aworks :: "new" american classical music

17 Musicians in Search of a Sound: Darfur (2007). Bill Dixon

After reading about Bill Dixon in Wire and then seeing his CD 17 Musicians in Search of a Sound: Darfur on display at Amoeba, I'm now listening to it. Given the title, I half expected this music to be sombre or even dismal. Instead, it was mostly subdued and interesting.

The composer on the the intent of the title:

There is no 'political message', overt or otherwise, with regards to this piece of music. On the other hand, if in listening to the music and viewing the cover painting, thoughts on the situation in Darfur are raised and brought to the listener's attention and/or consciousness, the point that I would have liked to have made, without being procedurally political, would have been achieved.

The ensemble sound is chaotic and feels like it is going to unravel but never does. It's also a live recording and the applause detracts from the effect.

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amazon: 17 musicians. bill dixon with exploding star orchestra. bill dixon/archie shepp

Dance (2008). Ilya Demutsky

Michael Kaulkin writes about judging a composition contest at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music:

It was interesting that the winning piece was so off-the-charts good that the three of us agreed on it hands-down, and there was very little discussion needed. My congratulations to student composer Ilya Demutsky for his a cappella setting of the Lorca poem “Dance”, which was well thought-out, well written for voices and also just plain entertaining.

Here's a video of Demutsky's electronic piece Black Square:

Jump in the Fire (1983). James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Dave Mustaine /scruffy as always/

Yesterday was Record Store Day, a chance to celebrate independently-owned recorded music merchants. Celebrities quoted for the occasion include Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Nick Hornby, and classical composer William Bolcom. Here's part of Bolcom's message:

For me the ideal store would revive the listening booths. But short of that, a store should have people in it who know and care about what they're selling. You can't find that contact in purely electronic media. I know that downloading and streaming are the musical dissemination modes of the future, but maybe if young people would be made aware of what is lost by just hooking up with music on the iPod... It could revolutionize musical taste.

We need to revitalize the recording store! Bring back knowledgeable salespeople! Bring back the booth!

To do my part in the festivities, I trekked down to the always scruffy Rasputin Music in Mountain View. This also happened to be where the band Metallica was doing a meet and greet for the occasion (youtube here):

I'm not sure I fit in to this particular crowd i.e. I had no black concert t-shirt, no guitar in hand, I was seeking music by Aaron Jay Kernis etc. But I toughed it out anyway in a show of community support for the local record store. I suppose I could have had them sign an Aaron Jay Kernis CD but unfortunately, Rapsutin had no Aaron Jay Kernis CDs in stock.

Later, I did download a Kernis recording from emusic. I have yet to determine any lesson from this experience...

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youtube: metallica's jump in the fire. william bolcom's poltergeist. aaron jay kernis' i cannot dance, o lord.

Steve Reich (1998?). Efrim Menuck et al /mirror world/

Matt White has a fun article about the history of the minimalist composers, in conjunction with the recent premiere of Steve Reich's Double Sextet by Eighth Blackbird:

Let’s start with a brief and totally disrespectful history of 20th century classical music (logz?) First the music sounded like Beethoven. Then people got pissed because it sounded too nice and organized and pretty. So…they invented this new thing called serialism to “emancipate the dissonance”. These new jams sounded nuts. And real weird.

Then World War II happened.

He goes on to describe the minimalists and their influences, complete with musical examples from Reich, Sufjan Stevens, and Tortoise. He also points out Godspeed You! Black Emperor's song called "Steve Reich." I did find a version of it at the end of a John Peel session. It sounds like a slowed down, more robust, graver Electric Counterpoint.

I also appreciate this comment from the article:

2. In Beethoven’s defense, he was the Steve Reich of the 19th century!!

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wikipedia: godspeed you! black emperor ludwig van beethoven stephen michael reich Eighth Blackbird consonance and dissonance

Keep the Changes (1997). Holland Hopson /amie street revisited/

Holland Hopson (related blog here) suggests Amie Street as a good source for jazz and experimental music. So I fed the service $5 and now I have 0 street cred, 0 friends, 8 songs, 8 recs, a balance of $4.02 and some tracks from Holland himself. This worked well, even if I'm not sure what "street cred" and "recs" are. The service merits more exploration (as does the music I just downloaded).

From the artist's bio:

Holland Hopson is a composer, improviser, and electronic artist. As an instrumentalist he performs on soprano saxophone, clawhammer banjo and electronics. Holland often augments his instruments with custom-designed sensor interfaces and performs with his own highly responsive, interactive computer programs.

As far as other music on Amie Street, I found the best selling classical music to date on the site, Steve Reich's Another Look at Counterpoint, for $3.92. Hopson also notes Matmos tracks are available and still cheap.

Update: I'll show discretion and not link directly to the now infamous Amie Street tracks. Back in December, I read the New Yorker profile of Eliot Spitzer ("The Humbling of Eliot Spitzer") and asking myself why was I bothering to read this. I'm still not sure.

Landscape Under Construction (). John McDonough /pattern connections/

Brian Olewnick reports on an interesting tribute piece amidst a concert of John Cage works:

The highlight of the evening, a very pleasant surprise, was McDonough's own "Landscape Under Construction", for 1 to 42 CD players, here ten. As I understand it (again, Barry or Kurt can correct me), each musician selects a disc of Cage's music from 42 supplied by McDonough. (S)he then follows a time-based score (total time = 34'55") consisting of two columns which contained instructions on starting or pausing the disc (which is played from its beginning) as well as volume increases or decreases...Whatever, the result was a beautifully shifting landscape where the listener constantly makes pattern connections between ostensibly unrelated musics, almost all of them seeming to make "sense".

Sort of a real-time iPod shuffle re-mix for the concert-going set.

Notes on the composer:

Recent compositions/arrangements have been an arrangement of Mingus’ Goodbye Porkpie Hat, Tracheotomy for 8 vocalists, Landscape Under Construction, for between 1 and 42 CD players playing John Cage CDs and a piece for solo viola. He has worked with Anthony Braxton recently recorded a duo CD this past July. He is currently working on a piece for 25 saxophones, an album of standards, and is collaborating with Canadian singer-songwriter Tony Hightower.

Dreams of the Child of Light (2002). Michael Mauldin /this work courtesy dell tech support/

The migration of my music library from iTunes on an old PC to MediaMonkey on a new one continues. Special "thanks" to Dell tech support person #3 who suggested I reformat and reinstall the OS to remedy the new problem introduced when Dell tech support person #2 came to the house and swapped motherboards to fix the original problem when I broke a 10 cent memory connector. Fortunately, Dell tech support person #4 in Oklahoma City figured out the real solution and I'm back moving MP3 files between various hard drives. In the interim...

Counterstreamradio.org just played Dreams of the Child of Light, complete with Native American flute, by Michael Mauldin. The composer:

Though I have written much music inspired by American Indian culture and beliefs, I wanted to use the charm of the native flute for something even more inclusive--the amazing spiritual depth of children everywhere. What better person could there be to embody that than the world's most cherished child-spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. After meeting him and discovering that he is just as delightful and full-of-fun in his adulthood, I feel that, even in his mature years, he is indeed still the "child of light."

This was a pleasant interlude to my database management duties.

Walking the Flat (2007). Dennis Báthory-Kitsz /75 composed, 25 to go/

Dennis Báthory-Kitsz has resumed blogging and writes more about his recently completed We Are All Mozart project. He describes one of his 100 commissioned compositions for the year:

[Peter Hamlin] asked for a composition that was 'real music' but which was also a study in approaching the alto sax's lowest notes in every way possible. And so Walking the Flat came to be.  It's fun and it's good listening. mysterious and energetic, a set of variations on direction rather than on melody.

MP3 here

This certainly appeals to the timbre-ist in me.

By the way, just like the composer's Vermont, we get snow here in the Bay Area. Fortunately, this one only occurred at elevations above 1000 feet so we flatland urbanists didn't actually have to experience it if we didn't want to.

Wind Quintet (). Michael Eckert /good luck to all candidates except those i hate/

It's the eve of the every-four-year Presidential Caucuses in the state of Iowa. Although I have strong political interests and know enough agriculturally to distinguish a corn field from a soy field, I'm not actually eligible to vote tomorrow.

Regardless, I'll cast an honorary blog vote for composer Michael Eckert, as played by the Iowa Wind Quintet on their recent album Into the Future (eMusic here).

Book of Heads (1978). John Zorn /penderecki! schoenberg! ropes!/

Personal circumstances constrain me from attending many concerts these days. So mostly I get my live thrills vicariously via SF opera bloggers, LA bloggers who visit SF, Joshua Kosman, and calimac.

So when I read about this concert in Brooklyn this Friday by the Ensemble de Sade, I had to think through if vicariousness is a good thing or a bad thing. The group's mission statement doesn't really help me resolve the issue:

While the standard deviation from the traditional concert modes has been to relax the boundaries between performer and audience, Ensemble de Sade seeks an intensification of the boundaries, an increase of the tension between the two opposing sides.

I appreciate this alternative artistic approach, at least I think I do. The programming by producer Matt Marks also seems appropriate:

Knowing the Ropes - Michael Nyman (arr. Matt Marks)
Selections from Book of Heads - John Zorn (featuring James Moore - guitar)
Sextet - Krzysztof Penderecki
Pierrot Lunaire - Arnold Schoenberg

John Zorn on his Book of Heads:

...this music was originally written for and is dedicated to guitarist Eugene Chadbourne. Meant to GAS him, and to stretch his already prodigious virtuosity to even wilder extremes, many of the extended techniques used here (toy balloons, talking dolls, mbira keys, wet finger whoops) were learned from him and were an integral part of his improvisational language at that time.

I admit to not having the nerve to even watch that Tori Amos video and yet I would like to experience the aesthetics of this concert first hand.

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private note to spouse: it's the concert's musical aesthetics i'm interested in, of course.