Maulwerker performs Pauline Oliveros

when you see people just standing or sitting around ..

Chico Mello - "FATE AT EIGHT"

(Part 1/4)

EINSPRUCH | MUSIKALISCHE (R)EVOLUTIONEN UM '68

PROTEST
MUSICAL (R)EVOLUTIONS AROUND '68


FREDERIC RZEWSKI
plays
36 Variations on "The People United Will Never Be Defeated!"


(Akademie der Künste, Berlin. 28.6.2008)










(apologies for this shortened version, i only started recording a few variations in... )

experimental & improvised music radio

Listen to Audition, Sundays between7-8.30pm, 104.4 FM if you're in Central London., or online at Resonance FM.

Audition is the radio show of Sound 323, a record store in North London specialising in interesting music (avant jazz/rock, improv, electronic music, sounds art .... ).

Collapsing Cities

ELIXIR ALWAYS

In the Valley

ELixir Always

Seriously

Radu Malfatti talks about somethings

...half way through this interview with Dan Warburton, February 2001


Moving on to your recent rediscovery of composition, could you give me your definitions of form, material and structure, which you referred to earlier? I think the distinction between form and structure is especially relevant.
I know that this is a tricky question and I'll try to start with an easy analogy (one I used once in a classroom trying to explain it to kids - which always is good for one's own understanding). Take a house: the form is the overall shape of the building - e.g. round, square, long, high and narrow etc. The material is clear - wood, bricks, concrete (nice word in this context) etc. The structure would be the shapes, patterns, design, layout of the different rooms and spaces and the their number, e.g. one big room, many small ones etc. It's only an analogy and analogies never really work, but it's a start. We could then accept the word "form" to refer to sonatas, symphonies, 12-bar blues, "long" pieces, "short" pieces etc. "Material" is a major scale, "in g-flat minor", or Lachenmann's "Materialzertrümmerung" (a kind of demolition, destruction of the old, well-known material), noises, scratching etc. "Structure" would then stand for the density, spaciness etc. I hope this sheds a little new light on the discussion.

So structure is a kind of function of event-density?
Very well expressed, thank you!


This would explain why certain "New Complexity" composers such as Spahlinger and Richard Barrett are both enthusiastic improvisors..
And quite lousy ones too! They only move along the old, well-trodden paths! I see the same idiomatics in improvised music: it must be "active", "energy-loaded" and God knows what to be interesting or "succsessful". This is why it doesn't really matter if one piece of music is improvised and another composed if they're both moving in the same direction, the one maybe willingly, the other under the pretext of doing something completely new, without realizing that the same modules are being used. For example, I know Evan Parker hates Ferneyhough on the grounds that he just can't see the point of writing music which is completely unplayable. But if you have a close look at Evan's own work, you realize that he is moving around in exactly the same category. His work also is "unplayable" - at least for others - and he seems to be as interested in virtuosity as good old Brian is. Neither of them can get rid of the old structures, the density, the mobilmachung and they both quite willingly follow the path of Beethoven, Boulez (Pierre j' vous laisse) and the rest. It seems to me that they are both tied up in the materialistic aspect of music - and they do it very well - but how about the structure? Nothing! We can listen to probably over 96% of the music which mercilessly surrounds us and it all has the same underlying structure: never-ending, on-and-on-going gabbiness. What exactly is the difference between MTV-music and most of the classical avant-garde? Of course they use different material, but in the final analysis they are both intensively talkative.

PHILIP JECK

Live @ The Classic (Auckland, NZ)

An ALTMUSIC Event
hosted by
The Audio Foundation

Monday May 19, 2008

UCSB Music Building

Geiringer Hall

8:00pm PST

free

New piece by James Orsher: This book is called Slouching Towards Bethlehem

performed by Dick Hebdige and James Orsher

also work by:

Salman Bakht, Greg Shear, Mahrina Rofheart, Jerry Hui, Katie Saxon

Salvatore Sciarrino: Tre Notturni Brillianti

Di volo

Scorrevole e animato

Prestissimo precipitamo





Garth Knox, viola

Crystal Castles

Mozart in the Underground, Schubert on YouTube

NY Times

LA Times

Hans Tutschku

Born 1966 in Weimar. Member of the "Ensemble for intuitive music Weimar" since 1982. He studied composition of electronic music at the college of music Dresde and had since 1989 the opportunity to participate in several concert cycles of Karlheinz Stockhausen to learn the art of the sound direction. He further studied 1991/92 Sonology and electroacoustic composition at the royal conservatoire in the Hague (Holland).

1994 followed a one year’s study stay at IRCAM in Paris. He taught 1995/96 as a guest professor electroacoustic composition in Weimar. 1996 he participated in composition workshops with Klaus Huber and Brian Ferneyhough. 1997-2001 he taught electroacoustic composition at IRCAM in Paris and from 2001 to 2004 at the conservatory of Montbéliard.
In May 2003 he completed a doctorate (PhD) with Professor Dr. Jonty Harrison at the University of Birmingham. During the spring term 2003 he was the "Edgar Varèse Gast Professor" at the TU Berlin.

Since September 2004 Hans Tutschku has been working as composition professor and director of the electroacoustic studios at Harvard University (Boston). He is the winner of many international composition competitions, among other: Bourges, CIMESP Sao Paulo, Hanns Eisler price, Prix Ars Electronica, Prix Noroit and Prix Musica Nova. In 2005 he rezeived the culture prize of the city of Weimar.click here


[Tutschku has a number of recordings posted on his website, www.Tutschku.com. I especially enjoy Winternacht for piano, percussiona nd live electronics.]

Emily Lacy

[Dr. Dog, Delta Spirit, + Emily Lacy singing on a Sidewalk in Georgia
with the polish sausage man who can really sing]

BENT FESTIVAL LOS ANGELES - April 17-19, 2008

Grand Performances: 350 S. Grand Ave Los Angeles, CA 90011

Zero Point: 1049 E 32nd St, Los Angeles, CA 90011

Los Angeles, CA - The Tank is pleased to announce The Fifth Annual Bent Festival of hardware hacking, DIY electronics, and circuit bending. The term circuit bending refers to the inspired short-circuiting of battery-powered children's toys to create new musical instruments, and over the last few decades a worldwide subculture has sprung up around this amazing art form. The Bent Festival began as a celebration of circuit bending, but has quickly grown to embrace not only circuit benders but also artists who create instruments and artwork from scratch using homemade circuitry. Artists from around the globe perform music with their homemade or circuit bent instruments each night of the festival, teach workshops to adults and children alike, and create amazing, interactive art installations. The festival brings together artists of all ages and showcases the state of the art of DIY electronics and circuit bending culture.


SCHEDULE OF EVENTS FOR THE LOS ANGELES 2008 BENT FESTIVAL:

Nightly suggested donation of $10.
A Festival Pass to all events is available for $25.

Thursday, April 17 @ Grand Performances | 7PM SHARP

Concert #1

der warst

Aimee Norwich

univac

POMPON

embarker



Friday, April 18 @ Grand Performances | 11AM - 5pm
Workshops

11:00am "Intro to Circuit Bending - Bring your own battery powered sound making device and we'll freak it out" - with Phil Stearns and Aaron Drake

1:00pm"Antique Experimentation; Tubes, Coils and the Mystical DIY of the not-so-ancient" - with Lorin Edwin Parker

3:15pm Phase One Workshop for the Omnichord Workshop - basic Omnichord bending - with Joker Nies


Friday, April 18 @ Grand Performances | 7PM SHARP
Concert #2

Tasos Stamou

XDUGEF and OGOGO

Krach der Roboter

Clay Chaplin

BARKER



Saturday, April 19 @ Grand Performances | 11AM - 5pm
Workshops

11:00am Phase Two Workshop for the Omnichord Workshop - Basic bending and exploring additional possibillities - with Joker Nies

1:00pm Omnichord Orchestra Dress Rehearsal

1:00pm "Building an intercosmical communication device with Krach the robot" - with Krach der Roboter

3:15pm "Lecture on designing audio chaos generators" - with Rob Hordijk


Saturday, April 19 @ Grand Performances | 7PM SHARP
Concert #3

Joker Nies

Lesley Flanigan

Travis Weller

Pete McPartlan

_memo


Saturday April 20 @ Zero Point | 10:30pm
After Party

Loud Objects

DJ Tendraw

casperelectronics


Art Installations on display throughout the festival at Grand Performances from:

Kichul Kim

Clay Chaplin

Cooper Baker


The Bent Festival is produced by The Tank, a non-profit space for performing and visual arts in New York City with a mission to provide a welcoming, creative, collaborative, and affordable environment for artists and activists engaged in the pursuit of new ideas. Grand Performances is Southern California's largest presenter of free performing arts with a primary focus on bringing together the diverse peoples of Los Angeles for concerts celebrating the cultural contributions of our community's peoples. The Bent Festival is made possible in part by Make Magazine, the first publication on the subject of DIY technology projects and by Periscope Entertainment, a Los Angeles based film and television company that prides itself on supporting independent thought and innovative creation. This event is also made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

happening in Los Angeles tonight

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008
Hyperion Tavern, Silverlake
10:00pm - FREE! - 21+

Club Ding-a-ling! presents

Badwater Bob - cowboy songs
Heather Lockie - high and lonesome songs
Missincinatti - ship songs (with Corey)
Emily Lacy - clawhammered songs
Laura Steenberge - low songs
Kikomaus - bowed and plucked songs

Hyperion Tavern
1941 Hyperion Blvd, Silverlake 90026

ChaplinOperas

1. Easy Street
2. The Immigrant
3. The Adventurer

I joined Stroma on viola to perform ChaplinOperas by Benedict Mason earlier this March. Check out our dress rehearsal run-through of the work here.

RIP, Dorothy Stone

How tremendously sad. Dorothy was a founding member of the California EAR Unit, with whom echo has performed.

Their body of work is vast. Here they are, with Dorothy, performing Stockhausen's Dr. K-Sextet.

'Dr. K' is Dr. Alfred Kalmus, who turned 80 in 1969, when Universal Edition asked several of the composers on its roster to compose short works for a concert in his honor to be performed by, coincidentally enough, Fires of London.

Live @ WINDOW today

(original poster here)

Today (3pm, 2/28) i will be doing the last performance at WINDOW. You can watch live webcam shots at the Window website, with the sound to follow at a later date.... In the meantime, feel free to indulge in your voyeuristic tendencies.


3pm, 2/28: New Zealand Time
6pm, 2/27: Los Angeles
9pm, 2/27: NYC
3am, 2/28: Berlin





From "Window":

"Experimental violinist and composer Johnny Chang will be performing a short selection of pieces from his London and Los Angeles compositions in conjunction with a field recording work via radios by Sonya Lacey

The event kicks off a three-day stint for Johnny at Window, as he'll be conducting less formal performances from 3 - 5pm on Wednesday and Thursday, activating the space with a range of sounds, from delicate amplified paper and dried vegetation to pure tones and field recordings."


Window, is curated by a trio of current (and former) art students from Elam School of Fine Art in Auckland. It is an alcove located in the foyer of the Auckland University Main Library. Their group blog, Window Scene focuses on happenings in electronic art, new media, and digital culture in New Zealand.

An Appeal from Downtown Music Gallery

DMG NEEDS YOUR HELP!

At the end of this past January, our five-year lease ran out here at
342 Bowery. Our landlord has graciously given us another 3-6 months
to find another place but, with 4 to 5 times the rent we're paying
being offered by bar/restaurants ['cause we know you can't get a
drink anywhere around here - NOT!] for the space our stay will come
to an end soon.

We have been searching for a new location for the past 6 months, but
if it's anything close to the 1500 sq. ft. we now occupy and need, no
matter how far east we go, the realtors are convincing the landlords
to hold off renting until they get a minimum of $ 60-75 per sq ft per
year - which for 1500 sq ft means a monthly base rent nut of
$7500-9400 - even on Ave D, where no one ventures to!

The only people who can afford that are banks that now make a tidy
new-found profit off of people taking $20 out of their account every
ten minutes [!] and national chains that take a tax loss to blanket
NYC with their outlets. No merchant who deals in anything but items
that have over 1000% markup [like drinks] can afford to stay in
business here, not even groceries and supermarkets, which have all
been closing rapidly. Just think: the overuse of debit cards has
caused the price of all everyday goods and food to skyrocket - most
of the increased amount just goes to the rent!

Anyone in NYC knows there are many spaces - in both prime and not
prime areas - that have remained empty for YEARS due to realtors who
have sold their bill of goods to landlords - when we've met those
landlords, many have lamented the money they've lost due to the
pressure from realtors, and were perfectly willing to talk lower
prices, when beforehand the agent said they wouldn't budge [and
wouldn't put us in contact directly, naturally]

We have many friends here in NYC, some 10,000 of you around the world
receive our newsletter each week. What we would like is a basement,
second floor or higher loft space [with elevator] with about 1,500
square feet for under $4000, hopefully in lower Manhattan - we don't
really care what it looks like, or what some snobs might have to say
about the neighborhood, just as long as it's secure. We'll do the
rest.

We would love to stay in the Lower Manhattan, but we might have to
move to mid-town or further uptown or even nearby in Brooklyn or
Queens

If you know of a space for us to rent - especially where we deal with
the landlord directly - please contact us immediately!

Our time here is limited. We may have to go with one overpriced
space - that otherwise meets our needs - within two weeks, so we'd
like to hear from you before then

Thank You

Bruce, Manny, Mikey, Chuck, Bret & all at DMG

Go see Convulsant

Trevor Dunn--bass
Mary Halvorson--guitar
Ches Smith--drums


...this Friday, February 22nd
@
Tea Lounge
Brooklyn, NY
(837 Union @ 7th ave, Park Slope)
9pm

A benefit for saxophonist, composer ANDREW D'ANGELO to help offset recent unexpected medical bills.
A whole night of music......

MICROSCORE PROJECT @ Wine Cellar

1 violinist - 32 composers


australia, canada, croatia, finland, england, italy, new zealand, u.s.a.


[new 30-second music & microscores]

february 20, 7pm
wine cellar
(st kevin's arcade, k'rd)

auckland, new zealand

exit (or entry by koha

pre-show listening : live show from the cellar, vancouver
(march 2006, music on main series)

part 1
part 2

Helicopter Quartet

Billy Bragg out doing his thing at the Big Day Out in Auckland two days ago. I was happy to hear this song from Mermaid Avenue...

Cheerio, Ed !

Tuesday 22 January 2008

State Funeral : Sir Edmund Hillary
11:00am

St Mary's Church, Parnell,
Auckland New Zealand

Television broadcast (TV1 10:00am)
Radio broadcast on Radio New Zealand (10:30am)
(streaming live on radioNZ.co.nz)

on NZ Herald

on Newsweek International: Remembering Sir Edmund Hillary

on TIME 100: Ed Hillary & Tenzing Norgay

on National Geographic: Sir Edmund Hillary, Everest Pioneer...

on BBC: Everest Hero dies

OBJECT COLLECTION has a concert coming up next week in New York. It is the first concert in the Experimental Music series at the Ontological Incubator: (OC also launces a new blog here. It features an interview with Michael Pisaro.)




Friday, January 25th 10pm

Ontological Theater (Parish Hall)
at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery
131 10th Street at 2nd Avenue
New York City
$5

(Note the late starting time!) Reception to follow after the concert......

nachtstimmung (2007/8)
by Michael Pisaro
for speaker, 2 vocalists, 3 performers, piano, violin, guitar, mandolin, saxophone/bass clarinet, trumpet, objects, sine tones, field recordings

performed by:
Alex Barreto, Eric Clark, Gisburg, Avi Glickstein,
Kara Feely, Travis Just, Jonathan Marmor, Aaron Meicht,
Michael Pisaro, Quentin Tolimieri, Jennifer Walshe, Harris Wulfson


about the composer:

Michael Pisaro was born in Buffalo in 1961. He is a composer and guitarist, a member of the Wandelweiser Composers Ensemble and founder and director of the Experimental Music Workshop. His work is frequently performed in the U.S. and in Europe, in music festivals and in many smaller venues. It has been selected twice by the ISCM jury for performance at World Music Days festivals (Copenhagen,1996; Manchester, 1998) and has also been part of festivals in Hong Kong (ICMC, 1998), Vienna (Wien Modern,1997), Aspen (1991) and Chicago (New Music Chicago, 1990, 1991). He has had extended composer residencies in Germany (Künstlerhof Schreyahn, Dortmund University), Switzerland (Forumclaque/Baden), Israel (Miskenot Sha'ananmim), Greece (EarTalk) and in the U.S. (Birch Creek Music Festival/ Wisconsin). Concert length portraits of his music have been given in Munich, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, Vienna, Merano (Italy), Brussels, New York, Curitiba (Brazil), Amsterdam, London, Tokyo, Berlin, Chicago, Düsseldorf, Zürich, Cologne, Aarau (Switzerland), and elsewhere. He is a Foundation for Contemporary Arts, 2005 and 2006 Grant Recipient. Most of his music of the last several years is published by Timescaper Music (Germany). Several CDs of his work have been released by Edition Wandelweiser Records, most recently "transparent city, volumes 1 — 4" and "harmony series (11 — 16)". His translation of poetry by Oswald Egger ("Room of Rumor") was published in 2004 by Green Integer. He is Co-Chair of Music Composition at the California Institute of the Arts near Los Angeles. He has performed many of his own works and those of close associates Antoine Beuger, Kunsu Shim, Jürg Frey and Manfred Werder, and works from the experimental tradition, especially John Cage, Christian Wolff, James Tenney and George Brecht.

Luigi Nono ... sofferte onde serene...

or '...serene waves suffered...' performed by the dedicatee Mauricio Pollini.

Perhaps you prefer watching your piano and magnetic tape music.

Markus Hinterhäuser captured in this 1991 live recording (Salzburg)
clip 1
clip 2

Michael Finnissy - LOST LANDS

These pieces are re-cycled waste. They do not, however, concentrate exclusively on the 'dead area' wastge of ostinati, oompah bass-lines or sequences of diminished sevenths. They variously collect together the detritus of musical cultures potentially obliterated by ethnic cleansing (in Kurdestan and Azerbaijan) or styles and genres (expressionism, an eroticised Modernism, Free jazz) dismissed as obsolete or commercially unsustainable.

To some extent it wouldn't matter what the source material was. The material is potter's clay from which something arises, is moulded, formed, sculpted. It is material from which I need distance, a 'factualness'. the'fact' itself encourages, inspires my work to start - provoking disruptivecritical discourse, preserving flexibility in its directions, but on its own account. the work itself discovers, reveals, vitalises, and allows things to be.

In this incarnation the various originals will seem to have disappeared in a haze of transcribing and palimpsesting. The scores are fully notated with all my own mistakes and misapprehensions, rough edges have been left in, problematic disjunctions left uncorrected. The originial sources, with one exception, come from long traditions of improvisation. 'Improvised' can also mean conventions of music making which have circumscribed, in practise, a more diversified evolution or any actual freedoms of individual expression.

New Year Greetings from down under New Zealand - I invite you to kick back and listen to some Trinity Roots with me. Imagine you are thawing away the winter chills down at the beach, with some stream hiking already behind you and a barbecue to look forward to ending a day in the Southern Summer. Any takers?

Aotearoa

Egos

Home, Land & Sea

[from album, Home, Land & Sea]

Tonight @ Canter's Kibitz Room

If you are in the Los Angeles-area tonight pop along to Canter's Deli on Fairfax to hear The February Fifths do their thing.














Starting 11:59pm PST

Canter's Kibitz Room
419 N. Fairfax Ave
90036

Fellow CalArts alum, Zach Behrens of LA-ist rides around the Newhall Pass on his moped, interviewing drivers stuck on the road during a massive truck pile-up.



Correction : the video above was not shot by Zach but vintageyellow71. My bad !

Revisiting Mermaid Avenue

California Stars
Airline to Heaven
Secrets of the Sea

Billy Bragg & Wilco "Mermaid Avenue & Volume 2"

Uncle Tupelo

Cocaine Blues

Orange Blossom Special


Photo by Toby Weiss