Christopher DeLaurenti, "SF Variations"

CdL

Thomas Kilpper

Los Angeles Transcriptions (5): Living Room, Santa Ynez (johnny chang)

Monday at Düsseldorf's Kunstraum (Alte Schmiede), Morton Feldman & Jürg Frey piano pieces on either side of Schubert's Winterreise as palette cleansers.

Listen here.

Sylvano Bussotti, "Il Nudo"

From Wergo 60048:

MAURICE FLEURET, Music within music

A kaleidoscope. Sylvano Bussotti's personality and work can be compared to a living kaleidoscope of infinite variety. The matter itself does not change - it has constant characteristics - but the slightest movement, the slightest change of view, causes the crystals to produce new, unanticipated perspectives, a hitherto unknown geometry and endlessly changing meaning.

Bussotti is not satisfied with a more or less linear organisation of sounds. For him music is more than music and he forms it ,,in close association with the arts of symbolism, colour of light, gesture, speech, writing and action". It would not only be wrong, but impossible to separate the composer from the grandiose violinist, from the accomplished exponent of new music, from the poet, analyst, critic, artist and sculptor, who has had 15 exhibitions in the last ten years, from the scriptwriter of cinema and television films, from the actor, producer and set-designer of more than 20 theatre productions from Puccini to Cage. The creative Bussotti is complex, not in the accepted intellectual way, but rather on account of his spontaneous elan. His work is conducted in the same manner as his life, with an insatiable thirst for innovation. In an age in which so many people follow the fashion or outdo it for being left behind, Bussotti is content only to follow or outdo himself, to do what he loves - but he loves so much! Thus, in a land which is full of social, sexual, religious and cultural taboos, he can reconcile the irreconcilable, without being frivolous or naive and without fear of scandal. For he puts on the ascetic cloak of creativity and gives free rein to an eminently Italian power of imagination, seeking the natural in art and artistic in the everyday and expressing himself with ease in the realms of concert and theatre, cinema screen and art gallery. Thus, like Couperin or Schumann, Bussotti is a unique and complex phenomenon, which defies attempts at labelling or categorisation, which takes up its stand on the periphery of every established historical movement, despite largely determining the development of the same.

Bussotti's entire musical output emanates from within. It commands continuity, emanating from living experience by means of a complex system of symbols. None of his pieces can be isolated from the larger context from which it sprang, any more than it could be divorced from those which preceded it or from those which are to follow. Thus, one must judge the corpus of his works from a distance, as part of a development and in relation to the Bussotti landscape. The abundance of references to earlier works, the abundance of symbols, of marginal notes, very often of an esoteric nature, of hints of future developments, all this testifies on every page of music to the unity and timelessness of the works as a whole. It is not without justification that Bussotti claims for himself the language of the "memory of things to come" with the intention of freeing himself of the bonds of time and transience.

Apart from "Phrase à Trois", which is the central piece and principal work of this record, which is to be viewed as a musical whole, the other three pieces on this record demonstrate the close, systematic relationship of Bussotti's works one to another. "Il Nudo" is composed of four fragments, each with its own individuality and architectonic and expressive function within the whole, which itself can be compared to a shorter, concentrated version of "Torso". Meanwhile "Torso" is related to other works inspired by Braibanti or dedicated to purity of voice...

"Ancora odono i colli" is one of the "Cinque frammenti all'Italia", a remnant of a more comprehensive project in the form of a "representation de concert" which Bussotti abandoned. RARA (eco sierologico), for violoncello is the version for violoncello of the work composed for soloists on five instruments, of which each individually and in turn performs on one of a succession of evenings, with a combined offering on the final evening of a six day festival. This procedure was followed at the festival in Rome organised by the Nuova Consonanze Society, which commissioned the work.

As opposed to the "cosmic" music, accomplished by the accumulation of musical happenings or mathematical treatment of masses, which becomes more and more common from Stockhausen to Xenakis, the music of Bussotti is only accessible virtually. That means that its range and meaning can only be appreciated fully by reading the score, and not by listening alone. It would seem to be the conscious intention of the composer to complicate and render almost impossible the execution of his "great forms" through the diversity of the media which he employs. For the "Cinque frammenti all'Italia" alone he uses, for example, the vocal sextet, a mixed choir and 24 mixed voices. An ideal performance of this work can only take place on paper. Thus Bussotti confirms his inclination towards abstraction and his preoccupation with the written mode of expression, the possibilities of which are inexhaustible. Is that to suggest that Bussotti's work is perfect but impossible to perform? Quite the reverse is true. For all, to the very last detail is filled with the breath of life, with an intimate and pathetic pulsation, which could be compared to the music of a state of mind. This, the composer achieves by using his own highly individualistic handwriting combining a peculiarly expressive graphic style with the most precise, elaborate post-Webern notation. Encroached on from many sides, the exponent must exert himself here to the utmost, employing his virtuosity, his imagination and his sensitivity in a kind of loving dialogue with the score. Very few are equal to the task, for it requires more than mere aptitude.

IL NUDO, and string quartet quattro frammenti da Torso, for soprano, piano

After Bussotti had completed "Torso", based on a text by Braibanti, for voice and orchestra after three years' work on it in 1963, he took 4 fragments from this piece, 4 specially selected pieces, to form a suite with the title "Il Nudo" ("The Naked One"). On account of its ingenious construction and almost classical composure he was awarded the first prize in the chamber ensemble class of the composition competition of the International Society for New Music in Rome the following year.

The composer takes up Rilke's idea that the human voice is like a naked body. In "Il Nudo", as in "Torso", he systematically strips the voice of the solo soprano and frees it, little by little, of the instrumental entanglement, until the purity, depth and origins of the voice are exposed. The piano disappears after the first fragment and the string quartet after the third, so that the last fragment is devoted to the voice alone. Thus the work develops asymmetrically, both on account of the progressive reduction in the instrumentation and on account of the elements of the composition themselves. It is a small-scale reproduction of the original work.

The most important pages of the score of "Torso" carry dedications (Max Deutsch, Mario Bartolotto, Heinz-Klaus Metzger, Dieter Schnebel, Henri Pousseur, Romano Amidei) and "Il Nudo" unites the four fragments which are dedicated to the Italian actor Romano Amidei, the composer's intention being to create a kind of musical portrait. In this connection the importance of Romano Amidei's initials for Bussotti's symbolism should be pointed out, especially since they are made to form the word RARA, which recurs in many titles. Finally it should be noted that the underlying unity of this suite can be attributed to the fact that the harmonic material in its entirety consists of a few selected chords, which recur in all possible combinations.

The first fragment is "Quartina II" from "Torso", for voice, piano and quartet, which is based on four verses from a poem on puberty by Aldo Braibanti:

Ecco che spunta gia 1'alba aurora
e tu ridi il tuo gioco spietato
quando viene il mattino hai giascordato
quando viene la sera impari ancora.

Freely translated:

The pale blush of dawn is already appearing
and you mock with your cruel game.
When morning comes, you have already forgotten it,
when evening comes you begin again.

This text is sung by the solo soprano. The instruments contrapunctuate every syllable or letter and form a pointillistic texture of sound which is unusually light and delicate, and from which now and then percussion and all possible kinds of discrete effects ring out. The surprising outcome of keeping the music to a minimum, is a kind of verbal alchemy, bringing forth remarkable utterings made up of the unusual vocabulary of piano and strings and the sounds brought forth by the voice. Further excerpts of the poetical text are to be found after the final pages of the piece. They may well have inspired the composer originally but they are not meant to be heard by the listener and may simply act as a guide to the exponent.

The second fragment from "Torso" - "Quartina III" - illustrates a typical Florentine association of ideas - that of the olive tree and the moon:

Lungo piove l'ulivo
fitti nodi di luna.

In translation:

For long the olive tree rains
the heavy nodes of the moon.

The relationship between the voice and the quartet - which still remains - is no less complex than in the first piece. But the instruments are more sharply separated, and the way in which they develop gives rise to a special annotation on the two pages of the musical text. The vocal part, with its intervals jumping to the extremities of the register, with its groups of melodical suggestions, its unusual structures of equal density and its dramatic interruptions, is reminiscent of the global, sophistic treatment of the voice in Chinese opera.

In the third fragment, "Atto" (Act), the string quartet is left to its own devices. There follows a kind of "instrumental liquidation" in the course of which the four stringed instruments play the sum total of what they had to play in "Torso". They commence simultaneously, but continue independently of each other until the material has been exhausted. In the score, the relevant poetical quotations from Braibanti are to be found in the margin.

The fourth and final fragment follows immediately. It is the one with which "Torso" concludes and that to which the suite owes its title, on account of the single verse which is set to music: "Il nudo violente dolce essenziale corpolinguaggio dell'intuito vitale" ("The violently gentle naked one, essential body-language of vital intuition"). A kind of great cadence, combining all the difficulties of reading and intonation. It is one of the most difficult and brilliantly executed pieces in contemporary music for the human voice without instrumental support.

Bussotti here adapts vocal writing in order to emphasize the underlying polyphony of the texts. He uses special articulation, hesitation, echoes and extra syllables which are produced through phonetic association. It is all borne by the same poetic impulse, without loss of comprehension. Small notes are often set at counterpoint to the main notes, producing the acoustic illusion of many interwoven lines of song. The third part of this piece gives the exponent a certain amount of choice in a large section. Depending on her temperament and possibilities, she must pick her way through overlapping areas, groups of symbols and free, but very suggestive graphic symbols. The last but one page of the score is a precise phonetic and literary analysis of the text, with similar consonants and sounds on one line, thus producing extremities of pitch and intensity.

From beginning to end, the most subtle, enchanting, but also the most conscious, musicality fuse, as do, with the same sensual elan, the spoken effects, murmurs, audible breathing, sighs, the compact masses of appogiatura, the arabesques, the extreme intervals and certain almost electronic distortions of the voice. Everything in the work has its own justification, and right till the cry at the end everything is subject to the logic of perfect, compulsive poetry, to a new vocal ethic rather than a vocal aesthetic. The score of "Il Nudo" was published in 1964 by Hermann Moeck in Celle.

Comedy Scores

The Memorial Day meme about great comedy soundtracks has yet to touch on the fact that some of the most memorable themes in movie history are from comedies: The Pink Panther, What's New Pussycat?, The Sounds of Silence, The Odd Couple, to name a few [Alan Silvestri's Mousehunt theme would be in that category if anyone had seen the film].

But writing a memorable full-length score is a bit trickier, and two people come to mind: Carter Burwell and Michael Kamen.


Kamen
Kamen's Die Hard scores are some of the funniest parts of the films and an important counterbalance to the films' violence. His score for another Bruce Willis film, Hudson Hawk, lets him really stretch his comedic legs, and he brilliantly anchors Brazil in the type of hyper-reality that's suggested by Terry Gilliam's visuals. His cue for Central Services' establishing shot is one of the all-time great musical moments in the movies.

Carter Burwell's scores for the Coen Brothers tend to be gorgeous and plaintive, and for the black comedy of Fargo, he strikes a deft balance that keeps the film's dark side at bay. But his magnum opus has to be the score for The Hudsucker Proxy. He writes everything from manic montage music to sappy parody, and keeps the film's grand narrative rolling right along.


Burwell

Sylvano Bussotti, "La Passion Selon Sade" (excerpt)

From Dischi Ricordi CRM 1002:

LA PASSION SELON SADE

Extraits de concert

"... Bussotti utilizes - at times to happily ironic effect - the expedients of contemporary musical language, lends them coherence and binds them into a lucid mosaic, but it is obvious that he is definitively concluding a period..."
S. Manzoni, "L'Unlfa", 1966

"... Time has left untouched La Passion: a score as wrinkle-free as the face of its composer..."
M. Tannenbaum, "L'Espresso", 1973

"... A masterpiece; we would like to invite everyone, whether lovers of contemporary music or not, not to miss this rare, precious, jewel of a piece..."
C. Tempo, "II Lavoro", 1973

"...A work that presents remarkable qualities of dramatic integration of the musical values: a musical colour of dark passion, a tormented sense of " envoutement", highly original yet clearly descending from Alban Berg's " Lulu "..."
M. Mils, "L'Espresso", 1965

"... Sylvano's music in this gentle Passion is composed with great transparency in the single parts, with superb "chamber" qualities. The most notable musical passages are a few brief intermezzos for chamber ensemble in which the horn often emerges melodically from oneiric harmonies..."
G, Lanza Tomasi, "L'Ora", 1965

SYLVANO BUSSOTTI Lato 1 LA PASSION SELON SADEi Extraits de concert (1979) Direttore: Marcello Panni Elise ROSS, soprano MARIO ANCILLOTTI, flauto GIANFRANCO PARDELLI, oboe BRUNO INCAGNOLI, oboe d'amore LUCIANO GIUUANI, corno LUIGI LANZILLOTTA, violoncello ANTONIO STRIANO, percussione JEAN LOUIS GIL, organo MASSIMILIANO DAMERINI, pianoforte, armonium CARLO LEVI MINZI, pianoforte, celesta ALESSANDRA BIANCHI, arpa Registrazione dal vivo effettuata dalla RAI il 6.2.1979 presso L'Auditorium del Foro Italico di Roma

The Bird Ensemble, "No. 4"

b.e.

Sylvano Bussotti, "Fragmentations"

Art Adams, "Rock Crazy Baby"

Sylvano Bussotti, "Frammento"

Notes From Time 58003:

This piece by Sylvano Bussotti is called FRAMMENTO only on this record and in corresponding performances. It is actually the piece VOIX DE FEMME from the PIECES DE CHAIR II (1958-59), an expanded cycle for piano, baritone and further instruments adjoining sporadically, occasionally gaining the dimension of a chamber orchestra. The original version of FRAMMENTO is for voice and orchestra rather than, as on this recording, voice and piano. The principle of the entire cycle is its non-economy which reaches possibly its extreme, at least in respect to its performance technique, when a female voice and an orchestra are being introduced solely for this single piece. In context it functions as an isolated fragment. When it is isolated from the context, its fragmentary character is no longer perceivable, and it becomes a fragment (FRAMMENTO) all the more. Equally fragmentary is the representation for voice and piano. The piano adaptation was written by the composer himself, who thereby thought to establish the piano arrangement as an autonomous compositional genre. The fragment again consists of fragments, and the totality of the fragmental universe results in its negation, that is, totality. The compositional procedure remains that of a collage as well in respect to the musical material as to the far-fetched texts taken from various languages and books. If in the orchestral version the principle of instrumentation has been replaced, as it were, by the principle of instrumental dramaturgy, i.e. by a disposition of the instruments' entrances and exits, so does this correspond with the principle of correpetition in the piano version which has been developed to a principle of composition.

George Antheil, "Ballet Mécanique" (1953 Version)

COMPOSER'S NOTES
on 1952-53 RE-EDITING

This "Ballet Mecanique" was originally written as a score to the first abstract motion picture of that name. However, since it was soon discovered that one could not synchronize a motion picture score thatt closely, (during 1924-25), it was written as an independent piece.

I have confined this editing mostly to cutting. Repetitous [sic] measures, intended to synchronize only with the film, have been cut out abundantly, reducing the playing time from the original of more than a half hour to less than eighteen minutes. The player piano has been deleted entirely, its role give to the pianos. The eight original pianos have been cut down to four; the four original xylophones to two, etc. But its basic character has, I hope, remained. It has merely been made more concise.

Interpretively speaking, BALLET MECANIQUE was never intended to demonstrate (as has been erronously [sic] said) "the beauty and precision of machines". Rather it was to experiment with and thus, to demonstrate a new principle in music construction, that of "Time-Space", or in which the time principle, rather than the tonal principle, is held to be of main importance.

To demonstrate. Up until Strawinsky and Schoenberg, most contemporary music had been constructed, architecturally speaking, on the tonal principle. A sonata allegro movement, for example, spread out a tonality, departed from it in the development, returned again in the recapitulation -- usually with a vengeance. It is still an excellent principle. But it neglects "Time-Space".

Strawinsky attempted to move away from its iron grip by making his music "super-tonal" so to speak. Schoenberg, going to the opposite pole, destroyed tonality entirely by removing all tonal centers in the 12 tone system.

BALLET MECANIQUE, while utilizing (subconsciouly, for at the time this work was written, 12 tone-ism was unknown as such) both systems, concentrated on what I then called "the time canvas". Rather than to consider musical form as a series of tonalities, atonalities with a tonal center, or a tonal center at all, it supposed that music actually takes place in time; and that, therefore, time is the real construction principle, "stuff of music", as it unreels. It is the musician's "canvas". The tones which he uses, therefore, are merely his crayons, his colors. The "Time-Space" principle, therefore, is an aesthetic of "looking", so to speak, at a piece of music "all at once". One might propose, therefore, that it is a sort of "Fourth Dimension"-al way of looking at music; its constructive principles may, or may not have been touched in this work, but they have been attempted.

I always hesitate to give any "program" to any piece of music, preferring to have it speak for itself. However, and if this piece had any program beyond that outlined above, it would be towards the barbaric and mystic splendor of modern civilization; mathematics of the universe in which the abstraction of "the human sould" lives. More locally, the first "theme" may be considered that of mechanical scientific civilization; the second and third barbaric ones, not unrelated to the American continent, Indian, Negro. These plus the mathematical 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,7,6,5,4,3,2 principle, and "Time-Space" make up the musical body and spiritual outline of this work, written so many years ago. It has seemed strange, yet prophetic, to delve back into these pages written as a youth of 23-24.

George Antheil,
March 1953

Nursery of Naughtiness, "Eyes"

non!

Modest Mouse Live @ Royal Albert Hall

I didn´t expect my first Royal Albert Hall experience to be Modest Mouse. Perhaps one of the BBC Proms Concerts or something.

I managed to tape parts of this show. You will hear Johnny Marr kind of rambling on about something near the end of Section 2.

Section 1

Section 2

Section 3


The show was actually pretty bad. So I didn´t stick around the whole time. Raced to Queen´s Arms for last drinks.

Owen Duff, "Act of War"

o.d.

Sylvano Bussotti, "O Atti Vocali"

Bonde Do Rolê, "Quero te Amar"

b.d.r.

Johann Strauss, Jr., "Frühlingsstimmen", Op. 410

As sung by Erna Sack
(courtesy of Soho the Dog)

Tim Wilson, "Past Cure 1974"

t.w.

Take the Colbert Challenge:

Animal Heads, "Grumpy Pumpernickle"

SPUTNiK's good friends Animal Heads have released Monkey Town, an album of very unique kids songs. Mic Rains is the guitarist for both bands, and he recruited some of us from SPUTNiK to play on the record.

"Grumpy Pumpernickle" follows its title character's journey from go-cart-hogging, old cowherd to kid-loving, neighborhood hero, with some custom-made trumpet parts from yours truly.

Sylvano Bussotti, "Le Bal Miro"

Notes From Dischi Ricordi CRM 1002:

LE BAL MIRO'

Prima suite - Antologie per orchestra (1981)

Orchestra sinfonica di Roma della RAI, Direttore: Lothar Zagrosek

Registrazione dal vivo effettuata dalia RAI il 20.12.1986 presso L'Auditorium del Foro Italico di Roma

All'interno libretto di LA PASSION SELON SADE e note illustrative di Sylvano Bussotti. Foto di copertina di Jacques Cloarec

SYLVANO BUSSOTTI was born in Florence in 1931. He studied violin and composition. He has lived in Paris, Buffalo and New York (thanks to the Rockefeller Foundation) and Berlin (thanks to the Ford Foundation). In 1978 he settled in Genazzano (Roma). He has taught at Aquila's Accademia di Belle Arti and at the Bach Academy of Stuttgart. He currently teaches composition at the Scuola di Musica in Fiesole and is president of the Bussottiopera-ballet in Genazzano. He has been artistic director of Venice's Teatro La Fenice and of the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago. He has directed and designed numerous operatic productions. He has won the following prizes: SIMC 1961, 1963, 1965, All'Amelia, Biennaie di Venezia 1967, Toscani d'Oggi L'Ulivo d'oro 1974, Psacaropoulo Turin 1973.

Big Balls

Sylvano Bussotti, "Lorenzaccio Symphony"

Continued Notes From Deutsche Grammophon 2531 011


"BERGKRISTALL" AND "LORENZACCIO" SYMPHONY, JOSEF HAUSLER

Sylvano Bussotti has followed in his own way a path similar to that of his brother the painter Renzo, from whose copy, illustrated with "astonishing landscapes", he became acquainted during his early youth with Stifter's "Bergkristall". The final pages of the score of Bussotti's "Bergkristall" contain an abundance of costume sketches, figurines and stage designs, belonging to an area of experience where romanticism, youthful style and surrealism meet. They therefore point to Bussotti's synaesthetic nature, to his many-sided gifts as a musician, designer, representer and producer. At the same time these illustrations unmistakably indicate the ambivalence of this work, which Bussotti describes as a symphonic poem, but which he has also called a "Ballet in one act and seven scenes". To remain with this visual concept, the score's seven sections provide Adalbert Stifter's novel with what might be termed astonishing musical landscapes; they transplant the characters and events of Stifter's tale of the simple yet artistic life amid high mountain peaks into the realm of Bussotti's abundant and indeed extravagant imagination, which peoples the region of glaciers with spirit manifestations, clothing the touching story of how two children are lost and miraculously saved on Christmas Day in a musical garment woven from a never-failing wealth of colours, rhythms, soaring lines and ornaments. This music openly proclaims its iridescent and descriptive character; it is of vibrant, highly sensualistic complexity, evoking with subtle tone colouring the sfumato atmosphere of Christmas-tree decorations and candlelight. In the tumultuous passages of the sixth section it enters the sphere of extreme realism, and in the concluding adagio, with its ostinato of plucked, percussion and keyboard instruments in their highest registers, it vividly depicts the glittering of a multitude of snow crystals in the rosy light of dawn. The constructive principle of varying repetition, important for Bussotti, is frequently employed; it may be described as operating with strata of sound conceived with a view to their potentialities for combination, strata which can be used to build up a substantial structure, or which can be taken out of their originally larger context. This procedure is demonstrated particularly clearly in the fifth section. This is based on five fragments distinguished by their different instrumental colouring; they are first heard one after another, then they are played in nine varying combinations, and finally all five appear simultaneously.

The same principle marks the first movement of the "Lorenzaccio" Symphony. This comprises extracts from the stage work which Bussotti based in 1968/72 on a drama of the same name by Alfred de Musset. The play concerns the assassination at Florence in 1537 of the tyrannical Alessandro de' Medici by his cousin Lorenzo, known as Lorenzaccio. The Symphony contains excerpts from the 3rd and 4th acts- not in the same order as on the stage but put together in such a way that they have an independent expressive shape. The first movement creates a sound picture of sombre splendour; the dramatic tension builds up in a movement of striking tonal and dynamic force for wind and percussion, and its climax is reached in a tutti passage which sounds like a completely aleatoric deluge of notes, but which in fact consists of forty precisely notated instrumental parts. The four-note opening motif of the next section recalls the movement for wind and percussion, but from here on the music becomes more and more lyrically subjective. There is a brief reminiscence of the "deluge of notes", but the final third of the work is dominated by cantilena melodies played by several solo instruments, as well as by the sense of beauty and sweetness in the style of a romantic adagio, with subtle effects of light and shade skilfully woven around a pedal point on A. In this wholly inward-looking final section, which with its unconcealed longing for beauty reveals one of the most striking aspects of Bussotti's concept of sound, the last word goes to a solo guitar which represents here the lute, the favourite instrument of the Renaissance age which saw the cultural flowering of Florence, the city in which "Lorenzaccio" is set, and of which Bussotti is a native.

(Translation: John Coombs)

A.C.

"The Internet Is Gay" | "Jack Kevorkian Is Cool"


-- From I Like It When You Die (1997)

Coltrane Motion, "Ex-Girlfriend in a Coma"

The Black Kites, "All Wrong"

The title track from their three-song EP. Look for a full-length later this year.

5 Blogs We Read Cover-to-Cover

One of the things that we do nearly every day is to trot over to the New Music Reblog and skim the feeds of over 100 blogs that have some ostensible connection to contemporary classical music. As per the vision of the Reblog's founder, we syndicate the posts that have something to do with the site's mission, and leave the posts about a blogger's pet or vacation pics to be discovered on their own.

Initially, they were almost all cat and coconut pics. Now, what used to be a light morning read, has turned into a bit of a workout with the profusion of excellent blogs that publish everything from mp3's to thoughtful analysis of contemporary trends.

In light of Musical Perception's second round of classical music blog rankings based on their traffic, we thought we'd highlight a few blogs qualitatively. Out of hundreds of posts read every day, thousands per week, a few blogs consistently stand out to our editorial eye, meaning simply that we find ourselves reading their entire posts every time, instead of skimming them:

On An Overgrown Path - Hands down, this is the most consistently astonishing reading. The breadth of coverage is staggering, and nearly half of its content does not get syndicated.

Free Albums Galore - There are a ton of sites out there that post zipped copies of entire albums on public hosts. Free Albums (we'll skip the acronym bait) directs you to sites where artists and labels are offering up albums for free. We syndicate maybe 10% of this site's content.

Jessica Duchen - The consummate 'blogger', Jessica mixes equal parts critic and diarist with an engaging style.

Roger Bourland - Most of his video posts don't get syndicated, but the stuff that Roger digs up is well worth a trip to his blog.

Soho the Dog - Soho's tastes run the gamut, and he's almost always got information that no one else has.

Incidentally, if you ever feel a post of yours should have been reblogged, don't take offense. We probably just missed the connection to contemporary music. Send us an email and we'll make sure it's syndicated.

The Lodger, "Kicking Sand"

lodge.

Day Market, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

-- Recorded by echo
from Found Sounds Radio

Sylvano Bussotti, "Bergkristall"

Notes From Deutsche Grammophon 2531 011":



Bergkristall (for large orchestra, ballet in one act and seven scenes, concept based on the narrative of Adalbert Stifter)

I. Christmas Eve in the mountains - the children receive their presents
II. The Christmas-tree in the house of the grandparents
III. The disaster of the baker's boy
IV. Losing the path - the snowstorm
V. In the regions of eternal ice
VI. Bergkristall
VII. The mother's arms - the dawn

Sinfonieorchester deds Norddeutschen Rundfunks, Hamburg
Conductor: Giuseppe Sinopoli

Sylvano Bussotti (b. 1931): Bergkristal

SUMMARY

It is Christmas Day, and in the innumerable hamlets hidden in the high mountains there is a perpetual flow of villagers, there are dances and excited exchanges of greetings and presents just before the festival. The cobbler's children are despatched by their father on the path leading to the valley, where their grandparents live in the big dyeworks. They are to bring Christmas greetings and presents, and they receive a warm welcome from their grandmother, who has been expecting them. There is much excitement, spirits are high and Conrad's knapsack is filled with all the good things his grandmother has prepared; there is even little of the very strongest coffee to take home to mother. The children are fascinated by the glitter of the Christmas-tree, but they must be hurrying home. Night will soon be falling and the grandmother has noticed a cold shadow darkening the sky . . .

Grandfather tells them to go carefully, as the mountain can be really dangerous in some places - like the one where the little red column marks the scene of the disaster when a poor baker's boy was found frozen to death on his way with bread from one village to the next, though no one knows exactly how it happened. Conrad can just imagine it all, as grandfather tells the story - the baker's boy and his terrible fight with the cold. But he is not afraid, and never has been. On the other hand it is the memorial column, with its iron cross and naive painting, that marks the path he has to take ... The children are alone now on their homeward path, but it has already begun to snow and the woods that rise above the pathway seem never to come to an end. Gradually an impalpable wall appears to hem them in on every side and all traces of the pathway are obliterated; and it is only by instinct that Conrad guides his small sister through the snowstorm, which becomes increasingly dense and heavy. He makes a despairing effort to find the track, which has disappeared, and to his heated imagination the spirit of the baker's boy seems to be guiding them on towards the unknown... Night has completely fallen now and the cold is unbearable. Conrad takes off his waistcoat and makes Sanna put it on. But by now they do not know which direction to take; the going is increasingly steep and difficult and eventually becomes impossible. Sanna finds a frozen corner to rest in, but she is unable to go on again. And now Conrad realises that the direction in which they are heading is that of the "eternal glacier", the highest peak of all, where perhaps no one has ever been before! The sky there is so close that you can almost touch it with your fingers. And all the time the figure of the baker's boy, half fascinating and half frightening, keeps recurring to Conrad's alarmed consciousness, while above them the enormous glacier towers, like a fantastic castle of crystal.

Spirits of the sky, the wind and the night, blinding and enchanted spirits of the snows - these form the procession that accompanies the comets and unfolds the vast mantle of night from whose centre the Bergkristall spirit will issue. Conrad has given his sister some mouthfuls of the coffee which they are carrying, aware that it is absolutely essential for them to keep awake if they are not to be frozen to death. It is here that nature takes on the appearance of supernatural forms, and the boy can dance among all these spirits. Now the revelation is incarnate in the enchanting figure which combines the fascination of one of grandmother's fairy-stories and the beloved features of a mother's smile.

As soon as it grows light the spirits will vanish, each beneath its mantle of snow. It is the contemplation of that universe that has kept the children awake, and alive, all night. The village rescue team, which has managed to make its way to the summit, with its red flag fluttering, finds the children in each others' arms. Sanna is taken down in a sledge, covered with a mass of furs. Conrad knows the joy of being rescued in the warm embrace of his mother's arms. The rising sun, close above them and of giant size, burns like fire over the vast expanses of snow and the glittering quartz of the rocks, as though a mass of roses were shining, opening their buds and reflecting their own light.

(Translation: Martin Cooper)

PROGRAMME NOTE

It may seem like a fable. In spite of its three successive movements this is really and truly a symphonic poem, with a plot whose text is couched in highly unusual language. The ballet, with its minute descriptions of scene and gesture always meticulously integrated into the musical score, observes every one of the conventions which brought the form to its symbolic peak between 1890 and 1910 with the immortal works of the Russian swan, the divine Tchaikovsky. In fact it goes even further and underlines them; I feel it is absolutely essential for this ballet to be performed strictly according to the right choreographic conventions and adhering closely to the classical modes of expression. To use a comparison appropriate to the setting laid down for it, a virginal winter landscape-one is meant to be confronted with a real, icy Ballet blanc. I came across Adalbert Stifter's masterpiece as a boy, thanks to my elder brother Renzo, a painter, who had sketched fascinating pencil landscapes on the pages of our Italian translation. For more than 20 years I cherished the idea of a ballet as the perfect medium for conveying a drama of eternal innocence, and in "Bergkristall" I found the ideal opportunity. There was no getting round the chief difficulty - that of putting two children on the stage. Even the elder of the two, the boy, cannot be much more than ten years old, and he must be able to play a real protagonist's part on the stage for more than thirty minutes. Given the age of development among European dancers, such a role demands a virtuosity only found in an adult. Yet though this thorny problem could turn out to be a death-trap at the same time it provides a perfect opportunity for beginning to study the score and to see the ballet in the right light and also in the true sense, which makes art a question of accuracy in the use of shapes and language - scenic as well as musical, of course. The whole is illuminated by a quite deliberately old-fashioned light and this has nothing to do with any desire to avoid the present or, worse--refusal to believe in a more or less secure future, which would be a form of escapism. On the contrary, the present and reality take part in a scene which stands out above the orchestra, both pledged to look present-day existence in all its misery firmly in the eye. The unspoiled boy protagonist of this terrible tale loses his innocence, his untroubled childhood sleep when--in mortal danger from an imagined adversary, death, in the person of the baker's boy, who is his exact opposite--he has his first transcendent experience of nature, or as we would say, of the universe.

This awareness leads him to maturity under the spectators' very eyes. (There is also the suggestion here that a brat, who amongst other things has some of the wickedness inherent in all primitive beings, can be freed on the stage from his youthful hubris by being given a heroic part and acting bravely and victoriously in the face of a natural catastrophe). But above all he achieves this with that intact, uncorrupted sense of beauty deeply rooted in the heart of every child which makes his mother and his adored grandmother into marvels of creation, and convinces him it is perfectly natural that they can work unique miracles in the form of supernatural metamorphosis. On the stage, that miracle can, in fact, be repeated-- indeed, it is part of the very essence of the theatre, and of art itself, both vitalistic experiences which are at the same time, strictly speaking, illusory and yet tangible. Behind Stifter's invention, candid and at the same time cruel, rises the dazzling sun of Raymond Roussel, with his demand for a total transfiguration of the probable into the absolute - the pure artistic imagination, in fact. And so in the last resort the fable is wiped out - no princesses, no genii. It is natural enough, if not quite an everyday experience, that the mountain appears as a kind of enchanted castle; and the whole thoroughly credible story consists of quite precise and simple details all consistent with one another. The name "spirits" is given to all personages who are "creatures of the imagination", not simply in their relationship to the play's grammatical syntax, but in virtue of that spirit which inhabits every one of us in his first youth, providing sustenance for the growing man and gaining control over him.

I should like to reveal how this score - begun in Berlin on 15 November 1972 and finished in Rome on 31 March 1973 - in its turn represents a real and true metamorphosis of another kind, a musical one resulting from the extension of an earlier chamber-work (Nottetempo con lo scherzo e una rosa; "Night Time with a scherzo and a rose", on poems by Filippo De Pisis, 1954). The complexities of that metamorphosis will be analysed elsewhere. Here, it will be enough to say that the earlier work was also concerned with nature and the miraculous, with night and stars. Indeed, the real innermost kernel of the whole fable could be said to be precisely the birth of such a star as one sees shining on the low horizon of the proscenium curtain. As always, the shapes taken by my musical ideas led me to write for certain individual performers I had in mind. Elisabetta Terabust literally inspired the triple role of the "etoile"; the dancer Rocco, to whom the work is dedicated, took the role of Conrad, and he provided the rasison d'etre of the work. Just as children have the gift of abandoning themselves to the wonder of something to the point when it becomes reality, the dramatic and difficult music of BERGKRISTALL speaks its own precise language for those who understand the meaning of dance.

(Translation: Martin Cooper)

Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch v. A Tribe Called Quest

At the dawn of the 90's, two of hip-hop's biggest names remixed Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side". We all know whose version moved more units, but whose version is better?

Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, "Wildside"

Who makes better use of Lou's bass line?
	Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch
	A Tribe Called Quest

A Tribe Called Quest, "Can I Kick It?"

Gilbert Amy, "Récitatif, Air and Variation"

Continued Notes From Erato NUM 75264:

Récitatif, Air and Variation for 12 a cappella voices dates from 1970 and was premiered at the Royan Festival in 1972 under the conductorsh of Marcel Couraud. A fragment taken from the poet Rene Daumal's collection Le Contre-Ciel is developed above all from the phonetic angle, and therefore split into phonemes. The three parts are linked together by a b-flat held by the sopranos. In Recitatif, the energy of breath dominates, in Air "male world and female breath unite in the poet's human envelope" (R. Daumal) lastly, in Variation the rhythm predominates, as a "discipline through which human animals achieve their only liberation." (R. Daumal).

Black Lips in Tijuana (and VICE Records)

You'll want to check out this live video of Black Lips playing Tijuana, complete with a Mariachi band. At least for one song anyway.

Thanks to the Vice Records blog by the way of Vice

ABC, "The Look of Love"

Gilbert Amy, "Relais"

Continued Notes From Erato NUM 75264:


The 1969 Brass Quintet Relais is a case, seldom found in Amy, of a work giving room for a certain amount of limited aleatoric writing, just as in some of Boulez's works. Relais consists of six short sections, whose order is determined by the first trombone, promoted "rally leader". Two of the sections (the third and fourth on this recording furthermore offer roundabout routes, with tempi and dynamics freely chosen by the performers. The latters are placed in a square around the first trombone.

Harry HALBREICH, Translated by Elisabeth BUZZARD

Jenny's Drinking to Your Voice Mails...

Batten the Hatches is a really good listen, one of those albums like White Ladder or Come Away With Me that puts you in a certain mood and keeps you there.

Her smoky voice is usually paired with alt-country textures, and her closing-time songs make you want to have one last drink before you turn in.

Definitely worth a listen:"Voice on Tape" | "Drinking Song"

Gilbert Amy, "Shin'Alim Sha'Ananim"

Notes From Erato NUM 75264:

Shin'Alim Sha'Ananim (1979), for alto voice, clarinet, cello and instrumental ensemble; after a poem by Ibn Gabirol (XI century). Benedetta Pecchiloi, alto; Robert Fontaine, clarinet; Michel Strauss, cello; Nouvel Orchestre Philharmonique, conducted by Gilbert Amy.

Born in Paris in 1936, Gilbert Amy is a key figure amongst the French composers of the middle generation. His artistic evolution has unfolded without any spectacular volte-face, towards an ever more accomplished maturity. His most important teachers were* Messiaen and Milhaud, he then learnt conducting with Pierre Boulez (1957), who introduced him to the newest music. Between 1959 and 1961, Amy, who had already written his first works, discovered Stockhausen, Nono, Maderna and Pousseur at Darmstadt. Since then and with equal success, he has pursued a double career as composer and conductor. In this capacity, he succeeded Boulez at the head of the Domaine musical from 1967 to 1973, then, when these concerts disappeared, he worked at the French Radio from 1976 to 1981 as chief conductor of the Nouvel Orchestre Philharmonique. Since 1984, he is Director of the Lyons Conservatoire National Superieur, whilst still pursuing an international career as conductor.

Initially, his work was strongly influenced by Pierre Boulez, and pieces of strictly serial obedience date from that period. Although Amy has continued to pay the greatest attention to form and construction, his music has long since blossomed out into expressive warmth, lyricism and tonal splendour, finding an invaluable point of reference in Alban Berg, whilst effortlessly fitting into the specifically French tradition of timbre and sensuousness. Amy's great orchestral pieces, (Strophe, Chant, Trajectoires, D'un Espace Déployé, etc.) are basic works in the present day symphonic repertoire.

This record confronts three works written around 1970 with an important piece written about ten years later.

Shin'Anim Sha'Ananim was written in 1979, commissioned by the Jerusalem Testimonium Festival and dedicated to its founder and director Mrs. Reha Freier. This Festival, held every fourth year, is always programmed around an aspect of Jewish culture. That year, this was the Medieval Spanish Sepharadic Jews, and Amy chose a short poem by Ibn Gabirol (XIth century), Angels of the Heavenly Presence.

The text is sung by a contralto in Hebrew, joined by two other soloists, a clarinet and a cello, who even finish the work with an important duet. The instrumental ensemble consists of three flutes, three clarinets, one trumpet, two percussions (metallic instruments), celeste, harp, piano, four cellos and two double basses. This intensely lyrical and expressive piece numbers amongst the most powerful and most inspired of Gilbert Amy's works.

NFL Europe 2007

Wembley Stadium is set to host the Miami Dolphins and the New York (Football) Giants on October 27, 2007. (Tickets go on sale on May 16.)

I had to see the New Wembley for myself after catching a glimpse of it in the zombie sequel, 28 Weeks Later over the weekend.

Apologies for the drizzly, gloomy view of things - it's England, damn it !

RIP, Ron Parmentier

Ron taught guitar out of his studio apartment on Thompson Street in the West Village for decades, and about four years ago, he got the bug to perform again. He assembled a cadre of young musicians, and those of us who played with him at restaurants and bars in the neighborhood considered our gigs more of an extended master class than performances.

He and I played together as a duo more times than I can remember, and we only ever played a handful of tunes: "Night and Day", "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat", "A Love Supreme", "Beautiful Love", and a few others. Any one of those tunes could easily last an hour. Ron wasn't interested in much beyond 'conversing', as he put it, with me. Most of those conversations took place at 350 bpm, and it took a while to get used to speaking Ron's language.

In rehearsals, he'd talk for half an hour about the intricacies of second-species counterpoint and Schoenberg's harmonic concepts while he chain-smoked cigarettes and weed. In five minutes, he could give you enough conceptual homework to occupy your practice for a month. He was irascible, perpetually tardy, and he did not take kindly to requests to turn his amplifier down (in fact, such requests usually yielded the opposite result).

We went in to a studio once to record, and the 'conversation' just wasn't right. We were talking past each other; so, before we even got the levels set, we packed it in. Every time I saw him, there was always talk of going back in to the studio and playing more dates together. It will take another while to get used to not having Ron to talk to anymore.

[I'm not aware of any other recordings of Ron. There's talk of a memorial concert, and hopefully that will turn up some better specimens. Until then, here's a demo of us performing "Night and Day".]

Found Sounds Radio

We don't usually call attention to our sidebar, but if you glance to the right, you'll see this doohicky --------------------------------------->

Next to that broadcast icon, there are now three audio streams. With so much source material for our found sounds and field recordings concerts, we decided to showcase it in a new stream on ANALOG Radio. It kicks off with Annea Lockwood's seminal sound map of the Hudson river, and the rest is ours (which is to say, it's mainly echo's).

DeVotchka

How It Ends

Let's Go

Till the end of Time

La Llorona


Just to get your ears in the zone for their May 24 show in Los Angeles which I blogged about a few days ago.

Gilbert Amy, "Sonata pian'e forte"

Fuck...I'm Dead, "Horrendous Bowel Evacuation"

From the split album with Engorged

Gilbert Amy, "Chant"

Continued Notes From Erato STU 70593:

Chant is in binary form: two parts linked one to the other, a local antiphony which divides the orchestra into two groups, the orchestra itself twice separated into two instrumental groups.

In a somewhat different way, Trajectoires is based on a loose passage-like structure: welded/tethered, smoothed out, decomposition/mass recomposition.

The principle of passage-music as applied to fundamental structures creates an "interweaving of textures", interweaving of structures - that is to say a total absence of the one and the other, or else their exclusive presence with all intermediate degrees - but at the same time interweaving of instrumental groups. Thus it is that there is nothing extraneous in this work, as in the classical or romantic concerto in which the soloist acts the principal role and leads the game, the orchestra making use of the same themes as he.

Here, on the contrary, the soloist is "alternately" a MEMBER of a composite whole and independent ACTOR where the orchestra is concerned. Trajectoires therefore is not a concerto: the autonomous trajectory of the violin may meet, cover, uncover, ignore, punctuate the trajectories of the other instrumental groups. It is indeed in the specificity and the pregnancy of this form of articulation that the formal invention of Trajectoires stands out.

Lastly the titles with their multifarious meanings conceal the unexpected. "Chant is intonation, musical recitation, Plain-Chant, melody, air, etc... it is also phonetically, "champ" (a field): a given temporal and musical space, an enclosed area, a detachable ensemble of sound, endowed with common denominators". Trajectoires, therefore, is different "trajets" (paths), each possessing its own curve, its own projection. And then, insensibly one is compelled to return to the orchestra, the hearing... Gilbert Amy's orchestra is unsparing in its total direction, reined-in brutality, a bedlam of noise... this orchestra affords practically no place to silence: the momentary absence of certain instrumental groups on stage - do not forget to WATCH this orchestra, its conductor - irrigates the action of the others. Often a prolonged pedal on the brass and lower strings is punctuated, questioned, suspended, by a crackle of pizzicati, of xylorimba...

Following this description the ear in its turn takes over: " revealing ths secret of his landscapes by dint of light and evidence", (Boulez a propos of Cezanne), so Gilbert Amy appears to us.

DJ Paul Oakenfold ...

... in a live-collaboration (of sorts) with composer Felix Salazar, who scores for and conducts the Florida Classical Orchestra.

Indie rock @ the DH ...

Probably no stranger than hearing Terry Jenning's String Quartet, which opened last year's Riley In C concert at the DH.

(March 20, 2006; Reviewed the next day on Sequenza 21)

Pixies in Heaven

In Heaven [Lady in the Radiator song] (live)

from COMPLETE B SIDES

Gilbert Amy, "Trajectoires"

Notes From Erato STU 70593:

Trajectoires, for violin and orchestra

Gérard Jarry, violin Orchestre National de L'O.R.T.F. Conducted by Gilbert Amy

Gilbert AMY was born in Paris in 1936. Before undertaking any musical studies he finished his classical secondary education. At the Paris Conservatoire Darius Milhaud and Olivier Messiaen were his masters. In 1956 he met Pierre Boulez and on several occasions worked under him: in Paris, in Darmstadt and later in Basle in 1965 during his Conducting Courses. Composer and conductor, Gilbert AMY has since 1967 also succeeded Pierre Boulez in the Direction of the Domaine Musical.

Over and above the two works here recorded, the following principal compositions are to be remembered: Mouvements for 17 solo instruments (1958) Piano Sonata (1957-60), Diaphonies for a double ensemble of 12 instruments (1962), Cahiers d'Epigrammes pour piano (1965), Cycle for 6 percussions (1964-66), Strophe for soprano and orchestra to a poem by Rene Char (1965-66), Relais for brass (1967-69), Cette étoile enseigne à s'incliner for voice instrumental ensemble and tape (1970), Récitatif, Air et Variation for 12 solo voices (1970). The author himself admits that Trajectoires and Chant, as also Strophe and Triade form "a series (...) of orchestral works representing a poetical vision at least as important as the formal research which brought them to life ".

Dialectical union of poetical vision and technique - one is here confronted with a typical product of the most exacting contemporary aesthetics. Here the physics and chemistry of the orchestra beget the " DRAMA ", that is to say, the plot, the happening. Nothing "anecdotal" even if Trajectoires might seem to be a concerto: the violin is reintegrated into the orchestra from which certain ambitious violinists had ousted it in the 18th century.

Here then, the musical happening takes place in the orchestra. The typical form in use in recent western music (18th-19th centuries) is both abandoned and disrupted: this is because it does not exist, not yet.

The orchestra only reveals itself as such when Mahler's and Berg's impossibly luxuriant music rings its doom.

To others is left the care of new inventions, to Debussy (Jeux), to Schoenberg (Lieder with orchestra, op. 22), to Bartok (piano concertos 1 and 2, Music for strings). Poor solutions, no sooner conceived than outdated, in which all reiteration is impossible, not to mention parody or misconstruction. (Can then something impossible to reiterate be a masterpiece ?). Gilbert Amy undoubtedly owes to Pierre Boulez a certain form of orchestra: the choice of certain percussions rather than others, groups of preferential timbres, piano-harp-celesta-glockenspiel. Nevertheless nothing more than the affinity which unites the orchestras of Berg and Mahler. It would therefore appear evident that Trajectoires invents AN orchestra, that Chant displaces (one is tempted to say "jostles ", if such a term were permitted) the centre of gravity of Boulez' orchestra: torn simultaneously between the lower and higher registers.

The only aim of the purposely barren titles of the two works here recorded is that one may hear the two orchestras, or to be more exact THE orchestra TWICE - which is a thing that few composers have attained. From Mahler to Boulez the few names cited above bear witness to the spheres in which Gilbert Amy orbits.

Trajectoires (1965-66), first performed at the 1968 Royan Festival, was written for 64 strings, almost incessantly at loggerheads, 6 horns, 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, a tuba, 2 harps, drums (2 players), 5 percussions, (xylorimba, vibraphone, bell-tubes, african drums, glockenspiel, tom-toms, etc...). Chant (1967-68 - revised in 69) was first performed at Donaueschingen in October 1968 with Ernest Bour conducting, then in Paris in 1969 under the composer's own direction. This work is for 4 flutes, 3 oboes (of which one a baritone oboe), 1 cor anglais, 2 clarinets, 2 bass-clarinets, 4 bassoons, 6 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 tenor-trombones, 1 bass-trombone, 1 counter-tuba, kettledrums, 5 percussions (2 marimbas, vibraphone, bell-tubes, tom-toms, and gongs), 2 harps, a piano, celesta, a complete string quintet (divided into 2 and 4 groups).

While composing his works Gilbert Amy is always conscious of being also a conductor. Thus a part of Trajectoires is comprised of rhythmic elasticity, and Chant requires a conductor's firm hand - especially in the execution of certain sections.

Indie-Pop/Rock Bands + Designer Concert Halls =

DeVotchka at Walt Disney Hall, May 24 alongside Saul Williams.




Naturally.



This is a few weeks after the Bright Eyes appearance at Disney Hall.

(So the Lavender Diamond/Indian Jewelry Show last month down at the Red Cat wasn't just a one-off curiosity evening. It's a thing.)

Thanks to LAist for the heads-up.

Wild Fire burns in the middle of Los Angeles

This has got to be my favourite line about Los Angeles.

Somewhere near the end of March, I was sitting at the Casbah Cafe, look across at a developing fire on the Hollywood Hills.



A couple of weeks later I was back at the Casbah. This time hearing about the Beverly Glen Fire ...

What's with that ?!!

Sasha Laen Smith

Have a listen to Oklahoma from Sasha's 6 Songs EP.

Gilbert Amy, "Strophe"

for Soprano and orchestra
Text by René Émile Char's "L'Action de la justice est éteinte"

Grant Hart, "2541"

Can, "Vitamin C"

Bank Holiday

Today I visited the Horseguards of the Household Cavalry Regiment at Whitehall. Two mounted guards are posted at the Parliament Street Gate plus a third roaming the courtyard. A woman informs me that the walker is her son. In the photo below she is seen telling him it's raining.

Yes woman, it is. Now leave the man along so he doesn't get chewed out by his Staff Corporal.

This took place about half a mile north of Big Ben. (Go Steelers)



Next, out of nowhere, a mass of protester march up the street towards Trafalgar Square. The rally was organised by Strangers Into Citizens. The action they are promoting seems to make sense.




As they passed by, I retired to the Red Lion to get out of the rain and devour some Beef & Ale Pie.

Do you hear .... ?

[ UPDATED: MAY 12 ]

London Transcriptions : Portobello Market ?

As a matter of fact, I do.

Do you ?

I am interested to see/hear if the readership can extract something out of this that I don't manage to. You are welcome to submit to me a fragment of thought, still preferrably complete, musical or somethiing else, of up to 2 minutes in length (this is negotiable, please contact me about anything different to this). I don't really care if you are a musician or otherwise better-emploed, if you have a Copland Grant, or better (!), that you don't even know who Copland is. Brownie points for you !

Regarding actual performance possibilities, I am currently setting up a show back in Los Angeles (August 16). However if you are a fast-worker, I can work this into a set I am putting together in Berlin on June 25 at KuLe for the Labor Sonor Series.

Update on Final Submissions for the June 25 show:
Please submit your work by June 1.

Some guidelines for you to consider (& practical concerns) ... as you may know I'm on the road.

1. PDF files are preferred.

2. FYI, the gears that I am travelling with are: G3 Powerbook, iPod, Sony SRS-T33 small speakers, Edirol R-09 MP3 Recorder, Chromatic & A harmonicas, 2 contact mics (RCA ends)

Violin, as well as metal practice mute, glass slide. Hmmm anything else you can think of ?

3. Please attach a short bio of 2-3 lines about yourself. No promises about a program for your files, but there will at least be an ANABlog post about the show when it happens....

4. Send scores to my email: johnny_echo@yahoo.com.

OK, Happy Experimenting!

SPUTNiK Orbits Cape Cod This Weekend

SPUTNiK joins local favorites Earth Jr. for a show at The Barley Neck Inn tonight at 9:30 p.m.

The next day, we'll play on WOMR 92.1 around 3 p.m. Check it out online at WOMR.org!

Read-In Rip-off

The news that a bunch of disgruntled Atlanta Journal-Constitution readers staged a read-in to protest the elimination of the paper's book editor position struck us as a little bit strange.

Only a week ago, we staged the world premiere of echo's LA Transcriptions⁶ which calls for performers to do the same exact thing: sit and read. We're used to getting ripped off, but this is a tough one to get mad about, especially since the piece itself is a rip-off of the vibe at Il Corral.

Paul Hindemith, "Of the Death of Mary III"

Continued Notes From GSC Recordings GSC 7:

Das Marienleben, XV "Of the Death of Mary III"

GSC RECORDINGS, 2451 Nichols Canyon, Los Angeles, Ca. 90046. PRODUCED BY: Herschel Burke Gilbert, Julian Spear, Don Christlieb. RECORDING ENGINEERS: Steve Markham & Paul Ford. MASTERING ENGINEER: Bernie Grundman.

Lost in the Trees - "Walk Around the Lake"

Those wacky Geico skywriters are back, which is always a little surreal in the city. Sort of like being lost in the trees...sorta.

Paul Hindemith, "Of the Death of Mary II"

Continued Notes From GSC Recordings GSC 7:

Das Marienleben, XIV "Of the Death of Mary II"

Mr. Dahl requested Miss Bonini to work on Das Marienleben, because he was interested in the original 1923 version of the work and felt it was well suited to her abilities. The successful performance, in 1967, was for Monday Evening Concerts at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the recording was made the following day.

The Basement

"It's a Kind of Love" | "I Just Caught a Face"

Workout with the Governator

It was the unforgettable spring of 1983...Ms. Pacman struck a blow for women's rights, a young Joe Piscopo taught us how to laugh, and Arnold Schwarzenegger had just won our hearts as that lovable scamp Conan the Barbarian. Clearly, he figured his next step should be cutting a workout record.

Save The Overtime For Me - Gladys Knight & The Pips
Don't Stop Believin' - Journey
867-5309/Jenny - Tommy Tutone
Let Your Body Rock - Champaign
Love Not War - Michael Case Kissel
Think I'm In Love - Eddie Money
I'm So Proud - Deniece Williams
It's Raining Men - The Weather Girls
Burning For You - Blue Öyster Cult

"The Sleep of Reason..."; 175 East in Concert

Musical Director, 175 East, James Gardner writes:

A concert featuring newly commissioned works by (New Zealand Composers) Phil Dadson and Ross Harris.

175 East are fortunate to be joined for this concert by two extraordinary guest musicians: Richard Haynes (clarinets and soprano sax) and Mark Knoop (piano) in a very varied programme that also includes the world premiere of Aaron Cassidy's solo soprano sax lung-twister 'asphyxia' as well as fine works by Lyell Cresswell, Morton Feldman, Michael Finnissy, James Gardner and Wolfgang Rihm.

Neither this nor our Auckland concert will be recorded by Radio New Zealand Concert so you need to be there on the night if you want to hear this music.

Make a difference and turn up this Friday to help keep music alive and kicking in New Zealand!

TWO CONCERTS

Friday May 4
7.30pm

St Andrew's on The Terrace

Wellington, New Zealand



Saturday May 5
7.30pm

Hopetoun Alpha

Auckland, New Zealand





Both events: Door Sales only $20 ($10 concs)

TONIGHT, 8.30PM (EST)

OBJECT COLLECTION
and special guests present


John Cage's Song Books

Tonight (Tuesday May 1st)


Show starts at 8:30 pm SHARP!

The performance lasts exactly one hour.


tickets are $10

Medicine Show Theatre
549 West 52nd, 3rd Floor
NYC


with Kara Feely, Jessica Feldman, Gisburg, Beth Griffith, Travis Just,
Christian Kesten, Dafna Naphtali, Craig Shepard, Harris Wulfson


here is a little archival video of Cage on a game show in 1960 to whet
your appetite (courtesy of Travis Just & WFMU)

Paul Hindemith, "Of the Death of Mary I"

Continued Notes From GSC Recordings GSC 7:

Das Marienleben, XIII "Of the Death of Mary I"

Peggy Bonini and Ingolf Dahl first worked together in 1952 while Miss Bonini was still a student at the University of Southern California. Mr. Dahl was conducting Menotti's The Consel, directed by Carl Ebert, and Miss Bonini had been chosen to sing the lead. The combination was very successful and for many years thereafter Miss Bonini and Mr. Dahl performed together in concert.

It's May Day, Comrade!

So here's Prokofiev toeing the line with his The Stone Flower (1950), wherein he manifests his famous apology: "...it has been shown that the formalist movement, which leads to the impoverishment and decline of music, is foreign to the Soviet people."

Prologue:
Mistress of the Copper Mountain; Danilo and his Work

Act I, Scene I:
Danilo in search of the Flower

"With the final pick of the draft..."

Modi'in Miracle (of the Israel Baseball League) selects Sandy Koufax.