well-weathered music

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:

Because of some technical error, the program for yesterday’s Ne(x)twork’s show did not get printed correctly. Here it is:

EMF and CBD Music present

Ne(x)tworks: Dialogics 2
Chelsea Art Museum
Saturday April 5 2PM
$15

Music of Alvin Curran, Joan La Barbara, and Miguel Frasconi

Distancing #4 (1983/2008) Miguel Frasconi

Triadic Limbo (2007) (fragment) ** Alvin Curran

Words on Water (Shimmer) (2008) ** Joan La Barbara

Endangered Species (1994 – 1996) Alvin Curran

Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights (1992) Alvin Curran
Saltando in Padella (2005) ***

Al Forno Al Sugo Al Pesto Al Vino (2001) (fragment) Alvin Curran

** There will be no pause between Triadic Limbo and Words on Water (Shimmer)

*** Fragments of Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights and Saltando in Padella will be performed simultaneously.

Notes on the program

Alvin Curran
From The Alvin Curran Fake Book: Saltando In Padella Dal Quinto Piano Mentre Passing Notes In Triadic Limbo (2008)

Ne(x)tworks is pleased to feature the work of Alvin Curran, acclaimed composer, sound artist, and longtime member of the radical improvisation group MEV. The music on today’s program is selected from The Alvin Curran Fake Book, a compilation of compositions, sketches and improvisational modules created over the past 40 years. The arrangement, entitled Saltando In Padella Dal Quinto Piano Mentre Passing Notes In Triadic Limbo, has been created by the composer specifically for Ne(x)tworks. It consists of a string of recent pieces and fragments thereof that are to be presented in modular format. For this performance Ne(x)tworks draws upon material from Triadic Limbo (2007), Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights (1992), Saltando in Padella (2005), Al Forno Al Sugo Al Pesto Al Vino (2001), and Endangered Species (1994-1996). Ne(x)tworks presents this piece in celebration of Alvin Curran’s 70th year. The ensemble is also planning to release a CD of Curran’s music on the Mode label in the near future.
–Cornelius Dufallo

Joan La Barbara
Words on Water (Shimmer) (2008)

Shimmer is heat rising from the desert floor, shimmer is light sparkling on water, shimmer is wraiths passing along the back walls, shimmer is the aurora borealis, shimmer is in ghostly conversations. “Words on Water (Shimmer)” (2008) is the latest scene from an opera in-progress, for multiple layers of voices, instruments and sonic “atmospheres”. Here, I am exploring sounds inside the mind, impossible sounds, fragile sounds, transparent, ghostly sounds, shimmering voices and modular fragments. A series of inhales with no exhale, separated by sonic blackness, silences of varying lengths are shattered by a sudden burst of underwater wails, as the work moves from interior to exterior space and back again.
- Joan La Barbara

Miguel Frasconi
Distancing #4 (1981/83, arr. 2008)

In 1981, while I was living in Toronto, my composer friend Jon Siddall returned from Mills College in CA, where he had been studying with Lou Harrison and Robert Ashley. Before leaving Mills, Jon asked Lou to buy him an eight-piece gamelan degung ensemble on his next trip to Java. Lou followed through on this promise, and all the bronze keys & pot-gongs were on their way. Toronto would soon have its very first gamelan. This was particularly exciting news for me as, at the time, I often visited the then newly formed homemade new music gamelan Son of Lion on my frequent trips to NYC. I was also in a group, The Glass Orchestra, that was a self described “free-improv glass gamelan.” Upon hearing Jon’s news I immediately wrote “Study in Slendro: Distancing.” This was an open-instrumentation, homophonic, steady-pulse piece exploring additive and subtractive cross rhythms expressed through permutations of a basic pentatonic scale. The first performance was solo violin. The second, a large, loud rock band. In 1983 I arranged it for the ensemble that inspired it, and “Distancing #3″ was performed in the very first concert of Toronto’s Evergreen Club Gamelan. Twenty-five years later, I’ve dusted off the score and have given it new life in an arrangement specifically for this concert.
-Miguel Frasconi

It was a wonderful concert, by the way.

Just back from Toronto, playing a concert there for the first time in 23 years! I will soon post pictures and audio files.

Now getting ready for the Ne(x)tworks concert at the Chelsea Art Museum on Saturday.

Next week: Ireland!

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.

I’m finally getting my ‘06 taxes done. I met with my accountant last week and, as he looked over my numbers, he said, “You didn’t buy much equipment last year.” I said, “Nope. I’m finally starting to use the stuff I already have.” It’s true. Now that I’m finally spending time in my apartment (being a bachelor will do that), I actually have the time and the room to set up all the audio equipment and musical instruments I’ve acquired over the years. Joan LaBarbara was up here a few weeks ago for a Ne(x)tworks rehearsal. The first thing she said when she walked in was “There’s a lot of glass in here.” And that’s just the beginning. I’m even pulling out all my old hardware midi modules that are basically antiques now, but still sound and still have all the various tunings I programmed into them over the years. Once everything is working and talking to one another I’ll decide what gets sent out to the eBay pasture.

In a way, that’s also what’s going on with my composer brain. Pulling out old ideas, getting them talking with new ideas, and throwing out what doesn’t fit anymore. That’s the thing about having had active careers in three very different locations (the third actually being in the present tense). There is no one other than myself who can see the thread that joins them. That’s one of the reasons for this website. I realized no one here in NY is familiar with my Toronto work (except for the early Glass Orchestra recordings). There are a few SF Bay Area ex-pats here who know of my work out there. But the majority of folks I work with here in NY don’t know my history. (My buddy Neil Dufallo was surprised to hear that I’ve written 2 operas.) But of course this is no one’s fault but my own, and perhaps not even a fault at all. It’s the risk one takes when one up and moves every 10-15 years. That seems to have been my M.O.; get a career going strong in one place then, poof!, move on out to someplace new. Perhaps it’s one way of returning to the “beginner’s mind” that zen buddhists talk about. (I’m sure there are more productive ways of achieving that state.) It’s been 5 years since I moved here (NYC) and it feels like I’m still just starting. Which is actually an exciting state to be in, as long as I don’t start thinking about Sisyphus.

Here, in a nutshell, are the places I’ve been.
CT & NYC (youth - high school): Skipping classes in high school to go hear new music concerts, up & down town. Studied electronic music (a huge moog). Put together my first glass instrument.
Toronto and NYC (York University and my 20s; ‘75-’86): Glass Orchestra. Helped start the downtown Toronto new music scene. Worked with Cage & Tenney.
San Francisco Bay Area (’88- ‘01): much music for dance; part of that whole “post-industrial urban primitive” movement. Performance Art stuff. Paul Dresher Ensemble. Bay Guardian calls me a “sampler guru.” (Oh yes, and wrote two operas.)
NYC: Here & now. (It’s not history yet, so can’t quite “nutshell” it.)

Actually, Camus thought Sisyphus was a happy guy. Perhaps he was right.

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.

Last night I went to the opening of the graphic score exhibition at The Kitchen. There’s nothing like starting the season with a gathering of one’s clan. I was there only for the last half hour but it definitely felt like a NY new music “everyone who’s anyone” kind of thing. I won’t mention everyone I talked to (you know who you are), but I do wish I had more than just a brief greeting with Alison Knowles. I find her work and history fascinating. She has recently been making these wonderful handmade-paper musical instruments that sound great and look beautiful. I first met her years ago during one of Phil Corner’s all too infrequent visits to NY and I tagged along for dinner at her place. I must add Alison to my “must call” list. I’d love to find a way to work with her sometime. Paper & glass would be a great combination.

At any rate, The Kitchen exhibit is wonderful! Check it out if you can. It’s difficult to pick out any specific work to write about; everything there is very cool. Although the two video works (by Michael J. Schumacher and Marina Rosenfeld, respectively) stand out, if only for their built in temporal aspects. Scores on paper can certainly represent time in some very exact ways, but now with video, time can not only be shared by sound & silence but also by graphics. And speaking of sound & silence, I was surprised there wasn’t even a page of any Cage scores. It would have been nice to have seen an actual manuscript page of his. But there were some other older pieces I was unaware of; the Lucier and Ashley for example. And there were a few pages from Cardew’s Treatise. Overall, a very well curated show.

I’m very much looking forward to playing many of these pieces (including Michael’s video work) in the upcoming Ne(x)tworks concert. We’ll be playing select scores from this exhibit on October 10th at The Kitchen. Part of the concert series associated with this exhibition.

Speaking of graphic scores. I just rediscovered the 2 copies of the old Source Magazine I picked up on eBay last year. Amazing. One has the entire score to Cardew’s The Great Learning and the other an actual page from Dick Higgin’s The Thousand Symphonies. More on these later.