well-weathered music

2008 has started off with a bang, or a klang, or a …, well definitely not a thud or a boink. But you get the idea. Last week was my first rehearsal as a “regular” member of Gamelan Son of Lion since 1987. I did write a piece for them in 2006, but I attended only a few rehearsals. This year I have decided to join the group on a regular basis. Son of Lion is a “home-made” gamelan ensemble built by Barbara Benary back in the late ’70s. The metalophone, keyed, instruments are mostly made of iron, as opposed to the bronze instruments of Indonesia or the aluminum of most California new gamelans. When I was in the group in the ’80s (rehearsing in Phil Corner’s loft on Leonard St.) they also had a large array of car hubcaps used as gongs. But those seem to have been replaced by actual bronze gongs from Indonesia.

The 1980s was sort of my “gamelan decade.” Gamelan was the through line during my moves from Toronto to NYC to San Francisco. There was even a 5 month trip to Bali & Java in 1986 to study the different gamelans there. But over an eight year period I wrote 4 pieces for 3 different American gamelans and played in 5, coast to coast. I was a founding member Toronto’s Evergreen Club Gamelan in 1982, then worked with Son of Lion in NYC in ‘86/’87, then to California to play with Bay Area New Gamelan (BANG), The Berkeley Gamelan and one of Lou Harrison’s groups. But new gamelan in CA had sort of run it’s course by the time I got there, and I stopped playing in these ensembles by 1989. The 2 east coast groups I had been in, SoL and Evergreen, continue to this day, and I’m very glad to be back in Son of Lion.

Here is what SoL looks like these days. (Photos taken 8Jan08)

(left to right, Jody Kruskol, David Demnitz, Barbara Benary, Lisa Karrer, Laura Liben)

(left to right: David Simons, Denman Maroney, Patrick Grant, Jody Kruskol, David Demnitz. Not shown: me, John Morton and Dan Goode.)

Then a few days later, David Behrman came up to my apartment to rehearse for the gig we have this week. I’ve been a fan of his work since I was a teenager so it was wonderful to finally play his music. The sound of glass fits in beautifully with his sound world. Here is David in my apartment (10Jan08).

Then Keiko Uenishi (aka o.blaat) came by the next day to help on the mix of the upcoming release of our OBJECTS cd. Back in 2004 Keiko & I & Ricardo Arias (who plays balloons) did a trio concert at the Sculpture Center in Long Island City (across the east river from Manhattan). We managed to get a very good multi-track recording of it and a small label in the midwest want to put it out. It’s one of the favorite bands I’ve been in. Me playing my glass objects, Ricardo playing his balloon objects, and Keiko playing her virtual max-patch objects. Here is a photo of the 2004 concert.

I’ve been getting some interesting feedback from my Stockhausen/Ike Turner piece (the previous post). I sent it out in individual emails to (as Chris McIntyre would say) “my peeps.” Three of my favorite composers answered back right away. Jay Cloidt said he was going to forward it to a zillion people. John King thanked me for the “mash-up,” which got me wondering if there is a difference between “mash-up” and “plunderphonics.” David Behrman said it brought back memories of his first driving experience, in his mother’s 1952 Olds 88 with a Rocket engine.

Then there’s my brother, who asked if the title means I believe in heaven. I was actually referring to the Ives’ piece “General Booth Enters Into Heaven,” which, admittedly, is a pretty obscure reference. But, no, I don’t believe in heaven, except as a metaphor for whatever happens after we leave our corporeal existence. My initial idea was to create a piece representing the post-corporeal spirits of KS & IT as they gradually lost their individual identity and merged together to become part of what my Gurdjieff inspired bodywork teacher used to call “the field.” I don’t mean to get metaphysical on y’all, but that sort of process (body returns to the earth, spirit returns to the ether) does make the most sense to me. It does not, however, lend itself to representation in a 3 minute New Year’s greeting. So I kept the two musician’s identity intact, and found some very interesting nexuses. I made no changes to the pitch or tempo of either piece, yet there are some places where they really do compliment each other. I can only imagine that the young Karlheinz could very well have been influenced by the Ike Turner piece. “Rocket 88,” from 1951, is thought to be the “first” rock and roll song, so it might well have sparked KS’s 1952 ears as he made his first piece in the new “tape music” medium. Is that common and reoccurring Eb, and the equally common and reoccurring 160 bpm triplet really a coincidence? Hmmmm….

My Toronto friend Andrew Timar observed that my piece obviously placed “Etude” within the structure of “Rocket 88″ and wondered, referencing Jim Tenney, what it would sound like the other way; with the pop song placed within the structure of the Stockhausen. A very interesting idea. It is of course always easier to do this sort of creative editing within a clear rhythmic grid than a rhythmic splatter, but it would certainly be an interesting project. Any takers?

Oh, and if anyone might think this kind of work is new for me (there’s no glass!!), may I direct you here; some pre-digital work from 1982.

Ain’t the internets grand? I just came across some things from my distant past. Okay, not too distant, but significant. Actually, 2008 marks yet another 20th anniversary for me; 1988 was the first year I became active in the SF Bay Area’s new music scene (I moved there mid-’87). So it’s only fitting that I find youtube videos of my first major performance activity out there. Paul Dresher & Rinde Eckert’s opera Power Failure, from 1988-89. This was my first work as keyboardist in the Paul Dresher Ensemble. (I worked with Paul on another 4 or 5 of his projects through the late ’90s.)

Power Failure was a wonderful piece with an unfortunate title. From this I have learned to never put the word “failure,” or anything negative, in a title; it does not lend itself to success. But I had a great time working on this piece. This is where I first met Rinde, an amazing performer, and tenor John Duykers, who has gone on to be one of my most frequent and most treasured collaborators. This is also where I first met and played with wind player/composer Ned Rothenberg (Ned and I are finally talking of collaborating together; glass & shakuhachi).

So here are excerpts from Power Failure. I think they are too short, and you can’t see us on-stage musicians (Paul Dresher, electric guitar & keyboard; Gene Refkin, drums; Ned Rothenberg, winds; and me, keyboards). Rinde, John, and Stephanie Friedman are the wonderful singers.

Power Failure, part 1

Power Failure, part 2

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).

I am now trying to write here at least once a week; aiming for every sunday, but monday will have to do. I’m playing in a wonderful concert at The Kitchen this coming friday & saturday. The sublime cellist/composer Okkyung Lee is presenting two evenings of her work with filmaker Andrew Lampert and a quartet with Okkyung, me, Cornelius Dufallo, and Trevor Dunn. I’m very much looking forward to that. I’m sure it will be a wonderful world.

I realized I don’t listen to much music (except when I’m playing) but I did yesterday. Here’s what I’ve been listening to:
The Shaggs. If you’ve never heard them, check ‘em out. They were a teenage sister pop trio in the ’70s. They don’t play in time or in tune and it’s wonderful. They were Zappa’s favorite band.

Terry Riley’s The Descending Moonshine Dervishes. One of Terry’s solo electric organ and tape delay concerts from 1975. I remember seeing him perform one of these pieces at the old Kitchen back around that time (part of a four day series with Lamonte Young, Jon Hassell, and David Rosenboom). Terry’s music is amazing, inspiring stuff. No one pulls off “minimalism,” improvisation, and sonic exploration like he does.

(By the way, that series at the Kitchen was amazing. I believe it was 1976, right about the time I started working with Jon Hassell. I must have the program or poster for it somewhere. I hear Jon just got a deal with ECM records, so maybe we’ll be hearing more from him. Check out his new site, it’s very interesting. For a while there, I thought LA had swallowed him up.)

And right now I’m listening to some old AMM recordings from the ’60s. An improvisation trio with Cornelius Cardew, Keith Rowe, & Eddie Prevost. I find this stuff to be very ear cleansing.

One more thing. I came across my (signed) copy of Lou Harrison’s Music Primer (Editions Peters) the other day. This and Cage’s Silence were my 2 music bibles when I was a young composer. Here is an excerpt that I seem to have taken to heart.

“Making an instrument is one of music’s greatest joys. Indeed, to make an instrument is in some strong sense to summon the future. It is, as Robert Duncan has said of composing, “A volition. To seize from the air its forms.” Almost no pleasure is to be compared with the first tones, tests & perfections of an instrument one has just made. Nor are all instruments invented & over with, so to speak. The world is rich with models - but innumerable forms, tones & powers await their summons from the mind & hand. Make an instrument - you will learn more in this way than you can imagine.”

Speaking of which, I am in the middle of re-building (or re-arranging) my glass harp. Should get back to it.

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.

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.

I realized that since this blog is filled with memories from, and references to, my 30+ years in the “new music biz” (”biz?” yeah, right), that “well-weathered” could perhaps be seen as a description as the present state of my music making. Not so. I have been using the term “Well-Weathered Music” as my “business” name since the mid-80s. When I first moved to San Francisco in 1987 (uh-oh, more memories) I stopped by the SF Art Institute to see the amazing Diego Rivera mural they have there. During that visit, I noticed there was a somewhat beat up old upright piano sitting _outside_ in the courtyard overlooking SF. I started playing and found its sound to be quite wonderful and quirky.

I then started returning there once a week to improvised a 45 minute site- and instrument-specific piece. I titled this series of guerrilla performances The Well-Weathered Piano. Unfortunately I was not so into documenting my activities at that point so I have no record of it except for a few fliers I passed around to friends. I did, however, enjoy the thought of music being well-weathered. If something could be well-tempered, it could certainly be well-weathered. From that point on I started placing my music under the Well-Weathered Music moniker.

It also, for me, has a reference to the constantly evolving material of glass, whose musical use I’ve devoted myself to. Although not literally “weathered” by the outside elements, many of my instruments are weathered by performance, constantly evolving into new instruments (I believe you non glass-ites call them “broken glass”). Of course, violins & wine also improve with age. But their evolution is not caused by anything quite as drastic as being left outside in the rain (or pummeled with mallets and marbles). Come to think of it, it might just be time to add my compositional processes and improvisational strategies to that list of “things that are well-weathered.” With an emphasis on well, of course.

I have added some more pages to this site. A discography page, where I will soon be adding some audio clips. A Glass Orchestra page; presently filled with pictures from my 9 years with the group. I will slowly be adding more material there. And a page called “Composer Stories.” I have been fortunate enough to meet and work with many amazing composers, so I thought I’d share some stories of my interactions with them. First up, my brief conversation with Cornelius Cardew back in 1975. I’ll be adding more stories as I remember them. I’ll also be adding more pages in the future, some with many audio clip, so keep checking back. But now I need to go transcribe a Gerry Mulligan solo (more on that later).

I went to The Stone last night to see legendary guitarist Eugene Chadbourne playing with equally legendary drummer Jimmy Carl Black. It was a wonderfully enjoyable concert. For those not “in the know,” JCB was the original drummer in Zappa’s Mothers of Invention. If you were one of the many who could not stop listening to We’re Only In It For The Money when they first discovered it, you know him from his line: “I’m Jimmy Carl Black and I’m the Indian of the group.”

And then there’s Chadbourne, the quintessential North American free improvising guitarist. He took Derek Bailey’s guitar explorations to a whole new level. I first saw (and played with) him over 30 years ago in Toronto (he was living in Canada as a US draft-dodger). He was the first person I ever saw play a prepared guitar, and he even took that a step further by adding kalimba tines on to the body of a few of his many guitars. So then President Carter granted immunity to all the draft-dodgers and Chadbourne came back to the US. To make a long story short, he has been integrating Country Music into his improvisations over the last many years (coined the term “Shockabilly”), and, judging from last night, has been having a grand ol’ time doing so.

Last night’s concert was all songs; some blues, some Texas ballads, and even some Zappa covers (an amazing version of Mom and Dad from …In It For The Money). EC & JCB have a great rapport; singing together, talking to each other during the songs. When EC would start getting “out” JCB would be right there with him, and again, with him when they seamlessly returned to the tune. I’m always happy when I hear music that simultaneously refers to and defies styles, but still knows exactly where it is at any given point.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video must be worth at least a million:

Eugene Chadbourne (but no Jimmy Carl Black):