasionally, single pitches dropped in right where another player paused. Having two basses was an interesting concept; particularly since neither played “bass parts” but explored the timbre of the instruments.
Then we come to the sax parts themselves. Jack was listed by Gust as a “legend” in his field; and I wasn’t disappointed when I heard him play. During the two large ensemble pieces he added to the textures in such a way as to be indistinguishable from the other players. A lesser talent would have insisted on blasting at least one “solo” here or there; he was content to provide the basis for the playing but melt into it – one senses that, if he weren’t there, the entire ensemble would fall apart. And yet, while listening, the sounds he provided were almost subliminal. In a sense he played the “spine” of the music – inside of it, not visible on the outside, but vitally necessary and providing support.
He also played two solo pieces, without the other players. I made the following notes during the performance:
(Alto sax)
Squawks, pops, evolves into notes, vibrating buzz –
Adjusted a valve (!)
Overtones
Uses knee as mute
Percussive fluttering – I’ve never heard this before!
Attack, whimper, wa-wa effects with “mute” and keys (valves)
Has “hollow” didgeridoo-sound when muted
Vocalize into sax – dog woof or scary/comical “Ghostbusters” effect
Changes mouthpiece – clicks, deeper pops, wails (Coltrane/Coleman) – loud!
(Soprano sax)
Clear notes emerge from pink noise, but “noise” continues
Very smooth – almost as if notes were overlapping
After these pieces, an audience member in sitting in front of me said to someone next to her, “It was too long, and it wasn’t very thoughtful of him to play another solo after the first one – it was too taxing on the audience.”
I countered that the first solo didn’t seem to be finished (Jack seemed so have left it unresolved in anticipation of the second solo) and I preferred to have the second part. Judging from the reactions of the audience, I think most (though certainly not all) heard it the way I did.
I made a similar set of notes about the ensemble pieces:
Piece 1:
Bass bowed the bridge of the instrument
Electronic “shell chime” sounds
Bass bow with hair wrapped around it in a spiral – adjustable – makes several different timbres
Gust’s “dowel” technique works on bass too!
Microtones (sax vs. piano)
Trio (two basses, piano) – sax joins
“Harsh” drones over chaos – Art Ensemble of Chicago style
Trills (sax) over piano
Piano pedal techniques (half-released)
Sparkles, clouds from sax; thumps, clunks (electronic)
High overtones (reed buzz) strangely calm, not strident – crescendo into all instruments – now loud, Klaxon – drones become violent (!) – quiet – dog whimpers (sax) – electronics gonglike
Whhhhhhfffft! (sax)
Tiny electronic murmur, high, pulsating – “a still small voice”
Piece 2:
Bass – bowed the rosin box! Squeeeee!
Spasmodic motions, scattered sounds
Wraps and unwraps hair on bow
Massive drones – Vvvvvvvvvvvvv!
Sudden “cosmic” reverb in electronics opens the soundspace
Piano – one clear, bell-like tone in midst of fluttering, flapping chaos
Electronic clang-drones (Roger Reynolds’ “From Beyond the Unreasoning Mask”) – these abruptly stop while other instruments continue
Sax changes from soprano to alto with no change in mood…
Near the end, the piece seemed to lose focus; several times it should have ended but one player kept starting it up again. Then, Jack led the ensemble into thirty seconds (or less) of “conventional” jazz (improvised melody over chords), and a crescendo – and it ended having been “brought back” from near death.
The concert ended refreshed, despite its length (and of course I’m guilty of overly long concerts myself…) and I headed over to hear the third concert.
Organ Recital – St. Mark’s Cathedral, Seattle, WA
I had intended to get there for the Compline Service – the (by now) world-famous plainsong service held there every Sunday evening at 9:30. I missed it, the Earshot concert running longer than I expected, but was there for the organ recital that always follows at 10:00. This time the organist’s name was Bill Giddings. He played a concert of mostly 19th and 20th-Century Scandinavian pieces – many were variations on the same hymn tune (which I didn’t happen to know, so I could listen to it objectively as a concert performance without any preconceived ideas). The Flentrop organ is truly an acoustic marvel, particularly in that vast cathedral space where its sounds hang in the air for what seems like a minute each, before trailing off into the realm of the spirit. The most surprising effect was – as always – the set of pipes that’s located on the balcony just above the congregation – when played, they make the music suddenly sound as if it’s located much closer in space than it “should” be, almost as if it were coming from only a foot or two in front of the listener. Almost shocking, and yet beautiful.
So that was my evening of concerts. I don’t recommend anyone to attend three in rapid succession like that, but I’d do it again if I got the chance…
(This posting is Nov. 11, 2010; 193 days until the first performance of the complete StormSound Cycle)
Saturday, October 30, 2010
CD Reviews: Boretz, Lierman, Improv Festival
I said in some earlier postings that I’d do some CD reviews, so here they are. These are all CDs that I’ve picked up over the last year or two at concerts at the Chapel Performance Space in Seattle, where many of the concerts I review on this blog have been. Unfortunately, due to budget constraints, I’m not likely to be getting any many more CDs in the months to come, so these reviews will have to do for this year (and maybe next as well).
Benjamin Boretz: String Quartet (played by Quartet Dafo)
Open Space 23
The two Benjamin Boretz CDs represent different aspects of the composer’s music. The string quartet (composed over forty-eight years!) really shows the two aspects itself: the first two movements are conservatively “classical” (or “20th-century classical”, rather reminiscent of Stravinsky or the relatively lesser known French composer Frank Martin). The second, a scherzo, could also have stepped out of a Shostakovich quartet. This is not to say that neither shows originality – Boretz’ harmonic language or two-note chords (rather than triads or more complex chords) is obvious in certain passages, and sometimes it is rather surprising. It comes to fruition in the third movement, a long slow movement that derives much of its sound-world from Morton Feldman. It is in complete contrast to the first two, but forms an elegant counterbalance to their louder, more strident activity.
So the composition itself is interesting. I might also mention that the Quartet Dafo plays with a considerable amount of verve and intensity, even in the long quiet section. The recording, on the other hand, has a major problem (which to me at least is unforgivable). The second movement is recorded at least twice as loud as the other two. (The music itself is slightly louder, but the recording sounds as if the mikes had suddenly been placed several feet closer to the instruments and the volume not adjusted accordingly.) I’m used to this occurring when home-burning CDs from home-assembled playlists; some pieces are naturally recorded louder than others. But it should never happen on a studio-produced CD. It completely destroys the flow of the music, and sent me scrambling for the volume button. I finally had to upload it into iTunes, adjust the volume on each movement separately, and burn a copy myself in order to listen to it.
Benjamin Boretz: Piano Music 1976 – 2000 (played by Michael Fowler)
Open Space 18
The piano CD says right in the insert that the individual pieces were recorded under different circumstances, which were not always optimal. This is true; they do not sound like studio recordings (though they’re certainly not bad). They do, however, sound consistent, which cannot be said for the quartet CD. These piano pieces are all in the “quiet” mode of musical thinking, a la Feldman. Nathaniel Evans called this the “West-Coast-can’t-play-quietly-enough” style (see my 7/7/2010 posting). Not a lot can really be said about them that wouldn’t detract from the music. They are slow, quiet, tranquil yet intense meditations on the sounds of the piano. Each note or note-cluster rings into its own silence in its own way, both related to all the others and at the same time utterly separately from them. Mr. Fowler plays the music with considerable nuance. I might add that at least one of these pieces is an intensely beautiful experience when played by a capable pianist in concert; I heard Keith Eisenbrey play (“…my chart shines high where the blue milks upset…”) at a recital last June (see my 6/12/2010 posting) and the piece's chiming resonances were like a revelation of the inside of the sound.
C. Lierman: Huon
2002 onethum disc
I picked up this C(arl) Lierman CD at the Eye Music concert (see my 9/19/2010 posting). Mr. Lierman is a member of that band. The music continues a similar aesthetic to the Boretz, but achieves it in a far different manner.
“Huon” has four meanings that I could find: a software development compnay, a character in a 13th-century French epic, a type of particle in the British cult TV show “Dr. Who”, and a wilderness area in Tasmania. I’m assuming that Mr. Lierman was referencing the particles and/or the legend (the music could be the accompaniment for a fantasy epic), but it could also refer to new technology or wilderness…
The CD consists or two long tracks. Like a lot of “ambient” music (I use that term in a good way) they appear to be composed from improvisations; that is, made from several recorded improvisations sampled, multilayered, and pieced together. The sound is uniformly slow and mysterious; drones of various intensities interweave with and comment upon sections of white noise and deeper indefinite rumbles. Most of the sound has heavy reverb; so much so that it is difficult to tell when one sound ends and the next begins. Besides this difficulty of pinning down the exact origins of these sounds in time, it is also difficult to discover their nature (both in material and in space) -- someimes they sound like distant trombones from outside of the room where one is listening; sometimes they are digeridoos from somewhere above the left speaker; sometimes they are waves from somewhere else... In totality the work sounds rather like my piece “Spherics” (number 9 in the StormSound Cycle), which is intended to represent the “music of the spheres” and was derived from computer-altered nature sounds (along with synthesized drones). It is best for quiet but active listening; the same way one would listen to it at a “live” concert. I recommend it heartily.
The 1st Seattle Festival of Improvised Music,
2 March 1986
Self-Produced by Paul Hoskins
This “improv” CD, a historical record (derived from historical vinyl records or cassettes) was my most recent acquisition of music from “The Chapel” (see my 10/20/2010 posting). As a historic record it is indeed very interesting; one can hear the sounds made by the older, analogue technology (I once heard some people complain that George Crumb’s music for electric string quartet sounded much better with the old electronics; the new digital sound didn’t roar and scream as much). Musically, it varies in quality.
It also varies in quantity. The informal concerts were recorded with a lot of talking and audience noise, and there are long stretches in the recording of nothing but background sounds with no music playing. (It sounds as if it had been recorded in a restaurant or bar, so this could be bar talk without Bartok. …sorry, couldn’t resist…) The impetus for this was probably the inclusion of as many “aleatory” elements as possible in what was essentially chance sounds made on purpose, but it doesn’t work that well on a CD. To me it comes off as sloppy editing. There are also places where the CD track number changes in the middle of a piece; I’ve seen this even on commercially released CDs and it’s probably a software glitch during the manufacturing process – I can’t complain yet again about bad editing…
That said, much of the music is interesting and worth repeated listening. Several of the pieces follow the standard “improvisational” form of beginning with sparse sounds, building in density to a wailing, screeching climax, then trailing off into silence. These are, as always, expected, and not so interesting. There are, however, a number of tracks that are genuinely inventive. There is one that lists Johnny Calcagno as playing “guitar and tapes” – but the “tapes” are manipulated and played with such dexterity that it seems to presage digital sampling and use of the turntable as in instrument in hip-hop. There is a piece with Wally Shoup (alto sax) and Harlan Mark Vale (drums) where they catch each other’s “groove” and are able to synch up – and stop and start – with almost mechanical precision even though there is no discernable meter. There is a piece entirely for voices – screeching, singing, howling, yodeling, ululating, and laughing (along with the audience at several points). There is one for four guitars and voice that sounds nothing like four guitars and voice: it is a minute of repetitive grinding howls with distortion, as if the guitars had been “prepared” with chainsaw and jackhammer motors. (Right as this piece finishes, an audience member can be heard saying, "That was too much!") There is a guitar solo that eschews the (then popular) Van Halen-esque riffs in favor of blocks of pure electric noise, taking cues from both Hendrix and the post-punk “noise” bands that were starting at the time (though, paradoxically, the end effect of this piece is calming). And, speaking of calming, there are a number of slow, ambient pieces with delicate points of sound, that remind me of Takemitsu’s sparser works. All in all, this is an interesting (and sometimes beautiful) collection of music, and most of it stands up to multiple hearings.
(This posting is Oct. 30, 2010; 204 days until the first performance of the complete StormSound Cycle.)
Benjamin Boretz: String Quartet (played by Quartet Dafo)
Open Space 23
The two Benjamin Boretz CDs represent different aspects of the composer’s music. The string quartet (composed over forty-eight years!) really shows the two aspects itself: the first two movements are conservatively “classical” (or “20th-century classical”, rather reminiscent of Stravinsky or the relatively lesser known French composer Frank Martin). The second, a scherzo, could also have stepped out of a Shostakovich quartet. This is not to say that neither shows originality – Boretz’ harmonic language or two-note chords (rather than triads or more complex chords) is obvious in certain passages, and sometimes it is rather surprising. It comes to fruition in the third movement, a long slow movement that derives much of its sound-world from Morton Feldman. It is in complete contrast to the first two, but forms an elegant counterbalance to their louder, more strident activity.
So the composition itself is interesting. I might also mention that the Quartet Dafo plays with a considerable amount of verve and intensity, even in the long quiet section. The recording, on the other hand, has a major problem (which to me at least is unforgivable). The second movement is recorded at least twice as loud as the other two. (The music itself is slightly louder, but the recording sounds as if the mikes had suddenly been placed several feet closer to the instruments and the volume not adjusted accordingly.) I’m used to this occurring when home-burning CDs from home-assembled playlists; some pieces are naturally recorded louder than others. But it should never happen on a studio-produced CD. It completely destroys the flow of the music, and sent me scrambling for the volume button. I finally had to upload it into iTunes, adjust the volume on each movement separately, and burn a copy myself in order to listen to it.
Benjamin Boretz: Piano Music 1976 – 2000 (played by Michael Fowler)
Open Space 18
The piano CD says right in the insert that the individual pieces were recorded under different circumstances, which were not always optimal. This is true; they do not sound like studio recordings (though they’re certainly not bad). They do, however, sound consistent, which cannot be said for the quartet CD. These piano pieces are all in the “quiet” mode of musical thinking, a la Feldman. Nathaniel Evans called this the “West-Coast-can’t-play-quietly-enough” style (see my 7/7/2010 posting). Not a lot can really be said about them that wouldn’t detract from the music. They are slow, quiet, tranquil yet intense meditations on the sounds of the piano. Each note or note-cluster rings into its own silence in its own way, both related to all the others and at the same time utterly separately from them. Mr. Fowler plays the music with considerable nuance. I might add that at least one of these pieces is an intensely beautiful experience when played by a capable pianist in concert; I heard Keith Eisenbrey play (“…my chart shines high where the blue milks upset…”) at a recital last June (see my 6/12/2010 posting) and the piece's chiming resonances were like a revelation of the inside of the sound.
C. Lierman: Huon
2002 onethum disc
I picked up this C(arl) Lierman CD at the Eye Music concert (see my 9/19/2010 posting). Mr. Lierman is a member of that band. The music continues a similar aesthetic to the Boretz, but achieves it in a far different manner.
“Huon” has four meanings that I could find: a software development compnay, a character in a 13th-century French epic, a type of particle in the British cult TV show “Dr. Who”, and a wilderness area in Tasmania. I’m assuming that Mr. Lierman was referencing the particles and/or the legend (the music could be the accompaniment for a fantasy epic), but it could also refer to new technology or wilderness…
The CD consists or two long tracks. Like a lot of “ambient” music (I use that term in a good way) they appear to be composed from improvisations; that is, made from several recorded improvisations sampled, multilayered, and pieced together. The sound is uniformly slow and mysterious; drones of various intensities interweave with and comment upon sections of white noise and deeper indefinite rumbles. Most of the sound has heavy reverb; so much so that it is difficult to tell when one sound ends and the next begins. Besides this difficulty of pinning down the exact origins of these sounds in time, it is also difficult to discover their nature (both in material and in space) -- someimes they sound like distant trombones from outside of the room where one is listening; sometimes they are digeridoos from somewhere above the left speaker; sometimes they are waves from somewhere else... In totality the work sounds rather like my piece “Spherics” (number 9 in the StormSound Cycle), which is intended to represent the “music of the spheres” and was derived from computer-altered nature sounds (along with synthesized drones). It is best for quiet but active listening; the same way one would listen to it at a “live” concert. I recommend it heartily.
The 1st Seattle Festival of Improvised Music,
2 March 1986
Self-Produced by Paul Hoskins
This “improv” CD, a historical record (derived from historical vinyl records or cassettes) was my most recent acquisition of music from “The Chapel” (see my 10/20/2010 posting). As a historic record it is indeed very interesting; one can hear the sounds made by the older, analogue technology (I once heard some people complain that George Crumb’s music for electric string quartet sounded much better with the old electronics; the new digital sound didn’t roar and scream as much). Musically, it varies in quality.
It also varies in quantity. The informal concerts were recorded with a lot of talking and audience noise, and there are long stretches in the recording of nothing but background sounds with no music playing. (It sounds as if it had been recorded in a restaurant or bar, so this could be bar talk without Bartok. …sorry, couldn’t resist…) The impetus for this was probably the inclusion of as many “aleatory” elements as possible in what was essentially chance sounds made on purpose, but it doesn’t work that well on a CD. To me it comes off as sloppy editing. There are also places where the CD track number changes in the middle of a piece; I’ve seen this even on commercially released CDs and it’s probably a software glitch during the manufacturing process – I can’t complain yet again about bad editing…
That said, much of the music is interesting and worth repeated listening. Several of the pieces follow the standard “improvisational” form of beginning with sparse sounds, building in density to a wailing, screeching climax, then trailing off into silence. These are, as always, expected, and not so interesting. There are, however, a number of tracks that are genuinely inventive. There is one that lists Johnny Calcagno as playing “guitar and tapes” – but the “tapes” are manipulated and played with such dexterity that it seems to presage digital sampling and use of the turntable as in instrument in hip-hop. There is a piece with Wally Shoup (alto sax) and Harlan Mark Vale (drums) where they catch each other’s “groove” and are able to synch up – and stop and start – with almost mechanical precision even though there is no discernable meter. There is a piece entirely for voices – screeching, singing, howling, yodeling, ululating, and laughing (along with the audience at several points). There is one for four guitars and voice that sounds nothing like four guitars and voice: it is a minute of repetitive grinding howls with distortion, as if the guitars had been “prepared” with chainsaw and jackhammer motors. (Right as this piece finishes, an audience member can be heard saying, "That was too much!") There is a guitar solo that eschews the (then popular) Van Halen-esque riffs in favor of blocks of pure electric noise, taking cues from both Hendrix and the post-punk “noise” bands that were starting at the time (though, paradoxically, the end effect of this piece is calming). And, speaking of calming, there are a number of slow, ambient pieces with delicate points of sound, that remind me of Takemitsu’s sparser works. All in all, this is an interesting (and sometimes beautiful) collection of music, and most of it stands up to multiple hearings.
(This posting is Oct. 30, 2010; 204 days until the first performance of the complete StormSound Cycle.)
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Malice of a Symphony
...Just an amusing incident, concerning music, that happened a couple of weeks ago. I wrote this then but didn't post it.
Can works of art have a vendetta against someone?!
Some weeks ago I found a CD of Hindemith’s “Mathis der Maler” symphony at the public library. I hadn’t heard it in several years, so I took it home for a listen.
I stuck it in my CD player. It was exactly as I remembered, with that beautifully textured and colored Engelskonzert followed by the deeply tragic Grablegung and the scarifying “St. Anthony” tormented by demons.
A couple of hours later, I forgot that I had it in the CD player, and went to play another CD. I opened the CD player and put another CD in (the Hindemith symphony CD didn’t come out when I opened the drawer, and I didn’t notice that anything was amiss) and pushed play. Nothing happened except weird scratching noises from the mechanism of the player. I ejected the CD, thinking it had somehow loaded wrong, and tried again. Nothing happened except scary grinding noises from the mechanism of the player. I tried another CD. Nothing happened except awful grinding and scraping noises from the mechanism of the player. This time when I ejected it, two CDs came out – one was the Hindemith. Like an idiot, I put the Hindemith back in the player to see if it worked again – nothing happened except gruesome ripping and crunching noises from the mechanism of the player – and when I pushed “eject” again, nothing happened at all. It’s stuck in there for good. Calls to repair shops indicated that there’s nothing to be done – it costs more in labor to take a CD player apart and take out an impacted CD that to buy a new player.
I hooked up my old discman to my stereo, which works fine. I ordered another copy of Mathis der Maler from the library, thinking I might want to hear it again.
Three weeks later I happened to check my library account online. The “Mathis der Maler” symphony was listed as “1 of 3 holds on 0 copies”. How can they put a hold on a CD they don’t have?! I asked a librarian the next time I was in the library (yesterday). She also had no idea what that meant. She did some calling to other branches and to the central office – it turns out that the CD is in fact missing – it’s somewhere “in transit” but has been there for a week or two. She tried to cancel my hold and put another on, so I could get another copy – but the hold can’t be cancelled because the CD is in transit! Basically I can’t get the CD because it’s being sent to me, but it's not being sent to me because I already have it, but I don't already have it because it's (not) being sent to me.
Something there is that doesn’t want me to hear this music…!
(This posting is Oct. 26, 2010; 208 days until the first performance of the complete StormSound Cycle) -- The problem with the Hindemith symphony has been solved, well, not completely: it's still stuck in my CD player but I got the other copy from the library.
Can works of art have a vendetta against someone?!
Some weeks ago I found a CD of Hindemith’s “Mathis der Maler” symphony at the public library. I hadn’t heard it in several years, so I took it home for a listen.
I stuck it in my CD player. It was exactly as I remembered, with that beautifully textured and colored Engelskonzert followed by the deeply tragic Grablegung and the scarifying “St. Anthony” tormented by demons.
A couple of hours later, I forgot that I had it in the CD player, and went to play another CD. I opened the CD player and put another CD in (the Hindemith symphony CD didn’t come out when I opened the drawer, and I didn’t notice that anything was amiss) and pushed play. Nothing happened except weird scratching noises from the mechanism of the player. I ejected the CD, thinking it had somehow loaded wrong, and tried again. Nothing happened except scary grinding noises from the mechanism of the player. I tried another CD. Nothing happened except awful grinding and scraping noises from the mechanism of the player. This time when I ejected it, two CDs came out – one was the Hindemith. Like an idiot, I put the Hindemith back in the player to see if it worked again – nothing happened except gruesome ripping and crunching noises from the mechanism of the player – and when I pushed “eject” again, nothing happened at all. It’s stuck in there for good. Calls to repair shops indicated that there’s nothing to be done – it costs more in labor to take a CD player apart and take out an impacted CD that to buy a new player.
I hooked up my old discman to my stereo, which works fine. I ordered another copy of Mathis der Maler from the library, thinking I might want to hear it again.
Three weeks later I happened to check my library account online. The “Mathis der Maler” symphony was listed as “1 of 3 holds on 0 copies”. How can they put a hold on a CD they don’t have?! I asked a librarian the next time I was in the library (yesterday). She also had no idea what that meant. She did some calling to other branches and to the central office – it turns out that the CD is in fact missing – it’s somewhere “in transit” but has been there for a week or two. She tried to cancel my hold and put another on, so I could get another copy – but the hold can’t be cancelled because the CD is in transit! Basically I can’t get the CD because it’s being sent to me, but it's not being sent to me because I already have it, but I don't already have it because it's (not) being sent to me.
Something there is that doesn’t want me to hear this music…!
(This posting is Oct. 26, 2010; 208 days until the first performance of the complete StormSound Cycle) -- The problem with the Hindemith symphony has been solved, well, not completely: it's still stuck in my CD player but I got the other copy from the library.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Second “New Music in the Library” Concert: Broadview Public Library, October 23rd, 2010
The second concert in the “New Music in the Library” series was a hundred-percent improvement over the first. For one thing, the poster hadn’t been removed, and they announced it over the library’s intercom system. (A minor set-back did occur. I got there early to set up the slab gongs, only to realize that I’d forgotten to bring some of their components – and simultaneously remembered that I’d forgotten to take the Lao mountain harp with me to the concert in Snohomish last Thursday,10/14/2010. It seems to be impossible to play both the Lao harp and the slab-gongs in the same concert…!)
I played two improvised pieces, both on the hammer dulcimer. One was a solo accompanied by prerecorded slab-gongs; the other was a duet with Bruce Greely on bass clarinet. The latter was the longer. He said he was an amateur, but his playing denied this. He filled the air with sinuous melodies interspersed with the deep, smooth chuckling and squeaking sounds that only the bass clarinet is capable of producing. (A sax can do similar, but not in as mellow a manner.) I used the dulcimer mostly for percussive and drone effects, along with some sparse plucks on the Lao harp.
So it looks like these concerts are (slowly, to be sure) taking off. The next will be in Lynnwood, next Wednesday; then I’ll put them on pause during the holiday season and resume in January.
I played two improvised pieces, both on the hammer dulcimer. One was a solo accompanied by prerecorded slab-gongs; the other was a duet with Bruce Greely on bass clarinet. The latter was the longer. He said he was an amateur, but his playing denied this. He filled the air with sinuous melodies interspersed with the deep, smooth chuckling and squeaking sounds that only the bass clarinet is capable of producing. (A sax can do similar, but not in as mellow a manner.) I used the dulcimer mostly for percussive and drone effects, along with some sparse plucks on the Lao harp.
So it looks like these concerts are (slowly, to be sure) taking off. The next will be in Lynnwood, next Wednesday; then I’ll put them on pause during the holiday season and resume in January.
Wallcussion, CCM, and the Sherványa Nocturnal Music
“It’s been a talented set so far,” said one participant as he tuned up his baritone ukulele, “Let’s see if I can rectify that.”
The occasion was the open mike at Tim Noah’s Thumbnail Theater two days ago. The musicianship level was indeed very high, for most of the evening.
At one point during the evening, a singer said she’d just written a song and it needed “some music”, by which she meant an accompaniment. She asked the audience members to play any percussion that was lying around. They did, with the djembe and the various shakers that the theater has; I had my percussion mallets with me so I joined in by drumming on the wall. “Where did you get the idea for that?” she asked me later. I’ve seen drummers and percussionists do it – particularly Moe Staiano, who will play anything as a percussion instrument.
Earlier in the evening a guitarist had played an intricately rhythmic instrumental number by a “Christian rock band from Hawaii, back in the 1970’s, and they had an incredible horn section…”
“Seawind!” I shouted, recognizing the band by his description.
“Ah – somebody knows them!” He talked about their music a little, then played. Later I talked to him a little about my recollections of hearing Seawind at college (in the early 1980’s). There were a lot of students there from Hawaii, who liked to hype “their” band by playing the music loud in the dorms with all the windows open.
“Yeah, that was a band,” he agreed. “They’ve just reissued a collection of their music. There are a lot of good musicians in the Christian music movement…”
“There are now,” I commented, “but back then there didn’t seem to be that many. Seawind was an exception.” He agreed with my opinion.
…Which reminds me of something that occurred about a year ago. The following is a posting I wrote for this blog but never posted.
About a year ago, on an impulse, I checked out a DVD of a reunion concert (more like an open mike) of artists of the original “Contemporary Christian Music” (CCM) movement from the 1960’s and early 1970’s. I used to hate this music. I considered it dull, generic, contrived, banal, boring, cloying, wishy-washy, and superficial – exactly what music of strong religious conviction should not be, and basically pop music done badly (isn’t it interesting how the best pop tunes are almost all of these things, but they never quite cross the line?). So I don’t really know why I got this DVD, but I took it home and watched/listened to it – and I was in for a surprise.
The music is, of course, very simple – but by its nature as music that can be sung along with, it has to be. The simplicity was a strength – and to my surprise, some of it was also quite intricate (such as the harmonies by The Second Chapter of Acts). So much for being dull, at least on an intellectual level. It didn’t seem to “take a stand” on what style of mainstream music it was supposed to be, either (rock, country, funk, etc.) but crossed from one to another freely – but it no longer sounded wishy-washy or generic because of this. Rather, this was an attempt to include more than one style, and even when it mixed them together the result was not “elevator music” but fusion. (And who am I to dislike mixing styles, when I don’t like to make a distinction between my experimental and “mainstream” music!?) The lyrics did sometimes contrast with the melodic material or vocal delivery (such as loud hard-rock screaming “Praise the Lord!” over fuzz-guitar bombast) but the result was more gently ironic than contrived, and if anything, it pulled the listener in to hear what was really going on here. …and as for cloying or superficial; the obvious sincerity of the performers (which could be heard in their voices) eliminated this from the start.
So what made the difference? First of all, there is a little of me in it; I admit to a certain amount of Ignatius J. Reillyism – but aren’t we all that way? Don’t we all think of our likes and attitudes as somehow above those of the “common people” (whoever they are)? Case in point: I went to a Christian college, where CCM was very popular among the students – and I used to play Messiaen very loudly on the stereo in my dorm room (with all the doors and windows open) to show the others that there was something better. (I might do the same today, but to show that them that there is something different, not something better – another concept altogether.) Once in a history class, when a professor had commented that another historian had quipped that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, I had triumphantly stated that the same criticism could apply to CCM – neither contemporary, nor Christian, nor music. One or two members of the class cheered, two or three folded over in hysterical laughter, but most just glared or grimaced at me with obvious contempt.
My attitudes have mellowed somewhat. But even so, it wouldn’t account for the complete turnaround in how I perceived this music. It was not just my perception, but the music itself that seemed to be different.
After some puzzling, I think the answer is subtler. It is the process of the recording of the music that made it different. Those older recordings that I had considered boring, banal, and superficial, might still sound that way to me today – the songs were mass-produced as popular media, and forced into rock or soul idioms, which they were not. They sounded contrived because they were trying to be something they weren’t. They were supposed to be for the quiet or communal worship of God, not for wild parties and loud concerts where one listens to show-off guitar riffs. In short, it attemptyed to be pop – which it was not, so it never really worked out.
Back to the open mike. When it was my turn (my number came up near the end), I played a little piano tune called “A Poem” (available on my CD “PianoSphere”) and then decided to pull out the stops by actually attempting to do the Sherványa Nocturnal Music.
In my forthcoming sci-fi novel “Tond”, the Sherványa people have the custom playing shéyi sulándusei (Shay-yee soo-LAHN-doo-say), translated as “Nocturnal Music”. This does involve a plot element in the novel, but an earlier passage describes it. …We join a band of adventurers in the outdoor plaza of an inn deep in the Sherványa lands.
The innkeeper whistled at one of the Sherványa servants, and a tray was brought to the table with black ceramic mugs, which were placed before the guests. They contained a hot dark drink which Rodan recognized immediately as the source of the aroma; he took a sip but found it disappointingly bitter. The others drank enthusiastically, however (except Teyan, who seemed to think about the same as Rodan), and the innkeeper said (in nearly perfect Fyorian) that the Emb woman had brought it with her from the far south; it was a popular drink in both the Imperium and the Emb Lands. He couldn’t remember what it was called, though. “It’s called káhei, and it’s made from a certain kind of bean.” filled in Ai-Liina. “She brought the beans, I assume; you wouldn’t expect she’d carry water-jugs full of it all the way from there. After it’s made into a drink, it goes stale quickly anyway.”
“It’s good hot,” put in S’Tai, “But it’s better, I think anyway, cold, on a hot day, mixed with milk, honey, and spices. Be careful, though; it’s not intoxicating, exactly, but it can make you feel unpleasant if you drink too much.”
...At that point everyone introduced themselves (the innkeeper’s name was En) and then several conversations began at once in different languages; Rodan found it hard to concentrate on what was being said (he could barely speak anything besides Fyorian anyway); he thought about pulling out his Karjaenic dictionary and trying a few phrases, but thought better of the idea. The music was about to begin, or at least they looked like they were about to play something besides the bells, and maybe that would be interesting. He wondered if he could keep awake during it; after all, it was meant to put people to sleep; but maybe that wouldn’t be a problem in the mid afternoon. The sun was still shining brightly, though the air was chilly.
One of the musicians noticed that Rodan was watching, and he stood, and, carrying his instrument, approached their table. He set it down in front of Rodan. “Would you like to try?” he asked in Fyorian. Rodan stuttered a yes, but found the instrument baffling. At first it was just a collections of metal rods arranged in a wooden frame at random. As he studied it more carefully (the others were curious too, he noticed), he finally saw the pattern to the arrangement. The rods were arranged in four rows of eleven each, smaller to larger from right to left; but behind each bar and slightly raised, there were other bars, seemingly two to each main rod, one on each side.
The musician explained. “It’s a metal kitál.” he said. “The first row, in the front, those are the notes for the sheyándol mode, the first mode to play. The raised rods behind them are the attendant tones, we call them; play them, you’ll see what I mean. Play the main ones first.” He handed Rodan a mallet, shaped like a hammer but with a pad on the end, held by a wooden handle.
Rodan struck one of the rods on the first row; the sound was high and pure, a ringing bell-tone. He struck a few of the others, from left to right, and found that it made a scale (with some notes missing, he thought, though it was very harmonious). Then he tried one of the ‘attendant’ tones; it was a slightly flat version of one of the others.
“Try it with this one.” said the musician, pointing to one of the main rows.
Rodan struck the two of them quickly together. The result was a blending and a shimmer; a beautiful sound more like light than anything. “The main notes are the notes of the mode; the ‘attendant’ tones are eighth-tones.” explained the musician, though Rodan did not know the meaning of the term. “They are, as pitches go, very close together; therefore they make that shimmer. We call the shimmer the sound of the stars singing; even if there aren’t any stars in the night, we like to keep their light shining.” He demonstrated himself, playing a looping melody. The sounds leapt into the air and continued their sparkle. The melody continued (against the ringing of the much larger bells) and gradually it began to change in effect; the musician was introducing, very gradually at first, a note from the second row, and its ‘attendant’ tones; at first it seemed to clash, but he gradually dropped a note from the first row as well, and then moved entirely over to the second row. The entire sound of the music had shifted; it was somewhat darker yet paradoxically more harmonious, and the shimmers were more penetrating. “Avalinkáalei. The Wandering of the Moon; the second mode.” he said as he kept playing. “That’s how we change modes; the first note from the new mode is brought in as the ‘enemy tone’, but soon the other tones accept it, and it becomes a friend. If you listen closely, only one note has actually changed.” He stopped playing, then played the scales of the first two rows. He was right; only one tone was different. “Now the third mode is different yet; again, only one note changes, but now the tonic, that’s the note that sounds like where it ought to end, is in a different place...”
He demonstrated at length and expounded his knowledge of Sherványa musical theory; Rodan kept interrupting to try to play something himself, but to no avail; finally the other musicians over by the bells began to play something different, and the demonstrator took his instrument in hand and wandered back over to join them. “Well he’s a good teacher,” commented Teyan. “If he taught the others how to play, they’d wind up playing Karjaenic music or something else.” He snickered as Ai-Liina glared at him, then she guffawed.
At last Naemar changed the topic, and his aged and ageless face was grave. “Teyan, we must speak of more serious matters.”
“Indeed,” replied Teyan with a final gulp of káhei; “Like how that stuff tastes.” He paused, waiting for a laugh, but none was forthcoming...
In an appendix, I describe the music in somewhat more detail for those who care to look it up. I think in my mind it derives ultimately from Indonesian kacape music. I imagine it as a symphonic form of kacape; a gamelan that has somehow sprouted a secondary ensemble of harps and kotos.
Whatever its “original” sound, I had a working version of it around 1995 at an improvisation workshop at Mills College in Oakland, CA. (led by violinist India Cooke). I gave the rather detailed instructions about the modes and the “enemy tone”, and we played it in a concert. It worked pretty well, at least according to my recollections, though it wasn’t exactly music for sleeping because it included lots of loud saxophones, trombones, and an electric bass.
I’ve been looking for an excuse to try it again, and decided that I might as well give it a shot at the open mike. I set up the hammer dulcimer next to the by-now infamous rondolin, and gave simplified instructions (it would be pointless to take an hour to explain the entire invented music theory for something that would last seven minutes tops). We tried it. One audience member imitated the bass “bells” on the piano by repeatedly, quietly, playing low E’s (with some other improvisation later); I improvised on the dulcimer and the rondolin; and the audience members joined in by playing guitars according to my instructions. One guitarist (I think it was Tim Noah) added beautiful desending open-string strumming at key points. We actually included one mode-shift, though I didn’t bother to include the “enemy tone” idea.
It sounded wonderful. The hall was filled with the chiming, twanging sound of multiple guitars (and mandolins, and a kalimba) played quietly. The lights were low, and the sound was in fact a magical “nocturnal music”. I think I will try it again, sometime when my turn is earlier in the evening (so there are even more audience members), and I think it’s also worth giving it a shot as an entire piece (longer, with all the modes) at some future concert.
(This posting is Oct. 24, 2010; 210 days until the first performance of the complete StormSound Cycle)
The occasion was the open mike at Tim Noah’s Thumbnail Theater two days ago. The musicianship level was indeed very high, for most of the evening.
At one point during the evening, a singer said she’d just written a song and it needed “some music”, by which she meant an accompaniment. She asked the audience members to play any percussion that was lying around. They did, with the djembe and the various shakers that the theater has; I had my percussion mallets with me so I joined in by drumming on the wall. “Where did you get the idea for that?” she asked me later. I’ve seen drummers and percussionists do it – particularly Moe Staiano, who will play anything as a percussion instrument.
Earlier in the evening a guitarist had played an intricately rhythmic instrumental number by a “Christian rock band from Hawaii, back in the 1970’s, and they had an incredible horn section…”
“Seawind!” I shouted, recognizing the band by his description.
“Ah – somebody knows them!” He talked about their music a little, then played. Later I talked to him a little about my recollections of hearing Seawind at college (in the early 1980’s). There were a lot of students there from Hawaii, who liked to hype “their” band by playing the music loud in the dorms with all the windows open.
“Yeah, that was a band,” he agreed. “They’ve just reissued a collection of their music. There are a lot of good musicians in the Christian music movement…”
“There are now,” I commented, “but back then there didn’t seem to be that many. Seawind was an exception.” He agreed with my opinion.
…Which reminds me of something that occurred about a year ago. The following is a posting I wrote for this blog but never posted.
About a year ago, on an impulse, I checked out a DVD of a reunion concert (more like an open mike) of artists of the original “Contemporary Christian Music” (CCM) movement from the 1960’s and early 1970’s. I used to hate this music. I considered it dull, generic, contrived, banal, boring, cloying, wishy-washy, and superficial – exactly what music of strong religious conviction should not be, and basically pop music done badly (isn’t it interesting how the best pop tunes are almost all of these things, but they never quite cross the line?). So I don’t really know why I got this DVD, but I took it home and watched/listened to it – and I was in for a surprise.
The music is, of course, very simple – but by its nature as music that can be sung along with, it has to be. The simplicity was a strength – and to my surprise, some of it was also quite intricate (such as the harmonies by The Second Chapter of Acts). So much for being dull, at least on an intellectual level. It didn’t seem to “take a stand” on what style of mainstream music it was supposed to be, either (rock, country, funk, etc.) but crossed from one to another freely – but it no longer sounded wishy-washy or generic because of this. Rather, this was an attempt to include more than one style, and even when it mixed them together the result was not “elevator music” but fusion. (And who am I to dislike mixing styles, when I don’t like to make a distinction between my experimental and “mainstream” music!?) The lyrics did sometimes contrast with the melodic material or vocal delivery (such as loud hard-rock screaming “Praise the Lord!” over fuzz-guitar bombast) but the result was more gently ironic than contrived, and if anything, it pulled the listener in to hear what was really going on here. …and as for cloying or superficial; the obvious sincerity of the performers (which could be heard in their voices) eliminated this from the start.
So what made the difference? First of all, there is a little of me in it; I admit to a certain amount of Ignatius J. Reillyism – but aren’t we all that way? Don’t we all think of our likes and attitudes as somehow above those of the “common people” (whoever they are)? Case in point: I went to a Christian college, where CCM was very popular among the students – and I used to play Messiaen very loudly on the stereo in my dorm room (with all the doors and windows open) to show the others that there was something better. (I might do the same today, but to show that them that there is something different, not something better – another concept altogether.) Once in a history class, when a professor had commented that another historian had quipped that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, I had triumphantly stated that the same criticism could apply to CCM – neither contemporary, nor Christian, nor music. One or two members of the class cheered, two or three folded over in hysterical laughter, but most just glared or grimaced at me with obvious contempt.
My attitudes have mellowed somewhat. But even so, it wouldn’t account for the complete turnaround in how I perceived this music. It was not just my perception, but the music itself that seemed to be different.
After some puzzling, I think the answer is subtler. It is the process of the recording of the music that made it different. Those older recordings that I had considered boring, banal, and superficial, might still sound that way to me today – the songs were mass-produced as popular media, and forced into rock or soul idioms, which they were not. They sounded contrived because they were trying to be something they weren’t. They were supposed to be for the quiet or communal worship of God, not for wild parties and loud concerts where one listens to show-off guitar riffs. In short, it attemptyed to be pop – which it was not, so it never really worked out.
Back to the open mike. When it was my turn (my number came up near the end), I played a little piano tune called “A Poem” (available on my CD “PianoSphere”) and then decided to pull out the stops by actually attempting to do the Sherványa Nocturnal Music.
In my forthcoming sci-fi novel “Tond”, the Sherványa people have the custom playing shéyi sulándusei (Shay-yee soo-LAHN-doo-say), translated as “Nocturnal Music”. This does involve a plot element in the novel, but an earlier passage describes it. …We join a band of adventurers in the outdoor plaza of an inn deep in the Sherványa lands.
The innkeeper whistled at one of the Sherványa servants, and a tray was brought to the table with black ceramic mugs, which were placed before the guests. They contained a hot dark drink which Rodan recognized immediately as the source of the aroma; he took a sip but found it disappointingly bitter. The others drank enthusiastically, however (except Teyan, who seemed to think about the same as Rodan), and the innkeeper said (in nearly perfect Fyorian) that the Emb woman had brought it with her from the far south; it was a popular drink in both the Imperium and the Emb Lands. He couldn’t remember what it was called, though. “It’s called káhei, and it’s made from a certain kind of bean.” filled in Ai-Liina. “She brought the beans, I assume; you wouldn’t expect she’d carry water-jugs full of it all the way from there. After it’s made into a drink, it goes stale quickly anyway.”
“It’s good hot,” put in S’Tai, “But it’s better, I think anyway, cold, on a hot day, mixed with milk, honey, and spices. Be careful, though; it’s not intoxicating, exactly, but it can make you feel unpleasant if you drink too much.”
...At that point everyone introduced themselves (the innkeeper’s name was En) and then several conversations began at once in different languages; Rodan found it hard to concentrate on what was being said (he could barely speak anything besides Fyorian anyway); he thought about pulling out his Karjaenic dictionary and trying a few phrases, but thought better of the idea. The music was about to begin, or at least they looked like they were about to play something besides the bells, and maybe that would be interesting. He wondered if he could keep awake during it; after all, it was meant to put people to sleep; but maybe that wouldn’t be a problem in the mid afternoon. The sun was still shining brightly, though the air was chilly.
One of the musicians noticed that Rodan was watching, and he stood, and, carrying his instrument, approached their table. He set it down in front of Rodan. “Would you like to try?” he asked in Fyorian. Rodan stuttered a yes, but found the instrument baffling. At first it was just a collections of metal rods arranged in a wooden frame at random. As he studied it more carefully (the others were curious too, he noticed), he finally saw the pattern to the arrangement. The rods were arranged in four rows of eleven each, smaller to larger from right to left; but behind each bar and slightly raised, there were other bars, seemingly two to each main rod, one on each side.
The musician explained. “It’s a metal kitál.” he said. “The first row, in the front, those are the notes for the sheyándol mode, the first mode to play. The raised rods behind them are the attendant tones, we call them; play them, you’ll see what I mean. Play the main ones first.” He handed Rodan a mallet, shaped like a hammer but with a pad on the end, held by a wooden handle.
Rodan struck one of the rods on the first row; the sound was high and pure, a ringing bell-tone. He struck a few of the others, from left to right, and found that it made a scale (with some notes missing, he thought, though it was very harmonious). Then he tried one of the ‘attendant’ tones; it was a slightly flat version of one of the others.
“Try it with this one.” said the musician, pointing to one of the main rows.
Rodan struck the two of them quickly together. The result was a blending and a shimmer; a beautiful sound more like light than anything. “The main notes are the notes of the mode; the ‘attendant’ tones are eighth-tones.” explained the musician, though Rodan did not know the meaning of the term. “They are, as pitches go, very close together; therefore they make that shimmer. We call the shimmer the sound of the stars singing; even if there aren’t any stars in the night, we like to keep their light shining.” He demonstrated himself, playing a looping melody. The sounds leapt into the air and continued their sparkle. The melody continued (against the ringing of the much larger bells) and gradually it began to change in effect; the musician was introducing, very gradually at first, a note from the second row, and its ‘attendant’ tones; at first it seemed to clash, but he gradually dropped a note from the first row as well, and then moved entirely over to the second row. The entire sound of the music had shifted; it was somewhat darker yet paradoxically more harmonious, and the shimmers were more penetrating. “Avalinkáalei. The Wandering of the Moon; the second mode.” he said as he kept playing. “That’s how we change modes; the first note from the new mode is brought in as the ‘enemy tone’, but soon the other tones accept it, and it becomes a friend. If you listen closely, only one note has actually changed.” He stopped playing, then played the scales of the first two rows. He was right; only one tone was different. “Now the third mode is different yet; again, only one note changes, but now the tonic, that’s the note that sounds like where it ought to end, is in a different place...”
He demonstrated at length and expounded his knowledge of Sherványa musical theory; Rodan kept interrupting to try to play something himself, but to no avail; finally the other musicians over by the bells began to play something different, and the demonstrator took his instrument in hand and wandered back over to join them. “Well he’s a good teacher,” commented Teyan. “If he taught the others how to play, they’d wind up playing Karjaenic music or something else.” He snickered as Ai-Liina glared at him, then she guffawed.
At last Naemar changed the topic, and his aged and ageless face was grave. “Teyan, we must speak of more serious matters.”
“Indeed,” replied Teyan with a final gulp of káhei; “Like how that stuff tastes.” He paused, waiting for a laugh, but none was forthcoming...
In an appendix, I describe the music in somewhat more detail for those who care to look it up. I think in my mind it derives ultimately from Indonesian kacape music. I imagine it as a symphonic form of kacape; a gamelan that has somehow sprouted a secondary ensemble of harps and kotos.
Whatever its “original” sound, I had a working version of it around 1995 at an improvisation workshop at Mills College in Oakland, CA. (led by violinist India Cooke). I gave the rather detailed instructions about the modes and the “enemy tone”, and we played it in a concert. It worked pretty well, at least according to my recollections, though it wasn’t exactly music for sleeping because it included lots of loud saxophones, trombones, and an electric bass.
I’ve been looking for an excuse to try it again, and decided that I might as well give it a shot at the open mike. I set up the hammer dulcimer next to the by-now infamous rondolin, and gave simplified instructions (it would be pointless to take an hour to explain the entire invented music theory for something that would last seven minutes tops). We tried it. One audience member imitated the bass “bells” on the piano by repeatedly, quietly, playing low E’s (with some other improvisation later); I improvised on the dulcimer and the rondolin; and the audience members joined in by playing guitars according to my instructions. One guitarist (I think it was Tim Noah) added beautiful desending open-string strumming at key points. We actually included one mode-shift, though I didn’t bother to include the “enemy tone” idea.
It sounded wonderful. The hall was filled with the chiming, twanging sound of multiple guitars (and mandolins, and a kalimba) played quietly. The lights were low, and the sound was in fact a magical “nocturnal music”. I think I will try it again, sometime when my turn is earlier in the evening (so there are even more audience members), and I think it’s also worth giving it a shot as an entire piece (longer, with all the modes) at some future concert.
(This posting is Oct. 24, 2010; 210 days until the first performance of the complete StormSound Cycle)
Friday, October 22, 2010
"New Music in the Library" Free-Improv Concerts
Just a reminder, to anyone following this, about the upcoming "New Music in the Library" concerts:
Broadview Public Library
Saturday, October 23rd, from 3:00 to 5:00 PM
12755 Greenwood Ave. N, Seattle
206-684-7519
Lynnwood Public Library
Wednesday, October 27th, from 7:00 to 8:30 PM
19200 44th Ave W, Lynnwood
425-778-2148
Be there or be an equilateral quadrangular parallelogram...
Again, these are "open mikelesses". I know from correspondances of some musicians who are planning to attend at least one of these, so last month's disappointment won't be repeated.
(This posting is Oct. 22, 2010; 212 days until the first performance of the complete StormSound Cycle)
Broadview Public Library
Saturday, October 23rd, from 3:00 to 5:00 PM
12755 Greenwood Ave. N, Seattle
206-684-7519
Lynnwood Public Library
Wednesday, October 27th, from 7:00 to 8:30 PM
19200 44th Ave W, Lynnwood
425-778-2148
Be there or be an equilateral quadrangular parallelogram...
Again, these are "open mikelesses". I know from correspondances of some musicians who are planning to attend at least one of these, so last month's disappointment won't be repeated.
(This posting is Oct. 22, 2010; 212 days until the first performance of the complete StormSound Cycle)
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
10-15-2010: Indonesian Dance at Seattle Pacific University; Improvised Music at the Chapel Performance Space
I hadn’t seen Indonesian dance before, though I am a fan of gamelan music, so I thought this would be a chance to see the visual element that often goes with the music. Since I know little about this, my ignorance will show: this blog posting will be little more than a description of what I saw. Any readers out there who know more about this topic, put in your comments!
In one aspect I was disappointed. Although SPU has a gamelan, half of it was on loan to the UW – so the dance performance was entirely with recorded gamelan. (More on this discussion about “canned” music, anyone…?)
The visual element was also minimal, though in this case it brought what I was seeing into sharp focus. There was no stage setting, and only one “character” on stage at a time, so I could concentrate on exactly what he or she was doing. The dances were elegant, with generally rather slow gestures, though often with sudden quick movements to emphasize the rhythm. For several dances, the dancer wore a strap of jingling bells on one leg, which took a lot of skill to only make “jingle” at exactly the right time (and never at other times!). There were some movements that seemed to imitate martial arts; others were flowing and balletic. There were some sinuous movements that seemed to indicate a lack of bones in the arms of the dancer... Facial expressions (when there was no mask) fit the character: noble, or drunken, or flirtatious (sometimes a combination of these!). The costumes were particularly elaborate, with sarongs, complicated headdresses, and long streamers worn around the neck and occasionally flapped through the air like ribbons or flags (this is similar to some Chinese dancing I’ve seen, though the movements were different and generally somewhat slower). The dancers wore masks for some pieces, which, interestingly, all seemed to be made to jut out from the face and appear to be somewhat smaller than the dancer’s real head – almost as if the dancers were supposed to appear as close to the shadow puppets as possible.
Concerning the music: the quality of the recording varied considerably. Some pieces sounded as if they’d been recorded underwater with an ancient cassette-deck boom box; others had crisp digital sound. It appears that none of the music was recorded specifically for these particular dancers; they were available recordings – and some were quite old, hence the differences.
Musically the most interesting was Gunung Sari, a dance depicting a legendary Medieval hero. Here, the melody gradually sped up against a steady rhythm, a classic gamelan “form” – but then, just as it became recognizable as a repeated cycle, it was suddenly taken over by a chorus of voices. The dancer went on, almost as if not noticing this change. After two repeats, the chorus stopped, and I (at least) expected the music to end or to go into one of the non-metered modal improvisations that sometimes function as a coda to a gamelan performance – but the gamelan kept going with the melody, faster, then faster again. Now at last the dancer seemed to notice the tempo changes, and sped up accordingly, creating some of the only frenetic movements of the evening. She then danced off of the stage as the music continued (several of the dances ended this way). The music continued for another minute or two, then suddenly slowed and came to a conclusion, leaving the audience somewhat stunned, it appeared (they were silent for a longer time than for any of the other pieces).
Afterwards I heard one audience member comment to another, “…well, it’s very cultural… a lot of people left early because they didn’t know what was going on and it all looks the same if you don’t know about it…” I don’t know what “very cultural” means (is there any music or art that isn’t “cultural”?) and yes, it was a lot the same, but there was a lot of difference behind that surface of sameness. To me, at least, it was a varied (and enjoyable) performance.
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On the way home, I stopped at the Chapel Performace Space at Good Shepherd Center (where they hold the Seattle Composers’ Salons and other concerts I’ve reviewed on this blog) to hear the tail end of an improvisation marathon by contrabass clarinetist Paul Hoskin (see my 8-28-2010 and 9-19-2010 postings). I missed it – exactly as I got out of the elevator, I heard the audience start to applaud. Oh well, I didn’t expect to hear very much of it anyway. I did meet Paul in the hall afterwards. He showed me a CD he had played on, a 3-CD set of the Seattle Festival of Improvised Music (recorded in the 1980’s) – I got one and will review it in a future posting. I also met Charlie Rowan, another improviser (used to do sax, now, keyboards) who had been manning the ticket booth. We talked for a while. I invited both of them to the next “New Music in the Library” concert and told them about what had happened last time… (The next one will be on Saturday, October 23rd, from 3:00 to 5:00 PM, at the Broadview Library, 12755 Greenwood Ave. N, Seattle, WA).
(This posting is Oct. 20, 2010; 214 days until the first performance of the complete StormSound Cycle)
In one aspect I was disappointed. Although SPU has a gamelan, half of it was on loan to the UW – so the dance performance was entirely with recorded gamelan. (More on this discussion about “canned” music, anyone…?)
The visual element was also minimal, though in this case it brought what I was seeing into sharp focus. There was no stage setting, and only one “character” on stage at a time, so I could concentrate on exactly what he or she was doing. The dances were elegant, with generally rather slow gestures, though often with sudden quick movements to emphasize the rhythm. For several dances, the dancer wore a strap of jingling bells on one leg, which took a lot of skill to only make “jingle” at exactly the right time (and never at other times!). There were some movements that seemed to imitate martial arts; others were flowing and balletic. There were some sinuous movements that seemed to indicate a lack of bones in the arms of the dancer... Facial expressions (when there was no mask) fit the character: noble, or drunken, or flirtatious (sometimes a combination of these!). The costumes were particularly elaborate, with sarongs, complicated headdresses, and long streamers worn around the neck and occasionally flapped through the air like ribbons or flags (this is similar to some Chinese dancing I’ve seen, though the movements were different and generally somewhat slower). The dancers wore masks for some pieces, which, interestingly, all seemed to be made to jut out from the face and appear to be somewhat smaller than the dancer’s real head – almost as if the dancers were supposed to appear as close to the shadow puppets as possible.
Concerning the music: the quality of the recording varied considerably. Some pieces sounded as if they’d been recorded underwater with an ancient cassette-deck boom box; others had crisp digital sound. It appears that none of the music was recorded specifically for these particular dancers; they were available recordings – and some were quite old, hence the differences.
Musically the most interesting was Gunung Sari, a dance depicting a legendary Medieval hero. Here, the melody gradually sped up against a steady rhythm, a classic gamelan “form” – but then, just as it became recognizable as a repeated cycle, it was suddenly taken over by a chorus of voices. The dancer went on, almost as if not noticing this change. After two repeats, the chorus stopped, and I (at least) expected the music to end or to go into one of the non-metered modal improvisations that sometimes function as a coda to a gamelan performance – but the gamelan kept going with the melody, faster, then faster again. Now at last the dancer seemed to notice the tempo changes, and sped up accordingly, creating some of the only frenetic movements of the evening. She then danced off of the stage as the music continued (several of the dances ended this way). The music continued for another minute or two, then suddenly slowed and came to a conclusion, leaving the audience somewhat stunned, it appeared (they were silent for a longer time than for any of the other pieces).
Afterwards I heard one audience member comment to another, “…well, it’s very cultural… a lot of people left early because they didn’t know what was going on and it all looks the same if you don’t know about it…” I don’t know what “very cultural” means (is there any music or art that isn’t “cultural”?) and yes, it was a lot the same, but there was a lot of difference behind that surface of sameness. To me, at least, it was a varied (and enjoyable) performance.
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On the way home, I stopped at the Chapel Performace Space at Good Shepherd Center (where they hold the Seattle Composers’ Salons and other concerts I’ve reviewed on this blog) to hear the tail end of an improvisation marathon by contrabass clarinetist Paul Hoskin (see my 8-28-2010 and 9-19-2010 postings). I missed it – exactly as I got out of the elevator, I heard the audience start to applaud. Oh well, I didn’t expect to hear very much of it anyway. I did meet Paul in the hall afterwards. He showed me a CD he had played on, a 3-CD set of the Seattle Festival of Improvised Music (recorded in the 1980’s) – I got one and will review it in a future posting. I also met Charlie Rowan, another improviser (used to do sax, now, keyboards) who had been manning the ticket booth. We talked for a while. I invited both of them to the next “New Music in the Library” concert and told them about what had happened last time… (The next one will be on Saturday, October 23rd, from 3:00 to 5:00 PM, at the Broadview Library, 12755 Greenwood Ave. N, Seattle, WA).
(This posting is Oct. 20, 2010; 214 days until the first performance of the complete StormSound Cycle)
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Reflections on the concert at Tim Noah's Thumnail Theater, Snohomish, WA, 10/14/2010
Before the concert. Left to right: piano, rondolin, hammer dulcimer (with mike), congas, tabla (sitting on amp), mikes, Drew, unknown person standing in the doorway.
Wayne on guitar and me on (plucked) hammer dulcimer. The sign on the rondolin says “Please do not touch instrument”.
The “band” after the concert, a little out of focus (we were tired after playing). Left to right: Keith, me, Wayne, Neal.
It was the night that avant-garde music invaded Snohomish, WA. …Well, maybe “invaded” is too strong a word. There was no aggression (or any other intention) involved. Like any of the concerts I’ve given for unsuspecting audiences, it was nothing more than a statement: this exists.
I tried to get to Tim Noah’s Thumbnail Theater early (around 5:00) but battled traffic and road construction – and wound up getting there around 5:45. Still early for a 7:30 show, but not as early as I would have liked. Wayne and Drew (soundman, a regular at the open mikes) were already there, setting up the stage and the sound. Keith arrived a little later, with a collection of odd little instruments. (The big centerpiece of the odd instrument collections, the rondolin, was already set up – with a sign that said, “please do not touch instrument”! There are two large cracks in its sounding boards.) Neal was the last to arrive and set up his guitar amp.
The audience trickled in. Cyndi and Tim (proprietors of the “Thumb”) manned the front ticket office while Wayne, Drew, Keith and I finished setting up. As a bit of preconcert sound ambience, I had Drew play the prerecorded sound for “Spherics” (#8 in the StormSound Cycle) through the sound system. “It’s good for Halloween,” he commented, referring to its dark ambient sound. I said, “…it’s supposed to sound like outer space. The title refers to the old concept of the Music of the Spheres.” “...There’s Halloween in outer space!”
Keith began the concert with two piano pieces. “N”, in which he plays every note of the piano once (beginning in the middle of the keyboard), is a fascinating excursion into the resonances of each particular sound. However, it was partially ruined by one badly out-of-tune note and an insistently ticking clock (which I immediately removed after the piece finished). I commented later that they’d had the open mike in that room many times before, but I’d never heard the clock… (Wayne said that it wasn’t noticeable until Keith’s music forced us to listen to the silence between the notes. …And, he had to move the clock farther out of the room later!)
Keith’s second piece, “High and Inside”, was one of the highlights of the evening. Having not heard the piece, I’d asked beforehand if the “inside” referred to inside the piano. It didn’t; rather, it seemed to indicate a way of listening to the inside of the sounds. Keith stated that the piece was about the “swirly” sounds at the upper register of the piano. He struck high two-note chords (in a sequence of prime numbers), loudly, stridently, and let them ring – and the result was humming and pulsating resonances that did in fact seem to “swirl”. Oddly, even when he struck the same chord more than once, the “swirls” were different; pulsations occurring in a different order, or in a different rhythm to each other – this should be impossible, and I watched carefully to see if he was holding down lower notes to make overtones, adjusting the pressure on the sustain pedal, or what… Nothing! He explained to me later that these differences were merely in the mechanics of the performance. It’s impossible to strike the keys exactly the same way twice. One note may be slightly louder, or struck a millisecond later, and the result is the difference in the reverberations. I was looking for something that he was doing to make these sounds; and it turns out that it is a chance operation! Aleatory music that, again, is not aleatory… (The intensity of these echoing sopranino booms was relieved by brief melodic interludes in the middle register.)
Neal also played a piano piece from much the same sound-world. “Pastorale: The Color of Water” was about the sound and silence in a particular place: “Bickleton is a small town with few streetlights, little traffic, and clear air. Near the town is the Blow Out, a remarkable geological phenomenon, essentially a big hole full of unique lava rock fragments that clink like bells.” The piece, a little longer than Keith’s, consisted of single quiet chords that did in fact “clink like bells”. It very much reminded me of the piano music of Benjamin Boretz, or (more distantly) of Morton Feldman.
Wayne’s guitar pieces were more “conventional” (whatever that really means) but still concerned with the sound of the sound itself. He played “Zigzag”, a rhythmically intense piece with a vague Latin feel and a little dissonance. To me it felt like what would have happened if Bartok had played the guitar and written Cumbia music (with a little country and blues, now that I listen to it again!). Fun! “Chamber” was a more ambient piece, based on chord progression that somehow continuously hovered between dissonance and resolve, never quite achieving either, but always expectant of both… A fascinating piece, and another solo highlight of the evening.
Wayne and I also played two duets: one of his compositions, and one of mine.
Mine, titled “Oceanic Music”, is a piece of conceptual music: one attaches a wire to the piano and improvises on it in various ways – many of the results sound like whalesong, hence the title – and any other instrument(s) may be added over the top. (My 9/29 posting says that I’ve recorded it twice before, but I recently re-discovered one more; an old cassette recording that I’d made of it sometime back in the early 1980’s, with a digital delay and no other instruments on top. I think I’d snuck into the University of Washington music building after hours to record it.) Anyway, Wayne added guitar chords very reminiscent of Ralph Towner, and percussion from the body of the instrument, all with a delay – and it sounded very much like “Oceanic Music”. It seemed to be a particular favorite of the audience.
Wayne’s piece, “Here and There”, begins “here” (a quiet guitar melody), goes “there” (louder, more rhythmic guitar work) and returns “here” – but it is a different “here” because I’d added a piano melody in counterpoint. That piano melody is a conscious bit of schmaltz; its presence in this concert was intended as something like the second movement of the Shostakovich second piano concerto – the quiet, (overly) romantic theme in the midst of more edgy material. Whether it worked, or was merely out of style, I’ll leave for those who heard it to decide. (…There was a problem with the piece: partway through, I suddenly forgot how the melody was supposed to go. I improvised it a little, but when I came back to the phrase I’d forgotten, I still couldn’t remember it… Listening to the recording, what I improvised didn’t sound as good as the original melody. Oh well.)
My solo piece was the “Song from Deep Silence” (#16 in the StormSound Cycle), for piano against four prerecorded (and slightly altered) pianos. It is extended variations on the Gospel song “Sing Alleluia” (though I treat the song more as an idée fixe rather than a set of variations in the standard sense). I think I did one of my better performances of this piece, though the bass on the prerecorded sound was a little heavy. I’ll have to listen back to my recordings of the concert more to find out for sure.
Scattered throughout the concert were the four “Snohomish Pieces”. This was a totally aleatory project. Keith and I worked on them, at first by creating seven-minute compositions for prerecorded sound only, each without knowing what the other’s pieces were going to be like.
Piece 1 (Keith): outdoor sounds, hammering percussion, a voice (Keith’s?) mumbling “sound example 2, sound example 3, etc.”, and at one point, a chicken.
Piece 2 (Keith): scattered plucked string sounds, altered and often abruptly cut off, gradually becoming sparser.
Piece 3 (me): altered sounds of a thunderstorm with hail, altered piano sounds and flute sounds, and altered birdcalls (this is actually a sped-up version of “The Songbird Flies Unhindered through Storm and Violence”, #9 in the StormSound Cycle).
Piece 4 (me): gongs, slowed down or sped up, with highly amplified slab gongs near the end.
I then multi-tracked these, #1 with #3, #1 with #4, etc., resulting in four new pieces. We used these as backgrounds for free improvisations at the concert: the four “Snohomish Pieces”. Keith and Neal played the first, then Neal and I, then Keith and I, then all three of us. These were a lot of fun – I played the rondolin, hammer dulcimer, and slab gongs (along with the piano); Keith played various hand-held percussion, a wooden tube (organ pipe?), cans full of ping-pong balls, and an out-of-tune autoharp (along with the piano); while Neal sang, chanted, muttered, and stomped around on the floor (along with playing the piano and the guitar). His guitar stylings were beautiful. At the end of the last piece, Keith scattered the ping-pong balls across the floor, making an incredible sound (one has to hear it to believe it) and then warned the audience, “Be very careful as you leave…!” These pieces made an ever changing and completely unpredictable sound universe. In retrospect, there were too many of them (two probably would have been enough) and the prerecorded sound was too quiet, so that the “live” sounds drowned it out. The pieces were still interesting, and I hope we can do them again in concert sometime.
So that was it. For another view of the concert by a performer, see Keith’s blog: http://nowmusicinnewalbion.blogspot.com/
Special thanks to Tim Noah, Cyndi, and the Thumbnail Theater for giving us the time and space for the concert.
(This posting is Oct. 17, 2010; 217 days until the first performance of the complete StormSound Cycle)
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Concert at the "Thumb", 10-14-2010
Just a reminder for those interested:
CONCERT, OCTOBER 14, 2010
Location: Tim Noah’s Thumbnail Theater, 1211 4th Street, Snohomish, WA 98290. The concert will be in the small hall.
Time: 7:30 PM (it will run about 2 hours, including intermission)
Performers: Keith Eisebrey, Neal Meyer, Wayne Lovegrove, and me (S. Eric Scribner). I'll play one of the StormSound pieces ("Song from Deep Silence"); Wayne will play two solo guitar pieces and two duets with me; Keith and Neal will each play some solo piano; and Keith, Neal and I (as a "band") are doing four new seven-minute pieces that Keith and I made specifically for this concert. These are improvisations over prerecorded sound. (We're having a lively e-mail discussion about what to call such music; more on that in future postings.) I'm going to play not just the piano and piano strings for these pieces, but also the slab gongs, hammer dulcimer, Lao mountain harp, and rondolin; Keith also said that he'd see what instruments he should bring, so this should be a load of fun! (The instrumentation is billed as "piano, crywire, hammer dulcimer, acoustic and electric guitars, rondolin, electronics, homemades and contraptions".
Admission: $10.00
See you there!
(This posting is Oct. 13, 2010; 221 days until the first performance of the complete StormSound Cycle)
CONCERT, OCTOBER 14, 2010
Location: Tim Noah’s Thumbnail Theater, 1211 4th Street, Snohomish, WA 98290. The concert will be in the small hall.
Time: 7:30 PM (it will run about 2 hours, including intermission)
Performers: Keith Eisebrey, Neal Meyer, Wayne Lovegrove, and me (S. Eric Scribner). I'll play one of the StormSound pieces ("Song from Deep Silence"); Wayne will play two solo guitar pieces and two duets with me; Keith and Neal will each play some solo piano; and Keith, Neal and I (as a "band") are doing four new seven-minute pieces that Keith and I made specifically for this concert. These are improvisations over prerecorded sound. (We're having a lively e-mail discussion about what to call such music; more on that in future postings.) I'm going to play not just the piano and piano strings for these pieces, but also the slab gongs, hammer dulcimer, Lao mountain harp, and rondolin; Keith also said that he'd see what instruments he should bring, so this should be a load of fun! (The instrumentation is billed as "piano, crywire, hammer dulcimer, acoustic and electric guitars, rondolin, electronics, homemades and contraptions".
Admission: $10.00
See you there!
(This posting is Oct. 13, 2010; 221 days until the first performance of the complete StormSound Cycle)
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Concert Review: Double Yoko and Orkes Manohara, Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center, 10/1/2010
What is it about the “heavy metal” style of vocalism that is so terrifying? These primal cat-like hisses and yowls lasted no longer than two minutes, yet their very hideousness brought the rest of the concert into sharp focus, and planted a seed that would later grow into melody.
The concert was a double bill: Orkes Manohara and Double Yoko. The first half of the concert could not have contrasted more with the “heavy metal” I just mentioned.
Keroncong music (krone-chong, with both O’s long and the R rolled) is a style of Javanese music, somewhere between our Euro/American concepts of “folk” and “popular” music (think of an Indonesian Fairport Convention). The few recordings I’ve heard of it emphasize the “pop” aspect and are a bit overproduced (if badly recorded). In concert, however, keroncong becomes an intimate type of vocal chamber music. This is how Orkes Manahara plays. The basis for the music is repeated figures on one instrument, often altered during repetition. The instrument is invariably plucked or strummed strings, such as a guitar, Javanese ukulele, or a three-stringed cello. The scales and modes are reminiscent of the more familiar gamelan and kacape music (though the tunings in gamelan are extremely complex and can’t be easily reproduced on a single instrument). Over this, the singer(s) add the melody – sometimes in contrast to the accompaniment or to each other, and sometimes in heterophonic agreement. The lyrics are often melancholy, and sung in the polysyllabic vowel-rich languages of Javanese or Indonesian. The result is quiet, melodic, and hypnotic.
Orkes Manohara is a husband and wife duet (with a baby who, despite being held by someone in the audience, seemed to insist on joining in the performance with happy squeals – and at the end actually seemed to be squealing in tune!). I can’t really review much of the performance, since I got there late (after being at the open mike at Tim Noah’s Thumbnail Theater in Snohomish, a half-hour away) so I only heard the last two songs. The first of these was playing as I entered – since it used the guitar, it seemed to be a continuation of the American folk music at the open mike. Closer listening revealed differences as well as similarities. The vocal line was mostly by Krusnedi, the male singer (who also played the guitar); Maeg added melodic interjections here and there, and she kept swaying to the music to stay in the right rhythm and sing at exactly the right time. The rhythms were quite complex. The last song used the three-stringed cello and an Indian sruti box (a reed drone instrument sounded by opening and closing a bellows). “This isn’t Indonesian; I bought it on Vashon Island,” she said before playing it. She sang the lead vocals, with little bits of harmony from him. Beautiful, quiet music.
Double Yoko (Beth Fleenor and Paris Hurley) played the second half. What they played was also an intimate chamber music, but for clarinet and violin. One audience member told me that “The second half probably won’t be anything like the first half,” and it wasn’t – but there was an odd sense of continuity. The instrumentals were often based on repeated but varied patterns, and there were long stretches in a single mode or scale. There was often a melancholy, nostalgic air. The vocals contributed to a quasi-pop atmosphere (Beth told me after the concert that they play “keening noir-pop”); but here was also a profound contrast. The first piece was entirely instrumental, with bass clarinet drones (created by an electronic loop) slowly fading over a series of raga-like improvisations; the second began in the same manner but went into minimalism – and then abruptly stopped. Then, the vocals (by Beth Fleenor) exploded. She let out a reptilian screech. She followed it with a series of yowls, hisses, screams, and sore-throaty rasps, all part of the standard “heavy metal” vocal weaponry, then settled into repeated “monkey” hoots and hiccups – this, in what had until then been music as gentle as the keroncong of the first half… Then, just as abruptly, the horror show was over, and the instruments returned to the front and the mellow quality returned. The mood had changed, however; Paris played the violin a little skitterishly at first (and Beth played the clarinet in strange jolts), before letting the melodic material bloom again – and all the music had (until the last piece) an intentional hesitancy, as if it was aware of a monstrous id lurking just below its surface. The last piece, pop-esque with its continuous rhythm by Beth on two shakers, finally broke the tension. This time Paris sang, over loops created by her violin and her own vocals – fluid, wordless melismas (her voice is reminiscent of Alanis Morissette or Jennifer Knapp) that “accepted” the singing as part of the instruments and thus negated its previous horrific interruption. Thus, although this may not have been planned, Double Yoko’s performance could be seen as a single large composition dealing with contrasts and acceptance of what is different.
Much of the music I listen to (and have talked about on this blog) is contemplative. This includes most of the StormSound Cycle music. But, I’m also something of a closet metalhead, and I like to listen to Wagner or Shostakovich with the stereo volume maxed out. Thus, I appreciate this incorporation of the primeval “heavy metal” vocal styling into a very different form of music. In this case, however, loudness was not the point. It seemed as though the scary vocals were intended to be an interruption by something threatening and alien, which was then incorporated into the rest of the music in a different form. The set ended in much the same relaxed mood as the end of the keroncong music in the first half.
(Oct. 3, 2010; 231 days until the first performance of the StormSound Cycle)
The concert was a double bill: Orkes Manohara and Double Yoko. The first half of the concert could not have contrasted more with the “heavy metal” I just mentioned.
Keroncong music (krone-chong, with both O’s long and the R rolled) is a style of Javanese music, somewhere between our Euro/American concepts of “folk” and “popular” music (think of an Indonesian Fairport Convention). The few recordings I’ve heard of it emphasize the “pop” aspect and are a bit overproduced (if badly recorded). In concert, however, keroncong becomes an intimate type of vocal chamber music. This is how Orkes Manahara plays. The basis for the music is repeated figures on one instrument, often altered during repetition. The instrument is invariably plucked or strummed strings, such as a guitar, Javanese ukulele, or a three-stringed cello. The scales and modes are reminiscent of the more familiar gamelan and kacape music (though the tunings in gamelan are extremely complex and can’t be easily reproduced on a single instrument). Over this, the singer(s) add the melody – sometimes in contrast to the accompaniment or to each other, and sometimes in heterophonic agreement. The lyrics are often melancholy, and sung in the polysyllabic vowel-rich languages of Javanese or Indonesian. The result is quiet, melodic, and hypnotic.
Orkes Manohara is a husband and wife duet (with a baby who, despite being held by someone in the audience, seemed to insist on joining in the performance with happy squeals – and at the end actually seemed to be squealing in tune!). I can’t really review much of the performance, since I got there late (after being at the open mike at Tim Noah’s Thumbnail Theater in Snohomish, a half-hour away) so I only heard the last two songs. The first of these was playing as I entered – since it used the guitar, it seemed to be a continuation of the American folk music at the open mike. Closer listening revealed differences as well as similarities. The vocal line was mostly by Krusnedi, the male singer (who also played the guitar); Maeg added melodic interjections here and there, and she kept swaying to the music to stay in the right rhythm and sing at exactly the right time. The rhythms were quite complex. The last song used the three-stringed cello and an Indian sruti box (a reed drone instrument sounded by opening and closing a bellows). “This isn’t Indonesian; I bought it on Vashon Island,” she said before playing it. She sang the lead vocals, with little bits of harmony from him. Beautiful, quiet music.
Double Yoko (Beth Fleenor and Paris Hurley) played the second half. What they played was also an intimate chamber music, but for clarinet and violin. One audience member told me that “The second half probably won’t be anything like the first half,” and it wasn’t – but there was an odd sense of continuity. The instrumentals were often based on repeated but varied patterns, and there were long stretches in a single mode or scale. There was often a melancholy, nostalgic air. The vocals contributed to a quasi-pop atmosphere (Beth told me after the concert that they play “keening noir-pop”); but here was also a profound contrast. The first piece was entirely instrumental, with bass clarinet drones (created by an electronic loop) slowly fading over a series of raga-like improvisations; the second began in the same manner but went into minimalism – and then abruptly stopped. Then, the vocals (by Beth Fleenor) exploded. She let out a reptilian screech. She followed it with a series of yowls, hisses, screams, and sore-throaty rasps, all part of the standard “heavy metal” vocal weaponry, then settled into repeated “monkey” hoots and hiccups – this, in what had until then been music as gentle as the keroncong of the first half… Then, just as abruptly, the horror show was over, and the instruments returned to the front and the mellow quality returned. The mood had changed, however; Paris played the violin a little skitterishly at first (and Beth played the clarinet in strange jolts), before letting the melodic material bloom again – and all the music had (until the last piece) an intentional hesitancy, as if it was aware of a monstrous id lurking just below its surface. The last piece, pop-esque with its continuous rhythm by Beth on two shakers, finally broke the tension. This time Paris sang, over loops created by her violin and her own vocals – fluid, wordless melismas (her voice is reminiscent of Alanis Morissette or Jennifer Knapp) that “accepted” the singing as part of the instruments and thus negated its previous horrific interruption. Thus, although this may not have been planned, Double Yoko’s performance could be seen as a single large composition dealing with contrasts and acceptance of what is different.
Much of the music I listen to (and have talked about on this blog) is contemplative. This includes most of the StormSound Cycle music. But, I’m also something of a closet metalhead, and I like to listen to Wagner or Shostakovich with the stereo volume maxed out. Thus, I appreciate this incorporation of the primeval “heavy metal” vocal styling into a very different form of music. In this case, however, loudness was not the point. It seemed as though the scary vocals were intended to be an interruption by something threatening and alien, which was then incorporated into the rest of the music in a different form. The set ended in much the same relaxed mood as the end of the keroncong music in the first half.
(Oct. 3, 2010; 231 days until the first performance of the StormSound Cycle)
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Getting Ready for the Snohomish Thumbnail Concert, part one
Went over to the music building at Seattle Pacific University to meet Wayne Lovegrove and practice for the upcoming concert at Tim Noah’s Thumbnail Theater in Snohomish. While we were waiting for the large classroom with the grand piano to become available, we discovered an anomaly in a practice room. SPU has a baby grand piano that’s painted white (“This is the Liberace room,” quipped Wayne) but unlike any other painted piano I’ve tried, it still sounds good.
Wayne and I had an e-mail correspondence going concerning the music we’re going to play. I’d sent him an MP3 of “…into all the world…”, a piece I’d written that implies a kind of world fusion. The piano part is basically the same melody, first played as parallel chords (in the manner of Debussy or Satie) and then four times in the style of the Javanese gamelan (with a gong-cycle played from the piano). It’s been mistaken for something by Lou Harrison, though I wasn’t trying to copy him exactly. I recorded it once about ten years ago in California, with Peter Valsamis and Tom Nunn improvising percussion parts.
I've been listening to "Into All The World" repeatedly to develop a feel for what kind of guitar part would fit. It's such a simple, self-contained melody that subsists on it's own lack of ornamentation that I'm not sure any conventional guitar part or improv won't detract from it. The percussion parts on the recording fit precisely because they're not melodic. I'll try to play actual guitar against the track today and let you know how it goes. Perhaps something with some delay effects?
Wayne wrote that a couple of days ago, but then, yesterday (before the practice):
I think I've found a very nice way to fit a guitar part to "Into All The World", so this is just a note to give you an opportunity to keep that tune in your mind for our meeting tonight. The guitar part is textural, rhythmic, and somewhat percussive (filling the roles of the percussion and gently melodic mallet work on the recording), so it allows the simple piano melody to remain clear while providing a quite rich accompaniment that both contrasts with and complements the piano part. Hopefully!
So I was looking forward to the practice, and I was not disappointed. The guitar part he’d added was beautiful; rippling waves of sound against the piano’s gamelan sounds. However, when we played some other pieces, it seemed to me to be the least interesting of them – mainly because the others were phenomenal. I tried adding a part to Wayne’s piece “Here and There”. I’d never heard it before, but found that it lent itself easily to improvising over; I added a hammer dulcimer part at the beginning, moved over to the piano for a faster part in the middle (against Wayne’s rapid flurries of notes at that point) and then, at the end, an epiphany: another melody can be played contrapuntally against the de capo of Wayne’s guitar part. I improvised it this first time (or actually first two times; I tried to record the result but found that I’d left the recorder on “pause” for the first time through – stupid, stupid!). I’ll probably try to come up with a composed melody for the concert.
We also tried “Oceanic Music”. This is one of my pieces, but it’s really more of a concept than a composition. The “crywire”, a piano modification of my own invention, is not entirely controllable – so any performance with it (including “Oceanic Music”) must be improvised. No matter. I’ve recorded it twice before, once with my own hammer dulcimer over the top (available on my CD “Music from Thousand Oaks”), and once, in a much more atonal/experimental version, with Tom Nunn playing a homemade bowed-percussion instrument called the “space plate” (on my CD “Duets and Trios”, not currently available). I like both of those versions, despite their completely opposite aesthetics; in Wayne’s rendering, the piece will take on its beautiful third form. He added sparse sprinklings of guitar (reminiscent of Ralph Towner) in a strange and resonant low tuning, and gentle percussion from the body of the instrument.
So it looks like we’re going to do “Here and There”, “Oceanic Music” (the first time I’ll have played the latter in concert) along with two solo pieces by Wayne. Also on the program: Two solo piano pieces by Keith Eisenbrey (including his “economical panneumiad” called N), a solo piano piece by Neal Meyer, one of the StormSound pieces (with me on piano), and a set of improvisations (by Keith, Neal, and myself) over prerecorded “compositions” that Keith and I are working on specifically for this concert. In the latter set I’ll be playing the hammer dulcimer, the rondolin, the slab-gongs (maybe) and probably some other miscellaneous and odd contraptions.
The concert, billed as “An Evening of Ambient and Experimental Music”, will be on Thursday, October 14th, 7:30 PM, at Tim Noah’s Thumbnail Theater, 1211 4th Street, Snohomish, WA 98290. $10.00 admission. It will run about two hours, including the intermission.
Wayne and I had an e-mail correspondence going concerning the music we’re going to play. I’d sent him an MP3 of “…into all the world…”, a piece I’d written that implies a kind of world fusion. The piano part is basically the same melody, first played as parallel chords (in the manner of Debussy or Satie) and then four times in the style of the Javanese gamelan (with a gong-cycle played from the piano). It’s been mistaken for something by Lou Harrison, though I wasn’t trying to copy him exactly. I recorded it once about ten years ago in California, with Peter Valsamis and Tom Nunn improvising percussion parts.
I've been listening to "Into All The World" repeatedly to develop a feel for what kind of guitar part would fit. It's such a simple, self-contained melody that subsists on it's own lack of ornamentation that I'm not sure any conventional guitar part or improv won't detract from it. The percussion parts on the recording fit precisely because they're not melodic. I'll try to play actual guitar against the track today and let you know how it goes. Perhaps something with some delay effects?
Wayne wrote that a couple of days ago, but then, yesterday (before the practice):
I think I've found a very nice way to fit a guitar part to "Into All The World", so this is just a note to give you an opportunity to keep that tune in your mind for our meeting tonight. The guitar part is textural, rhythmic, and somewhat percussive (filling the roles of the percussion and gently melodic mallet work on the recording), so it allows the simple piano melody to remain clear while providing a quite rich accompaniment that both contrasts with and complements the piano part. Hopefully!
So I was looking forward to the practice, and I was not disappointed. The guitar part he’d added was beautiful; rippling waves of sound against the piano’s gamelan sounds. However, when we played some other pieces, it seemed to me to be the least interesting of them – mainly because the others were phenomenal. I tried adding a part to Wayne’s piece “Here and There”. I’d never heard it before, but found that it lent itself easily to improvising over; I added a hammer dulcimer part at the beginning, moved over to the piano for a faster part in the middle (against Wayne’s rapid flurries of notes at that point) and then, at the end, an epiphany: another melody can be played contrapuntally against the de capo of Wayne’s guitar part. I improvised it this first time (or actually first two times; I tried to record the result but found that I’d left the recorder on “pause” for the first time through – stupid, stupid!). I’ll probably try to come up with a composed melody for the concert.
We also tried “Oceanic Music”. This is one of my pieces, but it’s really more of a concept than a composition. The “crywire”, a piano modification of my own invention, is not entirely controllable – so any performance with it (including “Oceanic Music”) must be improvised. No matter. I’ve recorded it twice before, once with my own hammer dulcimer over the top (available on my CD “Music from Thousand Oaks”), and once, in a much more atonal/experimental version, with Tom Nunn playing a homemade bowed-percussion instrument called the “space plate” (on my CD “Duets and Trios”, not currently available). I like both of those versions, despite their completely opposite aesthetics; in Wayne’s rendering, the piece will take on its beautiful third form. He added sparse sprinklings of guitar (reminiscent of Ralph Towner) in a strange and resonant low tuning, and gentle percussion from the body of the instrument.
So it looks like we’re going to do “Here and There”, “Oceanic Music” (the first time I’ll have played the latter in concert) along with two solo pieces by Wayne. Also on the program: Two solo piano pieces by Keith Eisenbrey (including his “economical panneumiad” called N), a solo piano piece by Neal Meyer, one of the StormSound pieces (with me on piano), and a set of improvisations (by Keith, Neal, and myself) over prerecorded “compositions” that Keith and I are working on specifically for this concert. In the latter set I’ll be playing the hammer dulcimer, the rondolin, the slab-gongs (maybe) and probably some other miscellaneous and odd contraptions.
The concert, billed as “An Evening of Ambient and Experimental Music”, will be on Thursday, October 14th, 7:30 PM, at Tim Noah’s Thumbnail Theater, 1211 4th Street, Snohomish, WA 98290. $10.00 admission. It will run about two hours, including the intermission.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
First “New Music in the Library” Concert: Broadview Public Library, September 26th, 2010
Waaaa!! Nobody showed up for this "open mike"! No other musicians, no audience. Also, the advertisement had been inexplicably removed from the library bulletin board some time during the week (none of the librarians knew who had taken it down). As a “new music” artist, this is the type of apathy I expect from record producers and radio stations – but I’ve never seen it in musicians or (non-)audiences. Probably the short notice (and disappearing ad) scuttled it. I’ll have to see what happens with the next two of these concerts (I may have to sign up for Twitter before then).
The day was not a total loss musically. I managed to play a twenty-minute solo improvisation, on hammer dulcimer with prerecorded electronics (a variant of one of the StormSound pieces). I used some of George Crumb’s piano techniques on the dulcimer, though the piece is generally in a sparse style reminiscent of Gust Burns' "silent" music. I recorded it; it is not a professional recording by any means, but I’ll offer it free for anyone who wants to hear it. Write to me at eskribby@gmail.com and I’ll send you a copy.
The day was not a total loss musically. I managed to play a twenty-minute solo improvisation, on hammer dulcimer with prerecorded electronics (a variant of one of the StormSound pieces). I used some of George Crumb’s piano techniques on the dulcimer, though the piece is generally in a sparse style reminiscent of Gust Burns' "silent" music. I recorded it; it is not a professional recording by any means, but I’ll offer it free for anyone who wants to hear it. Write to me at eskribby@gmail.com and I’ll send you a copy.
Concert Review: Foday Musa Suso, Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center, 9/24/2010
Foday Musa Suso with the kora; a picture from his website.
I described the Steve Peters installation at Jack Straw as a “profoundly meditative soundspace”; this was another. Kora music is relaxing, delicate, sweet, and gently rocking. It has a way, as one audience member sated after the concert, of “being good for listening for long periods of time, and you don’t care about time.”
The kora is somewhere between a harp and a lute. That is, the 21 strings are arranged like those of a double harp (one set for each hand), but they’re attached to a long neck and large gourd resonator – giving the appearance of a giant lute (the Renaissance theorbo comes to mind). The strings are wound around the neck by means of leather thongs; the tuning (which is approximate; more intuitive than mathematical) is done by sliding these thongs up and down a millimeter or two.
This much I knew. This was, however, my first chance to hear an entire concert on this beautiful instrument (the only other time I’d heard it “live” was a short set at an open mike in California).
When I walked into the performance space, I was greeted by the quiet sounds of an old Brian Eno and John Hassell CD, vaguely African in its ambience. Random bits of audience conversation drifted by: “I met the girl he’s dating…” “I just thought I’d come by to wish you a happy birthday…” “I think that zoo is the saddest one I’ve seen; the tiger is emaciated and the birds are all losing their feathers because they’re nervous…” The stage was set with a chair, a mike, a stand for the kora, and some electronic equipment, all on a hand-woven African rug that had stripes of brown, beige and tan triangle-within-triangle patterns vaguely reminiscent of Navajo weaving.
Steve Peters introduced Mr Suso, who then came on stage with his wildly decorated kora (the back of the instrument, which faced the audience, had a bull’s-eye star within star pattern in red, white, black, yellow, and green, with Mr. Suso’s website address in bold letters spelled out around the outside: www.FMSuso.com). He started to play. The pattern on the instrument was much “louder” than the music, but its rhythmic patterning was quite appropriate.
Mr. Suso played ten pieces. Eight of them were his own compositions. Rather than just playing the kora “straight”, he used electronics: fuzz pedals, reverb, and loops; he also played the strings with many different plucking techniques (all with his thumbs!) and tapped on the body of the instrument (or on the “handles”) to produce a drum-like sound. Many of the compositions (both his own pieces and the traditional ones) consist mostly of repeated patterns that the performer improvises over – a thicker texture could be achieved by looping. There was no discernable difference in “style” between the traditional pieces and the new compositions (with one exception, see below…). Both were modal, and began with a melodic introduction, set up an ostinato based on some fragments of the introduction (with more, related, melodic material above) and went into an extended coda that dropped the repeated pattern but in some cases seemed almost to start up a new pattern before ending. There was a complex relationship between the repeated accompaniment and the melodic fragments above: sometimes the phrases echoed one another, sometimes they harmonized; more than once they were in a two-against-three rhythm. Some faulty electronics detracted from the first few songs (there was distortion where it wasn’t wanted) but this was fixed and the rest of the concert went smoothly.
The piece called "Spring Waterfall" was the one notable exception in “style". Here, there was no fragmented introduction, and the repeated “loop” was clearly based on minimalist arpeggios, varied in rhythm, in the manner of Philip Glass (who is a personal friend of Mr. Suso’s, and collaborator for music). This was similar to the piece “Morning Light” on Mr. Suso’s CD “The Dream Time”, but the rest of the composition was structured much like the others.
My description makes the music sound monotonous. It was not. The change-within-repetition was a strength of the music, and it made one listen closer: for nuances, for details, for minute changes in timbre and rhythm and color. In that close listening, one could escape into another world, a world where time was suspended, at least for the duration of the concert. By the end, the audience was thoroughly entranced by the gentle rhythm (if the finger-snapping scattered here and there is any indication) and the evening closed magically.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
"New Music in the Library" Concert Updates
This series of concerts will be called (for now) “New Music in the Library”. If the series continues, there will eventually be other types of New Music featured, but these first three are for free improvisation. Basically they’re open mikes, though without the mike – so as one audience member at the Eye Music concert last Friday said, they’re “open mikelesses”. If you do free improvisation, bring your instrument. We’ll do duets or trios (probably put together on the spot), with 10-15 minutes per group (depending on how many are there).
Here are the details:
Saturday, September 25th, from 3:00 to 5:00 PM
Broadview Public Library
12755 Greenwood Ave. N, Seattle, WA
Saturday, October 23rd, from 3:00 to 5:00 PM
Broadview Public Library
12755 Greenwood Ave. N, Seattle, WA
Wednesday, October 27th, from 7:00 to 8:30 PM
Lynnwood Public Library
19200 44th Ave W, Lynnwood, WA
And again, here are the “rules” (sorry, there have to be some rules, even in free improvisation)
1. The concert will be in the meeting room to the side of the library foyer, and the library will be open – so the music must be of a quiet nature (not loud enough to disturb people using the main part of the library).
2. Get there early to set up. We will take a break about halfway through, but don’t want too many musicians setting up during the break (and none trying to set up while others are playing!).
3. There is no piano or sound system.
4. There will be some traffic noise from outside, so pieces that interact with the sound environment are good.
5. The concerts are free and open to all. They are not paid gigs.
6. The meeting rooms hold about 25 audience members plus musicians (that’s a pretty rough estimate; we might be able to have a few more).
So that’s that. See you there!
Here are the details:
Saturday, September 25th, from 3:00 to 5:00 PM
Broadview Public Library
12755 Greenwood Ave. N, Seattle, WA
Saturday, October 23rd, from 3:00 to 5:00 PM
Broadview Public Library
12755 Greenwood Ave. N, Seattle, WA
Wednesday, October 27th, from 7:00 to 8:30 PM
Lynnwood Public Library
19200 44th Ave W, Lynnwood, WA
And again, here are the “rules” (sorry, there have to be some rules, even in free improvisation)
1. The concert will be in the meeting room to the side of the library foyer, and the library will be open – so the music must be of a quiet nature (not loud enough to disturb people using the main part of the library).
2. Get there early to set up. We will take a break about halfway through, but don’t want too many musicians setting up during the break (and none trying to set up while others are playing!).
3. There is no piano or sound system.
4. There will be some traffic noise from outside, so pieces that interact with the sound environment are good.
5. The concerts are free and open to all. They are not paid gigs.
6. The meeting rooms hold about 25 audience members plus musicians (that’s a pretty rough estimate; we might be able to have a few more).
So that’s that. See you there!
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Concert Review: Eye Music, Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center, 9/17/2010
The Stage Set-Up: piano (lid closed), moon-lute, guitar, kaen, wad of aluminum foil, sticks, plastic cups, Celtic harp (prepared), Indian harmonium, another guitar, Tibetan bells, another kaen, wooden slats on a table, wok, more sticks, wires, flute, plastic bottle, lnaw, sax, stones, pie plates, light bulb, book in French, European harmonium, wooden toys, whiskey bottle (glass), auto horn, seashells, cello, more stones, slabs of ice frozen onto a string and suspended above a metal mixing bowl with a mike attached.
The Band:
(photograph by Rachael Lanzillotta, from the Eye Music website http://www.ribexibalba.com/eyemusic/)
The Music:
1. “Shuffle” by Alison Knowles
Shuffle around the performance space
Shoooop shooop shuffle (hush) drink from a thermos shoooop
2. “Drip Music” by George Brecht
Amplified water drips drip drop drip drip splat!
Amplified ice melting (almost melodic)
Dripping water from eyedroppers, cups, syringes, watering can, folded up wet towel, into plastic tub, wok, wad of crinkled foil
…too long (getting bored)… (snoring sound from closing window)
kerplunk splash drip drip plink plunk
3. “Instruction” by George Brecht
(Turn down the audience lights)
Bring old radio (1950’s) on a stand, place in front of stage, walk away
Another player walks up, bows, gingerly touches (investigates) radio, turns it on briefly (two bursts of static), bows, walks away
Retrieve radio and stand
4. “Piece for any number of vocalists” by Alison Knowles
(To the audience) “Hum any song that resonates in your entire body.”
He conducted us humming. (The first song that occurred to me was the guitar riff from “Carry On Wayward Son” by Kansas.)
5. “Newspaper Event” by Alison Knowles
(audience still humming)
Players read newspapers in various European languages (Italian, English, German, French)…conducted for volume & intensity.
“Money saving tips!” “Story about acid attack is…” “Louder! Louder!”
6. “Instruction” by George Brecht
Bring old radio (1960’s) on a stand, place in front of stage, walk away
Another player walks up, bows, gingerly touches (investigates) radio, turns it on briefly (burst of static), walks away with radio
Retrieve stand
7. “C/T Trace” by Robert Watts
Try to catch plastic coin pouch with plastic monkey toy. It falls onto a music stand when not caught.
8. “For La Monte Young” by Emmett Williams
(Still trying to catch coin pouch)
“Excuse me, is La Monte Young in the audience?”
(to one audience member) “Are you La Monte Young?”
(answer) “I used to be.”
(reply) “Congradulations!”
9. “Piano Piece for David Tudor #2” by La Monte Young
Inspect the sides of the piano keyboard keep looking at lid
(ice continues to drip)
thump thump rattle creak !
Move piano from side to side clunk stomp on the floor !
Blow dust off of the piano lid (again) one note! Another (let ring)!
Look inside piano
(During the intermission I asked what the instructions actually were. The pianist said that he was supposed to close the piano lid without making any sound whatsoever. Any other sounds may be made during this process.)
10. “Boundary Music” by Mieko Shiami
All musicians (seven) on stage. (Strong perfume drifts by.)
Flute overtones. Quiet. Cello strum. Quiet. Bowed Celtic harp. Quiet. Sounds blend into a barely-perfectible drone. Rattle seed pod. Deep reverberations (electronic?) – fade in and out. Shake long hair to make sound(!)
Snap! Harmonic drones. Crack. All stop, look around.
11. “South no. 3 (Malika)” by Takehisa Kosugi
ssssssssssssssssss (groan) owwwww (squeal) ooohhhhhhh (sing) thhhhhh
s! ow! oo! (frown) thp! ssssssouuuth
soouuuth southhhh (slobber) thhhhhhh sssss (dry howl) thhhhp!
s ow oo south s – ow – oo – th サー アオー ウー thー
12. “Constellation no. 4” by Dick Higgins
Conduct. One loud, brief, explosion/squawk from all instruments.
13. “Flute Solo” by George Brecht
Show flute to audience, take flute apart, put flute back together, bow.
14. “Instruction” by George Brecht
Hurry! Run! Bring old radio (1970’s) on a stand, place in front of stage, run away
Another player stomps up, prepares to karate chop radio, hurriedly switches radio on and off (kkhhh!) instead
Stomp! Stomp! (Ice in bowl echoes.) Walks away.
Retrieve radio and stand (stomp stomp).
15. “Organic Music” by Takehisa Kosugi
kaen
sax
2 kaens
breathy sound from sax
harmonicas
lnaw
comical/obscene sound from balloons
microtonal drone
blow across bottle whooooooo
16. “96” by Clifford Burke
Huge hand gestures with paint created a giant sheet of music; this was cut apart into 96 notebook-paper sized cards. These were distributed among the players (and three were put on a music stand facing the audience).
pluck scrape flute flutter crescendo chaos glissando scatter regroup hummm whistle whoosh fwump! clatter feedback whine plucked cello cadenza mwooom mwooom mwooom (electronic) white noise at end
Rearranged, unarranged, disarranged
In the style (more or less) or Anthony Braxton
17. “Looking North” by Christian Wolff
Drone (airplane? No!) Irregular drumming, plucking on Celtic harp. Harmoniums and Tibetan bells create beautiful drone. Stops. Electric bass sounds, then flute cadenza (Japanese mode). Silence. Faster electronic thumps (rhythmic) – mournful cello. Microtonal.
(After the concert I asked the flautist if the flute cadenza had in fact been based on a Japanese mode. She said yes and showed me a small Japanese flute.
“It looks nothing like a shakuhachi,” I commented.
“It’s easier to play,” she replied.
“That’s good!” And I recounted my brief encounter with the shakuhachi, some twenty years ago. The first time I tried it, I got it to hum a nice sustained note. Any time after that, I couldn’t get it to make any sound at all.)
18. “Sticks” by Christian Wolff
blow on sticks (fftt) clatter (rolling sticks in hand) clunk of sticks together
drop sticks on floor rub sticks on floor tie sticks together, untie
wooden slabs with resonators (like marimba)
drop sticks on guitar strings and cello strings
break sticks (snap!) Bow across ends of stick (keeeeee!) TLACK!
rub sticks together, use floor as resonator
19. “Play” by Christian Wolff
Short plucks, scrapes, becomes longer drone. Rubbing strings of Celtic harp with Popsicle stick produces static-like schchchchssschch!
Drone becomes dissonant, tense. One player blows up a balloon. He continues to blow it up. And he continues to blow it up. Chord is now unbearably tense! Will he pop the balloon!?
No. He lets it go, flying aimlessly into the air. Music stops.
(This piece seemed to comment on the several meanings of the verb “to play”: play an instrument, play a game, play with toys, play with someone’s expectations; and perhaps the entire piece could be thought of as performing an [abstract] play.)
20. “Stones” by Christian Wolff
Rub stones together on moon lute, and on floor
Stone wind chimes
Drop stones on floor
Roll round stone (like grapefruit) around on floor
Bow stones (high squeals and squeaks) – birdlike, avian
(Third bowed stone made no sound)
Metrical clicks, marimba-like tones.
So that was the concert, actually more of what used to be called a “happening”. Most of these were performance pieces based on text scores (i.e. instructions) rather than written “music” in the usual sense, and all except the Clifford Burke piece dated from the late 1950’s to the early 1970’s. (The Clifford Burke piece was written by the performer of the saxophone, and was receiving its first concert performance.)
After the concert I noticed the Celtic harp player using an e-bow to produce drones from his instrument. “Just yesterday, a clerk at Guitar Center in Lynnwood told me that that was impossible!” I told him, truthfully. “He said the sound made by an e-bow on an acoustic instrument is too quiet to be heard.”
He shrugged, “It works on any instrument that has the right kind of strings.”
A few minutes later I got to talking to another audience member about some other experimental music concerts I’d seen, including the one with the contrabass clarinet and electronics at the gallery on Capital Hill.
“When was that?” He asked.
“About a month ago.”
“…Contrabass clarinet and electronics?”
“Yup.”
“That was me.” He was Paul Hoskin, whom I’d seen with Jesse Kudler, Gust Burns, Chandan Narayan, and others (see my August 28th posting).
My overview of the whole thing: fun music, though most of it probably wouldn’t work in recorded form – hence the name of the band, “Eye Music”. One has to see it to hear it. (Of course, the name also comes from the fact that they do "graphic scores" more than traditionally notated music.)
The Band:
(photograph by Rachael Lanzillotta, from the Eye Music website http://www.ribexibalba.com/eyemusic/)
The Music:
1. “Shuffle” by Alison Knowles
Shuffle around the performance space
Shoooop shooop shuffle (hush) drink from a thermos shoooop
2. “Drip Music” by George Brecht
Amplified water drips drip drop drip drip splat!
Amplified ice melting (almost melodic)
Dripping water from eyedroppers, cups, syringes, watering can, folded up wet towel, into plastic tub, wok, wad of crinkled foil
…too long (getting bored)… (snoring sound from closing window)
kerplunk splash drip drip plink plunk
3. “Instruction” by George Brecht
(Turn down the audience lights)
Bring old radio (1950’s) on a stand, place in front of stage, walk away
Another player walks up, bows, gingerly touches (investigates) radio, turns it on briefly (two bursts of static), bows, walks away
Retrieve radio and stand
4. “Piece for any number of vocalists” by Alison Knowles
(To the audience) “Hum any song that resonates in your entire body.”
He conducted us humming. (The first song that occurred to me was the guitar riff from “Carry On Wayward Son” by Kansas.)
5. “Newspaper Event” by Alison Knowles
(audience still humming)
Players read newspapers in various European languages (Italian, English, German, French)…conducted for volume & intensity.
“Money saving tips!” “Story about acid attack is…” “Louder! Louder!”
6. “Instruction” by George Brecht
Bring old radio (1960’s) on a stand, place in front of stage, walk away
Another player walks up, bows, gingerly touches (investigates) radio, turns it on briefly (burst of static), walks away with radio
Retrieve stand
7. “C/T Trace” by Robert Watts
Try to catch plastic coin pouch with plastic monkey toy. It falls onto a music stand when not caught.
8. “For La Monte Young” by Emmett Williams
(Still trying to catch coin pouch)
“Excuse me, is La Monte Young in the audience?”
(to one audience member) “Are you La Monte Young?”
(answer) “I used to be.”
(reply) “Congradulations!”
9. “Piano Piece for David Tudor #2” by La Monte Young
Inspect the sides of the piano keyboard keep looking at lid
(ice continues to drip)
thump thump rattle creak !
Move piano from side to side clunk stomp on the floor !
Blow dust off of the piano lid (again) one note! Another (let ring)!
Look inside piano
(During the intermission I asked what the instructions actually were. The pianist said that he was supposed to close the piano lid without making any sound whatsoever. Any other sounds may be made during this process.)
10. “Boundary Music” by Mieko Shiami
All musicians (seven) on stage. (Strong perfume drifts by.)
Flute overtones. Quiet. Cello strum. Quiet. Bowed Celtic harp. Quiet. Sounds blend into a barely-perfectible drone. Rattle seed pod. Deep reverberations (electronic?) – fade in and out. Shake long hair to make sound(!)
Snap! Harmonic drones. Crack. All stop, look around.
11. “South no. 3 (Malika)” by Takehisa Kosugi
ssssssssssssssssss (groan) owwwww (squeal) ooohhhhhhh (sing) thhhhhh
s! ow! oo! (frown) thp! ssssssouuuth
soouuuth southhhh (slobber) thhhhhhh sssss (dry howl) thhhhp!
s ow oo south s – ow – oo – th サー アオー ウー thー
12. “Constellation no. 4” by Dick Higgins
Conduct. One loud, brief, explosion/squawk from all instruments.
13. “Flute Solo” by George Brecht
Show flute to audience, take flute apart, put flute back together, bow.
14. “Instruction” by George Brecht
Hurry! Run! Bring old radio (1970’s) on a stand, place in front of stage, run away
Another player stomps up, prepares to karate chop radio, hurriedly switches radio on and off (kkhhh!) instead
Stomp! Stomp! (Ice in bowl echoes.) Walks away.
Retrieve radio and stand (stomp stomp).
15. “Organic Music” by Takehisa Kosugi
kaen
sax
2 kaens
breathy sound from sax
harmonicas
lnaw
comical/obscene sound from balloons
microtonal drone
blow across bottle whooooooo
16. “96” by Clifford Burke
Huge hand gestures with paint created a giant sheet of music; this was cut apart into 96 notebook-paper sized cards. These were distributed among the players (and three were put on a music stand facing the audience).
pluck scrape flute flutter crescendo chaos glissando scatter regroup hummm whistle whoosh fwump! clatter feedback whine plucked cello cadenza mwooom mwooom mwooom (electronic) white noise at end
Rearranged, unarranged, disarranged
In the style (more or less) or Anthony Braxton
17. “Looking North” by Christian Wolff
Drone (airplane? No!) Irregular drumming, plucking on Celtic harp. Harmoniums and Tibetan bells create beautiful drone. Stops. Electric bass sounds, then flute cadenza (Japanese mode). Silence. Faster electronic thumps (rhythmic) – mournful cello. Microtonal.
(After the concert I asked the flautist if the flute cadenza had in fact been based on a Japanese mode. She said yes and showed me a small Japanese flute.
“It looks nothing like a shakuhachi,” I commented.
“It’s easier to play,” she replied.
“That’s good!” And I recounted my brief encounter with the shakuhachi, some twenty years ago. The first time I tried it, I got it to hum a nice sustained note. Any time after that, I couldn’t get it to make any sound at all.)
18. “Sticks” by Christian Wolff
blow on sticks (fftt) clatter (rolling sticks in hand) clunk of sticks together
drop sticks on floor rub sticks on floor tie sticks together, untie
wooden slabs with resonators (like marimba)
drop sticks on guitar strings and cello strings
break sticks (snap!) Bow across ends of stick (keeeeee!) TLACK!
rub sticks together, use floor as resonator
19. “Play” by Christian Wolff
Short plucks, scrapes, becomes longer drone. Rubbing strings of Celtic harp with Popsicle stick produces static-like schchchchssschch!
Drone becomes dissonant, tense. One player blows up a balloon. He continues to blow it up. And he continues to blow it up. Chord is now unbearably tense! Will he pop the balloon!?
No. He lets it go, flying aimlessly into the air. Music stops.
(This piece seemed to comment on the several meanings of the verb “to play”: play an instrument, play a game, play with toys, play with someone’s expectations; and perhaps the entire piece could be thought of as performing an [abstract] play.)
20. “Stones” by Christian Wolff
Rub stones together on moon lute, and on floor
Stone wind chimes
Drop stones on floor
Roll round stone (like grapefruit) around on floor
Bow stones (high squeals and squeaks) – birdlike, avian
(Third bowed stone made no sound)
Metrical clicks, marimba-like tones.
So that was the concert, actually more of what used to be called a “happening”. Most of these were performance pieces based on text scores (i.e. instructions) rather than written “music” in the usual sense, and all except the Clifford Burke piece dated from the late 1950’s to the early 1970’s. (The Clifford Burke piece was written by the performer of the saxophone, and was receiving its first concert performance.)
After the concert I noticed the Celtic harp player using an e-bow to produce drones from his instrument. “Just yesterday, a clerk at Guitar Center in Lynnwood told me that that was impossible!” I told him, truthfully. “He said the sound made by an e-bow on an acoustic instrument is too quiet to be heard.”
He shrugged, “It works on any instrument that has the right kind of strings.”
A few minutes later I got to talking to another audience member about some other experimental music concerts I’d seen, including the one with the contrabass clarinet and electronics at the gallery on Capital Hill.
“When was that?” He asked.
“About a month ago.”
“…Contrabass clarinet and electronics?”
“Yup.”
“That was me.” He was Paul Hoskin, whom I’d seen with Jesse Kudler, Gust Burns, Chandan Narayan, and others (see my August 28th posting).
My overview of the whole thing: fun music, though most of it probably wouldn’t work in recorded form – hence the name of the band, “Eye Music”. One has to see it to hear it. (Of course, the name also comes from the fact that they do "graphic scores" more than traditionally notated music.)
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