aworks :: "new" american classical music

Divine Peacemaker (1966). Albert Ayler

President Bush visited Silicon Valley yesterday. I had seen posters advertising a protest in San Jose but apparently Stanford wasn't immune either, according to the New York Times:

Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said Mr. Bush's visit to Stanford was interrupted by protesters, who blocked the only road leading to the Hoover Institution, where Mr. Bush was to meet with fellows before dining with Mr. Shultz. As a result of the protest, the meeting was switched to Mr. Shultz's house, and the dinner followed.

For the record, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was at the Starbucks in our building in San Jose the prior week but everyone says it was a friendly event.

All of which is a lead-in to pointing out my current favorite Albert Ayler track -- his Divine Peacemaker. It's combination of old-time band music with the usual "out there" jazz sounds so American to me. Call it glorious tradition in a crazed, regal kind of way.

...the strings saw away at steady eighth notes, Don plays a martial theme and Albert begins a very soft squeal on the tenor. As he crescendos, Beaver Harris comes thundering in on the tom-toms and the ensemble breaks apart for a wild saxophone solo. Jeff Schwartz

albert ayler discography. official bios of george schultz, the president and the governor. menlo park-based organization advocating amending u.s. constitution to allow foreign-born presidents (site not updated recently)

Ghosts, First Variation (1964). Albert Ayler

  Via Avant Music News, The Guardian reviews the new documentary of the jazz musician, "My Name Is Albert Ayler":

A project that began in 1998, Collin's film is testament to the passion and dedication that the man and his wildly honking, but strangely tuneful music can inspire. Having tracked down all extant film footage (including Ayler's performance at John Coltrane's funeral service), the film uses old audio interviews, and recent interviews with his brother and father as a framework for Ayler's story.

Jack Gold reviews the film (and tells the story of Ayler's suicide):

For those devoted to listening or to performing jazz, in particular free jazz or improvised music, heartbreaking as it is, this film is a rarity and not to be missed.

Of all the sixties jazz legends, I never cared much for what little I had heard of Ayler's music. But with a bit of inspiration from Devin Hurd, I'm liking it more and more.

Yesterday, I was trying to think of an example of a composer or musican who I initially hated and grew to really like. Even with Elliott Carter, Night Fantasies was instantly appealing. Lately, I've been listening to Mel Powell and Milton Babbitt but in both cases, I can't begin to understand it and more listening hasn't enlightened me. But Albert Ayler may be the best example where a deeper look has paid off. I wonder if this is because of my belated appreciation of Ayler's spiritual nature (as well as not judging his music in the shadow of John Coltrane and Dexter Gordon). For that matter, Powell or Babbitt may have a spiritual muse, but if they do, I haven't fought through the intellectualism to find it yet...

official film site. norwegian blogger who saw the film. albert ayler: his life and music (online book). click here and scroll for a matt groening quote on coming to terms with captain beefheart's trout mask replica.

Goin' Home (1964). Albert Ayler /seeking out new music/

I'm trying various ways of finding new music of interest, with mixed results.

First is MusicIP Mixer, a downloadable application. It reads your iTunes music file, analyzes your MP3s for their musical signature and then allows you to create playlists. Unfortunately, it runs slow on my two-year-old computer so it's too frustrating to really use. I did seed a playlist with Albert Ayler's Goin' Home and it produced this possibly related playlist:

• Hymn to New England. John Williams
• Red Pony Suite. Aaron Copland
• Violin Concerto. Samuel Barber
• End of Dracula. Philip Glass
• Gloria. Ockeghem
• Catfish Row. George Gershwin

Not what I expected but good results nonetheless. I like the idea of "if you like this, you'll like that" on my own collection, a feature iTunes lacks.

Next is gpal, which, given an artist, will add a podcast to iTunes for new music related to that artist. I did this for Boards of Canada and have a handful of new tracks, but nothing compelling so far.

Third is Songbird, a music browser, based on Mozilla. I had set it to watch Carl Stone's MP3 page as well as some others and then automatically download as contents change. Songbird early in its life had various problems so I updated to a new version but unfortunately, it somehow lost my old configuration. I'll try again later when it's more stable.

Fourth is lala, which pretends we don't live in the world of MP3s. This is a website where you list the CDs you own and the CDs you want. Then, when someone wants one of your CDs that you are willing to give, you send it to them and lala takes a $1 fee (with some percentage also going to the artist). I registered several hundred CDs and had people wanting the more popular music e.g. Boards of Canada, Gorillaz, Coldplay, etc. However, according to the rules, you aren't supposed to send any CDs that you ripped into MP3s, even if this may be hard to actually enforce. Ok, so I registered another hundred unripped CDs and eventually had a Bach cello suite CD someone wanted. The other twist is that you ship the CD without the original jewel case or liner notes, instead using just a smaller plastic case and a Netflix-like envelope. Regardless, I suspect my "want list" is too obscure to be matched. My page is here.

Finally, the most successful for me has been the Azureus torrent client. Last night I downloaded the SXSW Showcase MP3s as a torrent using Azureus. It took 10 hours to (legally) download 2+ Gigabytes of music and so far, the quality of the music is surprisingly good. Let's see -- if I listen to all 713 pop MP3s at a rate of 25 per day, I'll be returning to classical music in a month.

Other than cacaphonous.org, I don't know of anything in the art/classical domain remotely like this immersive SXSW download. I subscribe to individual podcasts that can be good but they trickle in whereas this is truly a torrent of pop music. Maybe one reason I liked the Cinema Volta ambient podcast was that it was so frequent.

Instead, (and speaking of control of intellectual property), the classical world has Cal Performances complaining about SFMike's photo blog of the Alarm Will Sound concert. I don't doubt there are contractural reasons for precluding photo-taking (although it appears the San Francisco Symphony and San Francisco Opera haven't objected).  It just feels so closed and proprietary (and serious and elitist).

Anyway, back to the fun of the SXSW tracks...

Raw Silk (A Rag) (1994). Nurit Tilles

Devin Hurd continues to work his way through Women's History Month. It's interesting and can spur me to refresh my listening. From his musical survey of Black History last month, I still have not decided about Albert Ayler although Eric Dolphy sounds better than ever to me. 

Today's post probably indicates I need to get out more. I'm reading through the list of works and composers and come to Nurit Tilles.  My first thought -- why is his music being covered for Women's History Month? I'm familiar with Tilles via Double Edge and  Steve Reich & Musicians although apparently I never paid close enough attention to gender and made an assumption. Sorry.

About her work: Scored for piano. This is a piano rag cut from a sophisticated harmonic fabric. There are several tempo fluctuations as this piece breathes through variations in density while sustaining harmonic clarity.

The generally slow tempo adds to the work's clarity as well.

By the way, several hundred CRI CDs are available at Berkshire Record Outlet.