40 years ago this week: New Music America and I go to Hartford
A bit of a return to posts slightly updated and cleaned up from last year: the events of July 1 to 7, 1984, in which I was introduced to New Music America...
Again, as I arrange things for my second year of nearly daily substacks (and maybe prepare for a short vacation as my $500 desktop has been sporadically crashing for a couple of weeks), this is another list but it’s much cleaner than when I first presented all of these last year on the anniversary dates. Happy 40th birthday, NMA Hartford!
New Music America Hartford 1984
Day 1:
Charlie Morrow - NMAmtrak - Bill Obrecht - Pearlman-Hayes-Lebentritt - Bill Seaman - Joseph Celli - Brian Johnson - Sun Ra and his Arkestra - July 1 birthday tributes to Carles Santos, Alicia Terzian
Day 2:
New Music Alliance - Afro-Algonquin - Arto Lindsay and the Ambitious Lovers - David Weinstein - Jan Williams plays Charles Boone, Edward Diemente and Joel Chadabe - Scribing Sound exhibit launch - Open Mic at Mad Murphy’s - Birthday tributes to James Fulkerson and Stephane Roy
Day 3:
Peace Train - Shockabilly with Dr. Eugene Chadbourne- Phill Niblock - Ron Kuivila - James Fulkerson - Neely Bruce - Stephen Montague - Morton Subotnick - David Moss - Jim Pomeroy - Earle Brown - Gary Karr - Tom Johnson - RelĂ¢che - Malcolm Goldstein - Muhal Richard Abrams - Birthday: Thomas Mapfumo
Day 4:
Sam Rivers - Skip Laplante - Yura Adams - David Mahler - Frankie Mann - Marina LaPalma - Guy Klucevsek - F. Gerard Errante - Robert Black - Robert Dick - Hartford Symphony with James Sellars and Yvar Mikhashoff + Charles Ives
Day 5:
Liquid Liquid - Olu Dara - Ellen Fullman - Ruth Miller and Steven Parrish - Jon English - Yvar Mikhashoff - France-Marie Uitti - David Mott - Gary Karr -Stewart Smith - Helen Thorington - John Zorn - James Tenney
Day 6:
David Garland - Spiral - Russell Frehling - Ursula Oppens plays Alvin Curran, Elliott Carter, Anthony Davis, Charles Wuorinen and Frederic Rzewski - Alvin Lucier - Jerry Hunt - Frances-Marie Uitti plays John Cage - SEM Ensemble - Joseph Jarman + Geri Allen
Day 7:
David Hykes - William Albright - Amina Claudine Myers - Glenn Branca - Morton Feldman - Earl Howard - Leo Smith - Khrisna Bhatt - Terry Riley - Beth Griffin - In C 20th anniversary all stars
♪
The y2bs of works presented at 1984 NMA Hartford
DJ Notdeadyet’s You Tube Playlist of tracks found on y2b re: New Music America Hartford 1984 - roughly in order of their appearance at the festival
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmyw9E0_Jh8a_XcDRefD9GLAE6p1I7Wz1
Spare versions of works presented at the festival. There are a heck of a lot of the Winnesboro Cotton Mill Blues…
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmyw9E0_Jh8YeyYbysdn7TlIW1twTU2qx
Extra videos of some participants at the festival, some of which were recorded around 1984.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmyw9E0_Jh8b5gfp9rYqzXlRkrWTwoW8e
That was a week in my life also. I had designed the graphics, the identity, the posters, the billboards, the catalog... and we worked up until the last minute. Hartford is known as the Insurance Capital of the World. In that week, at least, it became the Risk Capital of the World. The designers and production people at The Aetna Insurance Company supported and printed my catalogue design with the 30 degree angled pages. United Technologies paid for my John Cage poster! Legendary music and musicians. Art everywhere. The people I met - like Jin Hi Kim for the first time, in the back of a taxi with Joe Celli when it was pouring rain. Sun Ra and the Arkestra playing some of the most inspiring improvised music I've heard. I hadn't been in America for very long. But after that festival, I started designing a lot of music CD packages. Rzewski was one of the first. It was a life-changing experience for me, and I'm still in that place. Thanks for all you do!!!
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