Aug 24'48: Jean Michel Jarre (Not NMA!) + NMA'82 Mikhashoff plays Wolff's "Preludes", Douglas Ewart's "Clarinet Quintet"
+ NMA Chicago radio program 5 (part 1) live with hosts Charles Amirkhanian and Joan La Barbara - short interview with Wolff on his "Preludes" based on American folk songs and sounding like Chopin
Stream to all three hours of the fifth live radio program on July 10, 1982 here, details below:
https://archive.org/details/NMA_1982_07_10_2
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Jean Michel Jarre August 24, 1948 Lyon, France
Jean Michel Jarre’s Rendez Vous Houston was not a part of the New Music America festival, but for my personal experience, it can’t be detached from the incredible first day at NMA86 that would stay with me forever. The concert is still up there in the Guinness Book of Records it seems.
On the early morning of April 5, 1986, my first experience of Texas at the downtown hotel restaurant, consisted of pulling out the local Houston Chronicle while sipping on my coffee and reading, then thinking, “Yup. I guess I’m in Texas now.” Of course, this is a Canadian bureaucrat from Ottawa unused to seeing such headlines while drinking their morning coffee:
But guns and coffee were only a tiny portion of what the Texas Experience (to me) turned out to be!
And so that day I went from the Holiday Inn restaurant to a literal public New Music Parade led by Tom Cora and featuring highly modified art cars. Then to be in the presence of Cage himself through the wonderful Ryonaji performed in a Japanese Garden, even with celebrated Canadian performer Robert Aitken. To be topped afterwards by my visit to the Rothko Chapel and not only being in the presence of a room surrounding me with Rothkos, but to have the privilege of witnessing Joan La Barbara perform her work Rothko right there.
There was one more awesome event at New Music America that day, but that got pushed back to after midnight: the world premiere of the Shirley Clarke film Ornette: Made in America with Ornette Coleman there, even including the presenting to him of the keys to the city of Houston in honor of this event and his contributions to Texas music.
It was just one of those things, but something else happened that night courtesy of the Houston Festival, the permanent organization that via Jerry McCathern and Michael Galbreth, incorporated NMA 86 in almost a model of how two completely different festivals can co-exist wonderfully in the same space at the same time. Kinda like Ives, I guess.
The Jarre + NASA performance was part of the Houston Festival, which ran simultaneously during New Music America. It is one of those rare concert/events that gets its own wikipedia page. But then not many concerts get 1.2 to 1.5 million people showing up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendez-vous_Houston
If you squint a bit, you can imagine me in the crowd about four fifths to the back of the Sam Houston Park where we gathered, blocking the traffic for forty miles going into the city.
Four months earlier in January, I had been working full time as a communications clerk at the Head Office of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and so we had a live TV on all the time in the main lobby, where I found myself - and stopped - during the delivery of a package, becoming part of a larger crowd witnessing the explosion of the Challenger, only three months earlier.
I thought probably like everyone during the Jarre event (check out the NASA specs below), this is what they mean by Texas Big. But the Big Heart of Texas came out fully as I’m sure there were a million tears in the audience when the photographs of the astronauts who had lost their lives were projected on the sides of seven skyscrapers in the middle of the Jarre performance.
The full story of how Jerry McCathern and the Houston Festival gave birth to a protective tent for New Music America is in Michael Galbreth’s recounting of the event at his own website, written only a couple of years before Michael’s passing in 2018…
https://www.michaelgalbreth.com/new-music-america
Wikipedia:
About 2,000 projectors shone images onto buildings and giant screens up to 1,200 feet (370 m) high, transforming the city's skyscrapers into spectacular backdrops for an elaborate display of fireworks and lasers. Rendez-vous Houston entered the Guinness Book of Records for its audience of over 1.5 million, beating his earlier record, set in 1979. The display was so impressive that a nearby freeway was blocked by passing vehicles, forcing the authorities to close it for the duration of the concert.
Definitely not “new music”. In fact Rendez Vous Houston was nominated in the first ever Grammy award category for “New Age”! Lost to Andreas Vollenweider’s harp music. But then so did Paul Winter and a couple of Windham Hill nominees whose sales were the best Grammy argument for the category (which now includes, eeps, “ambient” and “chant”!).
Anyway… something about Jarre does make him NMA worthy, if not for being son of a Jarre, major film soundtrack composer, or having studied with Pierre Schaeffer and hung around with Karlheinz Stockhausen. What I argue makes him “one of us” are the gizmos that would even in a warehouse qualify as a state of the art world class list of studio gear… today they’d be in a museum of electronic music worshipers, or maybe I should call such a thing a “church”! (underlined = handy Wikipedia links in case you forgot what these things were).
Seiko DS-250, Elka Synthex, Moog synthesizer, Roland JX 8P, Fairlight CMI, E-mu Emulator II, Eminent 310U, EMS Synthi AKS, Laser Harp, RMI Harmonic Synthesizer, Oberheim OB-X, Yamaha DX100, Roland TR-808, Linn 9000, Sequential Circuits Prophet-5, Casio CZ 5000, ARP 2600
Jarre has made the Spotify version easy for you to find on his home page:
https://www.jeanmicheljarre.com/music/cities-in-concert
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New Music America Chicago 1982, program five
part 1 - July 10, 1982
Charles Amirkhanian and Joan La Barbara, live radio hosts
https://archive.org/details/NMA_1982_07_10_2
Full program archive.org / Other Minds Radio description:
Radio station WFMT in Chicago presents the fifth of six broadcasts from Navy Pier, as part of the fourth New Music America Festival. Charles Amirkhanian hosts, assisted by composer and vocalist, Joan La Barbara. This concert features the Clarinet Quartet by Douglas Ewart, the world premiere of Christian Wolff’s Preludes for Piano and Phi Winsor’s Same Tired Old Changes, and a work for solo shakuhachi (Japanese flute) and tape by Dary John Mizelle. Also included is a performance by Peter Gordon and the Love of Life Orchestra. Intermission features include a profile of composer and pianist Leo Ornstein, a look at the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, an interview with John Cage, and concludes with a profile on Conlon Nancarrow.
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♪ 0:00 theme
Charles Amirkhanian: Live from Chicago, it’s Saturday Night!
Joan La Barbara: And these are the sounds of New Music America ’82 on July 10th, 1982. Tonight’s program opens with Douglas Ewart’s Clarinet Quartet, followed by the world premiere of Christian Wolff’s Preludes for piano.
Charles Amirkhanian: Phil Winsor and a group of musicians will perform STOC or Same Tired Old Changes, composed in 1982 for the New Music America festival and after intermission, we’ll hear Dary John Mizelle’s Shakuhachi Polyphonies.
Joan La Barbara: We’ll wind up the concert with Peter Gordon’s art rock band, the Love of Life Orchestra, and we’ll also bring you some pre-taped features on the AACM, our birthday boy John Cage and Conlon Nancarrow.
Charles Amirkhanian: So welcome to the fifth of six programs from Mayor Byrne’s New Music America ’82 festival, sponsored by the Mayor’s Office of Special Events and the Chicago Tribune. This year’s festival was organized by Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art. I’m Charles Amirkhanian…
Joan La Barbara: And I’m Joan La Barbara, co-hosting these broadcasts, which are coming to you live from Navy Pier auditorium on Lake Michigan in Chicago and are made possible in part by the Illinois Office of Tourism, the Nathan Manilow Foundation, the Museum of Contemporary Art and WFMT Chicago, the originating station for these programs.
1:18
Charles Amirkhanian: We have a packed ah auditorium once again tonight here at Navy Pier, about 1600 people and we’re going to be going down to the stage in just a moment for music by Douglas Ewart, who was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and who live in Chicago.
He’s a composer, performer, instrument maker and craftsman. He’s been President of the Chicago chapter of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, about which we’ll hear more at intermission in our report from Neil Tesser. He teaches at the AACM School of Music and also at the Chicago Museum of Natural History.
Joan La Barbara: His interest in the clarinet has sustained over a long period of time because of its vast sound spectrum, its multiphonic possibilities, and its complex acoustical phenomena. He’s also interested in, ah, recordings of whale sounds, walrus sounds and songs sung by the American Indians in which they imitate animal sounds. All of this goes into his music.
Charles Amirkhanian: Yeah, I think you can hear that very clearly in the Clarinet Quartet which will open our program. Our performers will be Edward Wilkerson, J. D. Perron, Mwata Bowden and Douglas Ewart. And the lights are dimming now, as we go to the stage for a piece of music which we are told will begin off stage with the performers playing from the wings.
♪ 2:35 Douglas Ewart quartet Clarinet Quartet part 1
14:14 applause (into background)
(pause for set-up)
♪15:36 Douglas Ewart quartet Clarinet Quartet part 2
21:19 applause
♪21:57 Douglas Ewart quartet Clarinet Quartet part 3
25:43 applause and quartet intros by Douglas Ewart (into background)
Links to his recent recordings of what Ewart now calls his Inventions Clarinet Choir here:
https://douglasewart.com/music
Screenshot of the links to photos at his website:
26:01
Charles Amirkhanian: You heard the Clarinet Quartet of Douglas Ewart, performed, ah, by members of his ensemble, just announced, in their African robes with very beautiful lighting, very subtle ah lavender and magenta lighting here on the stage at Navy Pier auditorium. And the warm receptions (applause still continuing) for Edward Wilkerson, J. D. Parran, Mwata Bowden and Douglas Ewart playing clarinets from soprano to the contrabass range with no saxophones.
Joan La Barbara: Coming up next on our program is Christian Wolff’s Piano Preludes, played by Yvar Mikhashoff. Christian Wolff was born in 1934 in Nice, France and has been living in the United States since 1941. He began composing in 1949 and in the following two years, met John Cage, David Tudor, Morton Feldman and Earle Brown.
In recent years, his music has taken a political turn as we learned in an interview taped earlier today.
26:53
Charles Amirkhanian: In the 1950s, you developed a style of writing which was very very original, and which was quite different from what you’re doing now. It was sparser, it was perhaps more introverted and I wonder if you could tell us how you got to the point that you are now and what the difference is?
Christian Wolff: Well, as you say, the earlier music was, um, it was very – had a lot to with Webern, that’s the composer who affected the most and very sp-, spare. And um, lots of space, silence and the way the music was set up, which had to do with the very delicate interactions between the players, ah, produced a very kind of, um, concentrating. Ah, but also very introspective feeling.
And ah, and after a while, you know, it – I got, um, I felt I had done that, and I wanted to move out and also to make a music that affected more people, that more people could listen to more easily.
Charles Amirkhanian: Now, this music that you’re presenting tonight is based on folk songs as I understand it. Could you tell us why?
Christian Wolff: My notion there is to bring to people’s awareness, and bring back to some people’s awareness, I – a whole tradition of um, songwriting which exists in this country and elsewhere. Ah, political songs mostly, political folk songs which, um, have sort of gone underground.
If you hear Pete Seeger, you will hear some of them, ah, but mostly, you certainly don’t hear them on the ordinary, um, on the regular media. I like them a lot. I felt a kinship with some and I wanted to, ah, incorporate them in my work. And also to use the work then as a way of reminding people of their existence.
28:29
Charles Amirkhanian: You spend your day to day life as a classic professor at Dartmouth College. It’s ah unexpected perhaps that you might be, um, one of the more outspoken ah Marxist ah proponents of a, a kind of art which reaches a lot of people. Could you tell how you got to this place politically?
Christian Wolff: Right. Well, by slow degrees. Um, I sort of went along with the, um, ah, civil rights movement in the sixties and then, (raises voice suddenly) then very strongly um in the late sixties, early seventies. Um, the anti-war, um movement and my own sort of work experience, um, trying to hold on to a job, even in the academic world is ah, had its bad moments.
And I suddenly became more and more aware of ah, political forces, in larger interests in [...] got caught in various ways.
Charles Amirkhanian: Do you think that ah, New Music America represents a kind of, um, good or possibly ah, not so good force in the, in the situation of American composers as…
Christian Wolff: Um-hum.
Charles Amirkhanian: …workers?
Christian Wolff: I think – I think by and large, a good force. It’s ah, it clearly is a kind of alternate to many music establishments which, ah, can use some kind of ah shaking up. And, um this particular festival, I found very nice from the point of view of the, the audience, the kind of people that have come.
It has a very kind of, almost populist feeling about it, it’s not a sort of elite special collection of people who have come because they’re trying to keep with things, but it seems mostly to be people who, ah, are trying to hear some new music. And it’s right on.
30:03 (live)
Joan La Barbara: We’re about to hear Yvar Mikhashoff in the world premiere of Christian Wolff’s Preludes for Piano, a collection of eleven pieces based on American folk songs.
Charles Amirkhanian: And in the tenth, ah, prelude, he’ll be assisted by Anthony DeMare who was ah, heard early on our Percy Grainger program, as one of ah, five pianists along with Yvar and Dennis Russell-Davies, and Neely Bruce and others. Yvar Mikhashoff just returned from the Holland festival where he performed ah, and organized numerous concerts of American music from the Revolutionary Period to the present. It was a mammoth undertaking and ah, done beautifully, and here he is, live at Navy Pier auditorium on this New Music America fifth of six concerts of the 1982 series.
Voice: And you’re listening to New Music America here on KPFA or KPFB in Berkeley or KFCF in Fresno.
♪31:07 Yvar Mikhashoff - Christian Wolff: Preludes for Piano
(to save you the trouble of looking for it:
https://archive.org/details/NMA_1982_07_10_2 )
Note: Philip Thomas recorded the Preludes and his online liner notes the corresponding folk songs used in the creation of the work:
Wolff’s own programme note lists songs used including ‘Hallelujah, I’m a Bum’ (Prelude 3), ‘Rock About’ (Prelude 4), ‘Abi Yoyo’ (Prelude 7), ‘Po’ Lazarus’ (Prelude 9), Big Rock Candy Mountain’ (Prelude 10), and ‘Acres of Clams’ (Prelude 11). The pianist is even required to sing - or, rather, whistle or hum - in the fifth Prelude, though almost as if to herself, occasionally emerging from widely spaced chords, Wolff’s response to Chopin’s set of Preludes, perhaps the famous C minor (Op.28 nr20).
1:02:55 applause (into background)
1:03:08
Joan La Barbara: We’ve heard Yvar Mikhashoff playing the world premiere of Christian Wolff’s Preludes for piano.
Charles Amirkhanian: There are eleven in the set and ah, now Mr. Mikhashoff is back on stage to bow and ah, we’ll take a few moments for station identification. From Chicago, these are the sounds of New Music America ‘82
[end part 1]
Alternate version…