July 1, 1984 - New Music America Hartford - Day 1 - NMA Birthdays: Carles Santos, Alicia Terzian
Charlie Morrow - NMAmtrak - Bill Obrecht - Pearlman-Hayes-Lebentritt - Bill Seaman - Joseph Celli - Brian Johnson - Sun Ra and his Arkestra - B'day - Carles Santos, Alicia Terzian
NMA Birthdays: Carles Santos, Alicia Terzian (scroll to end for some links)
AMTRAK New Music America Express Train (AMTRAK Patiot No. 174), N.Y.C. to Hartford. Departure from Penn: 2:00 p.m. Arrival in Hartford: 4:42 p.m.
And as for Penn Station! History will record that in a perpetual 1960s of the soul there lived a composer named Charlie Morrow who among much else liked to gather with his friends on the summer solstice to bay at the moon. Two years ago, when New Music America hit Chicago, he filled the nearer reaches of Lake Michigan with boats for a reportedly charming nighttime event called "Toot 'n Blink." That was his good side.
This year he was rashly allowed to muster his dreaded Ocarina and Conch Orchestra for "Penn Station Explosion," otherwise known as an assault on the people of New York. In vain did Penn Station's official announcer, with the rolling cadence of some predecessor announcing stops on one of the great trains of yesteryear, promise us "oscarinas"; in vain did three brave souls on a cart pulled by human oxen heft improbably droll bass saxophones.
Imagine, if you can, a ragged brigade of lost souls blasting at random as they marched through Penn Station, arriving finally at the stairway to the tracks where for minutes on end they brayed at stunned travelers innocently awaiting their trains. As the Hartford Courant's diligent music critic Steve Metcalf wrote: "The sound, which at times even obliterated the rumble of arriving trains, caused children to clutch their mothers' skirts, teenagers to smirk and one elderly man to rush to a nearby policeman and shout, "who are these people?"
Ten years ago - with the memory still fresh of Haight-Ashbury, and of demonstrators massing in Grant Park in 1968 before marching to meet the Chicago police - music like this sounded like an amusing or at times even exciting tribal rite. But the tribe it represents has dwindled into little more than a sect. The Ocarina and Conch Orchestra now sounds like a new music nostalgia band. in 1969 such flamboyantly unplanned music sung of a spontaneity many people had just started to seek; in 1984, divorced from any tangible musical content, it suggests a way of life that for most people has worn very thin.
- Geoffrey Stokes, Village Voice July 24 - "New Music Back to Normal"
Charlie Morrow’s program description:
Getting off to an explosive start, Charlie Morrow and his Ocarina Orchestra paraded through New York City's Penn Station blowing conch shells and boisterous saxophones.
- Brooke Wentz report for High Fidelity 1984 november
Official festival preview:
During the train rise, composer/video artist Myrna Schloss will present a video performance about riding a train consisting of video, electronic music, live music of vastly diverse origins, as well as a thematic narrative performance.
Train riders are invited to bring along their portable cassette machines to participate in Lull-A-Go, a 30 minute sound piece created by Julia Lebentrift and Karen Pearlman. Tapes of this sound feature, which explores the lulling, swaying motion of train rides, will be passed out to train riders by the composers. A portion of their press release for this part of the journey:
Art-rock composer Bill Obrecht and his band of musicians will perform at various passenger stops along the route. If you can imagine musicians popping in and out between trains presenting Mr. Obrecht’s unrelenting rhythms, you will have a sense of what to expect.Six cars made up the New Music Express train, each housing an individual audio or visual piece. Intermedia artist Myrna Schloss entertained one car with a text and video work; audio cassettes were played in another car. Brian Johnson's metal, clay, and wooden objects dangled in his car while Bill Seaman's contemplative, award-winning video S.He played in another. At New Haven, Bill Obrecht rushed his chaotic band of players onto the platform, giving a lively horn-honking, drum-rolling set before landing in Hartford. - Brooke Wentz report for High Fidelity 1984 november
The World Premiere of Connecticut composer Brian Johnson’s The Mighty and the Meek will turn a car of the train into a virtual sound garden. Suspended sound objects will produce sounds as they respond to the motion of the train. The work will transform the ride into a clanging, ringing, sound-engulfing experience.
In the luggage racks of the train will be a video installation of William Seaman’s S.He, a video pool of words, images, sounds, observations and a space in which one can rest in reflection.
Program notes:
S.He is a housing for a resonant network of observations. S.He is reflecting both inwardly and outwardly. S.He is a pool of words, images and sounds that one becomes submerged in. S.He provides a space where one can rest in reflections. S.He flirts with relativity. S.He paradoxically defines him/herself as S.He unfolds.” - Bill Seaman
HARTFORD - The all-American railroad welcome here for the New Music America Festival Amtrak Express from New York would have pleased that original New England iconoclast and champion of Americana, Charles Ives.
Amid the blare of two marching bands (the smaller of which had been on the train) and the bold declarations of red, white and blue banners, a motley collection of New Musicians, composers, fans and reporters from across the country and Europe spilled from the train Sunday to begin a week-long pow-wow of experimental sound.
Paul de Berros - Philadelphia Inquirer, July 7, 1984
First experience of hearing New Music in a space not meant for new music: Grand Central Station with the announcer's pronouncements bouncing off all the walls in a naturally ambient setting. And all those trains like the rumbles of a thousand mountain rainstorms. Well, at least a dozen, because you couldn't make out the acoustics that sent the announcer's pronouncements bouncing off all the walls in a naturally echoy setting.
Damn! Writing on a rocky train with a fountain pen with thin margins after two beer is nearly impossible!
Well, as I remember it, it was only a march for about a block and a half in a deserted part of town on a Sunday afternoon. It rained in Hartford, and I guess they didn't promote efficiently the mail-in composition. Wonder where John Philip Souza's ghost was at the time. Stew remembers: We followed it through with the recording walkman going. One of the four measure inserts was one big chord on the first beat and four measures of the rest. His four measures came in about thirtieth out of about forty and in marching tempo it took them about five seconds. Jon Gibson was one of the composers, and there were about five famous names. It's on the inside front cover.
- Georges Dupuis from my diary
sun ra at Bushnell Park Mad Murphy’s
7/1 - Sun Ra did not appear in Bushnell Park, mostly Evening because only amphibious creatures could have survived the monsoon in Bushnell Park. Thus things were pushed indoors to Mad Murphy's Bar, where bodies were packed wall- to-wall and the air was too heavy to breathe; took a raincheck.
- David Hicks, "A Cross Country Music Tour" Perpectives of New Music Vol 22 no. 1-2 Autumn 1983 pp. 519-531
The week began with a spiritually cosmic night of Sun Ra and his Heliocentric Arkestra.
- Brooke Wentz report for High Fidelity 1984 november indicating she was able to get in
Missed this one. Thought that the band we had just seen was Sun Ra. Informed a member or two of the band that they had just missed the last concert. Only later did I understand the look on his face. Besides, it was going to be too crowded in that small bar. Still...Stew saw it. He got to talk to a couple of friends in the basement before the gig with some members of the group, but it was so crowded, that they had to come up through the stage. The place held maybe two hundred at most and there was at least four hundred that day. He faced Sun Ra, with the Fender Rhodes separating them. There were also singing dancing ladies. They were closer. His new song at the time was "Nuclear War" (with the line "get down on your knees and kiss your ass goodbye"). They didn't.
- Georges Dupuis from my diary
Festivals ought to be festive. And so the organizers of this year's New Music America bash had at least the right kind of idea when for their opening on July 1 they arranged special New Music America cas (each with an art installation of its own) on a train from New York to the festival's site in Hartford; a performance in Penn Station to send it off; a performance and ribbon-cuttnig ceremony at Hartford's Union Station to receive it; a processino from Union Station to nearby Bushnell park (with the University of Hartford band playing a "Mega March" jointly written by 50 composers); and finally - to start the festival's public concerts on a suitably exuberant and ecumenical note - a free concert in Bushnell Park by the wildest, most joyous name in jazz, Sun Ra.
But things didn't quite work out as planned. Sun Ra was rained out and performed nearly three hours late in a club never meant to hold even half the crowd that tried to jam its way in. The Mega March was also hard hit by the rain, and because of a misunderstanding about whether it woudl occur at all was very nearly dispersed by police. The train was fun - there was a bar car, and most of us knew each other - but the car hung with plants and ceramic chimes was muggy and (because the chimes swung) treacherous on curves. Installations of any kind were superfluous in any case. In Hartford we'd be glutted by music. What we neded on the train wasn't art, but a party.
- Geoffrey Stokes, Village Voice July 24 - "New Music Back to Normal"
=================== NEW MUSIC AMERICA BIRTHDAYS JULY 1 =======
Carles Santos, 1940 Vinaros, Spain wikipedia photo credit Peter Grath
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carles_Santos
Carles Santos performed twice at NMA, in Washington D.C. 1983 at a performance with the Washington Music Ensemble conducted by Nicolas Slominsky, and in 1990 at Montréal Musiques Actuelles as part of a five vocalist performance led by David Moss named Direct Sound. Part of that recording will be posted in November when that festival comes up.
Alicia Terzian (Lisa Lacross) 1934 Cordoba, Argentina
Terzian’s first work for quarter-tone flute, Shantiniketan, was performed by Lisa LaCross at the 1988 NMA festival in Miami. Her substantial biography is here: https://komitasmuseum.am/en/alicia-terzian/ from which I took this screen shot photo from the Komitas Museum website