well-weathered music

The Gamelan Son Of Lion concert at the Living Theater went very well the other night. The entire evening had a very nice feel to it. I can’t post audio for the entire program, but my piece, Telling Time #3 is at the end of this post. Here is the program:

Program:

1. She (Really) Had to Go – John Morton
the gamelan blends with an electronically processed music box and a familiar tune

2. Music Box – Jody Kruskal
the entire gamelan plays as a giant music box in ths fantasy for double suling (flute)

3. Piece in Harmony – Patrick Grant
a stately, neo-baroque harmonic trance with keyboard

4. Telling Time #3 – Miguel Frasconi
for gamelan and glass. A composition in unison tempo is then repeated in “telling time,” where each performer tells a story through use of shifting tempi

interval

5. Toy Symphony: Introduction and Non-Development Section – Daniel Goode
a romp of the gamelan through Toyland, including the softest sound you can imagine

6. Wauking – Barbara Benary
five Scottish working songs learned in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Wauking, or milling, is a preindustrial way to preshrink wool by pounding

7. Hard Rain – Bob Dylan/Lisa Karrer
a Dylan classic arranged for gamelan

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Here is how Telling Time #3 sounded:

Here are some excerpts from two of my recent ensemble pieces, both being performed soon.

This Friday, Gamelan Son of Lion will be premiering Telling Time #3, for glass and gamelan. This piece is a reworking of the piece I wrote for them in 2006. Here is an excerpt from the first Telling Time, where the performers are asked to relate a personal narrative about the experience of time through the use of shifting tempi:

A week later, on Saturday, May 3rd, Ne(x)tworks will be performing a concert of our “in house” composers, where we will be doing another performance of my music/theater piece, Tasks & Objects, from 2007. This piece is a suite of activities that allow musicians to explore their instruments and the performance environment in musical and extra-musical ways. Here is an excerpt from the first performance:

I had a dream the other night that a friend of mine was married to Pablo Picasso. Even though they had just been married a few months, they already had 6 teenage kids. I went to visit them in the south of France, which was a two hour drive from Manhattan. They lived on a very rocky shoreline and I had to walk the last mile or so to get to their house. Once there, I sat and talked with my friend for a long time. A while later Picasso came in and sat by the window. He didn’t join our conversation for a good long while. When he heard that I was a musician, he perked up and started asking me questions about music. He asked me what my favorite piece was and I said that it was, without a doubt, this one recording of Miles Davis that was made right before Bitches Brew, and I always carry it with me. (In reality “In a Silent Way” was Davis’ recording right before BB. But the recording in this dream was made in some other dimension between these two sessions.) Picasso & I listened to the entire piece together. When we finished, he got up right away and said he must go paint. My friend had gone out to do errands. I left and climbed across the rocky coastline back to my car and woke up.

The feeling of listening to this wonderful (imaginary) music with Pablo Picasso was what stayed with me after waking.

I remembered this dream later that day as I was packing my glass instruments for a short run of solo shows; a concert at Barbés in Park Slope that evening and one the next day here in Inwood (northern Manhattan). In both concerts I told the story of this dream and played a piece called “Listening to Miles Davis with Pablo Picasso.” I, of course, wasn’t trying to recreate the Davis piece from my dream, but the feeling of the dream itself.

This is the 2nd night’s version.

Here is something more melodic, a companion piece from the 1st night.

And if you’ve had enough high harmonics, here is something more mellow.

Okay. Now I’ve heard everything. Literally.

Our planet Earth is our “everything.” Every thing comes from it and every thing returns to it. Now, thanks to MIT seismologist John Bullitt, we can hear our home planet.

This is the sound of seismic waves traveling through the Earth’s crust from distant earthquakes over a three week period. Bullitt sped it up 10,000 times to bring it into the human auditory and temporal range.

And there’s more where that came from. Earth as the ultimate resonator. Hear more here, and buy his CD here.

To all my readers (yeah, all 3 of you),
Have a great 2008!

Karlheinz and Ike entering into heaven.

Source material:
“Rocket 88″ (1951), Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm
& “Etude” (1952), Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Okay. Not the world, but Toronto certainly is. And no major bridges; or at least not like the George Washington or Golden Gate. That was my first impression flying in over TO in my first visit back in 5 years. Toronto was the city of my 20s. It was the place where I learned to be an active performing composer. I was still spending time in the NYC/CT area, but TO was the place in which I paid rent for a good 9 years. But this is only the third time I’ve visited since 1986. I occasionally think that my attitude toward being a composer in society is still quite Canadian. I still hold on to the idea, despite much evidence to the contrary in the USA, that being a composer of new and unique music is a valued profession. When I lived up here, the Canadian gov’t was actively trying to find it’s own unique Canadian Culture and they poured $$ into the arts. It’s not quite like that now, but government support is still way more than any artist in the US is used to. I do believe Canada would still rather support it’s artists than build tanks and robot jets.

I think it’s also a question of education. As far as I know the arts are still a valued part of public education up here. I think the reason why there are so many people listening to music on their cell phones (at least in NYC) is because people are no longer taught how to listen to music. Sure, Cage said all sound is music, but that worked because at some point he was taught how to listen to music and could then appreciate those same qualities in all sound. Without some sort of guidance at a young age (or at least hearing live music at the community level) music gets reduced to a snappy rhythm, a melody with a hook, and a brand name. All things adequately conveyed over the dime sized speaker of a cellphone.

But I digress. Actually, not really. It seems, on the surface anyway, that the general aesthetic standards in this small but large country called Canada, or at least this city of Toronto, are of a higher standard than what I’m used to in the USA, or at least NYC. Maybe I’m just being a Toronto-phile, or seeing things through 20 year old memories, but things just feel quite different up here than they do in The States.

There are two dear composer friends I have stayed in touch with over these many years. One is the pluderphonicist & altered sax player John Oswald, and the other, bassoonist turned suling (Indonesian flute) master Andrew Timar. John takes every opportunity to do something new and absolutely unique (while still managing to coax strange and wonderful sounds from his plastic reeded saxophone as he did 30 years ago). Andrew has dedicated himself to Indonesian music, specifically the suling, even to the point where he no longer composes on a regular basis. But, damn, that guy can play suling, and is a wellspring of knowledge about most things Indonesian.

Here is a bit of Andrew Timar playing suling (with the gamelan I helped start 25 years ago, The Evergreen Club), in a piece by Lou Harrison (google readers see below):

And here is a video excerpt of John Oswald’s one-person “opera” (with the wonderful Susanna Hood performing).

What a couple of weeks it’s been! First there was Okkyung’s concert (see below). Then from Nov. 12-16 I was up at the Kaatsbaan Dance Center, near Bard College, working with choreographer Erica Essner on a new piece. It was wonderful spending 5 hours a day improvising with sound files (thanks to Ableton Live) and creating a score at the same time as the dance. I much prefer that to having one follow the other, which is usually the way it works. Here are some things I came up with.

and

I then came back and went right into rehearsal for a performance of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood, which was performed at Here Theater Nov 19 & 20. I created the score, which was more than just incidental music, and performed it live, mostly on my glass instruments. DT’s language is quite musical and the actors did a great job. DT created it as a radio play and that is the way we performed it, with the actors sitting at a table with microphones. I was behind them with my glass menagerie.

Also on Tuesday, Nov 20, Neil Dufallo & Joan LaBarbara came by my apartment to do some recordings of our trio. All my glass was still at the theater so I ending up playing electronics and we sounded something like this.

Then Chris McIntyre came by and the four of us sketched out the rep for Ne(x)tworks spring series at the Chelsea Art Museum. Nothing is official yet, so I won’t give any details. But suffice it to say it’s going to be yet another wonderful season for NxW.

Then Thanksgiving rolled on by, which involved a few days of driving around eating too much. But a pleasant break.

Now, back to work.

One of the reasons I started this blog was to document the rather odd gigs I get every now and again. Tomorrow evening I’m playing at the 3,000 seat City Center as part of “Dance Rocks!” the gala fundraiser for Career Transition for Dancers. I have a prerecorded score for a dance by Ann Marie DeAngelo and then I’ll be performing live on my glass instruments as underscoring for a tribute to some successfully transitioned dancers. I thought I’d be playing much longer but it turns out to be quite short. Here are some of the rather polite, rather Satie-esque, notes I’ve put together:

And here is the Playbill blurb on the evening. I didn’t know I was a Broadway star.

Haven’t written for a while. Will soon. I just uploaded some writing to my “About” page about the instruments I play and added this audio clip of a piece I recorded for my New Albion “Song + Distance” CD (2001). It didn’t make it to the final CD; I’m not sure why. But it is lovely and quite representative of the music I was writing/improvising at the time (ah, California!). The working title was “Glass Harp & Toy Piano,” which is what it is. I’m playing glass harp with my left hand and toy piano with my right. (There is no overdubbing.) Any ideas for a title would be appreciated.

There are two Ne(x)tworks related gigs coming up the second week of October. A trio concert with Cornelius Dufallo, violin; Joan LaBarbara, voice; and me, glass & electronics, at The Stone, Sunday October 7, at 8pm. Then the full ensemble at The Kitchen, Wednesday October 10, at 8pm. Each show will be very different, so come to both. The trio will be exploring some very new territory. The ensemble will be playing works by composers in the graphic score exhibit at The Kitchen, including Earl Brown, Wadada Leo Smith, Cardew, LaBarbara, and Schumacher.

Here is an excerpt from the piece I wrote for Ne(x)tworks earlier this year, premiered at The Stone in June. It was a music theater piece called Tasks & Objects. (You haven’t lived ’til you’ve seen Joan LaBarbara totally wrapped in paper, singing her favorite aria.) Unfortunately I didn’t videotape it (doh!) but did get a good recording. Here is a 3 minute excerpt.