July 2, 1984: NMA Hartford day 2 - NMA birthdays: James Fulkerson, Stephane Roy
New Music Alliance - Afro-Algonquin - Arto Lindsay and the Ambitious Lovers - David Weinstein - Jan Williams plays Boone, Diemente, Chadabe - Scribing Sound exhibit launch - Open Mic at Mad Murphy's
New Music Alliance Meetings at U of Hartford
Revelation in a University classroom where some 30 to 70 (I can't remember where I overrate or underrate the size of the crowd at those first meetings) musicians, composers, people who write about musicians and composers and the rest of us who just like to listen to that stuff all gathered to debate great questions of the day. Here, it helped that I spoke Ottawa and was able to decipher debate from bullshit, and found relatively little of the latter. I remember Earl Howard who was blind being the only person who didn't get cut off in mid senten-.
- Georges Dupuis from my diary notes
10:00-17:00 at the Old State House Day 1 video series
Rick Rozie & Mixashawn at Old State House “Afro-Algonquin” 11:30
Double bassist Rick Rozie and his brother Mixashawn, the saxophonist, flutist, vocalist, poet and actor who was formerly known as Lee Rozie, are Hartford's best and brightest contributions to the international jazz avant-garde.
They've played or recorded with manyprime movers in new music, are well-known in Europe and particularly celebrated in germany. Yet here in their native city, the brothers are relatively unknown.
They took a big step toward rectifying that oversight Monday as they presented their Afro-Algonquin music in a free noontime concert on the Old State House grounds.
Instead of concocting cerebral abstractions for the lunth-time audience of several hundred, the brothers served a pleasantly accessible musical smorgasbord seasoned with elements of black and American Indian music. Mixashawn has assumed an Algonquin name and has become a scholar of his ethnic roots in Indian history - studies that have influenced both his music and poetry.
- Combined writers of the Hartford courant, July 3, 1984
There were some klunkers, too.
The Rozie Brothers, both fine jazz musicians, were preachy and pompous outdoors at the Old State House.
- Paul de Berros - Philadelphia Inquirer, July 7, 1984
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Arto Lindsay & Ambitious Lovers at the Old State House
At lunchtime, insurance men and women ventured from their offices to explore Arto Lindsay's Ambitious Lover's blend of Brazilian music and white funk embellished by quavering, quirky gibberish.
- Brooke Wentz report for High Fidelity, November 1984
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"I don't know how Hartford will respond to all of this," said Doug McLeod, who works at Computerland in West Hartford and was dressed in a blue blazer and wing-tip shoes. "I think Arto Lindsay (and the Ambitious Lovers) are the most accessible and will be popular with the crowd. But I'm not sure about the rest. personally, I love it."
So did the crowd of several hundred at the noontime New Music America series at the Old State House Monday, which featured Lindsay and his eight-member band.
The band's incessant, driving Brazilian rhythms acted as a strong pull for even the most novice new-music listener. At the center of the high-energy band was the gawky-but-spirited Lindsay who took an upbeat approach to his group's offbeat sounds. It was hard not to be seduced by the persuasive percussion with its whiplash tempos and its gear-grinding shifts of rhythms. And if the beat didn't get you, the vocals certainly did.
Vocalist David Moss seemed to make strange and wondrous sounds from every ounce of his ample being: His tonsils, throat, both lungs and parts of his large intestine seemed to contribute to the sounds that were coming from his mouth. It was scat-singing on acid, combined with bits of Donald Duck, bees in heat, a busy signal, a spoon going down the garbage disposal and angels screaming. It was amazing.
- Combined writers of the Hartford Courant, July 3, 1984
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There was other good music too, of course. The Ambitious Lovers, Arto Lindsay's band, played outdoors for a lunchtime crowd; they were tight and fresh, a genuine fusion not just of styles but of people, new music types and Latin percussionists.
- Geoffrey Stokes, Village Voice July 24 - "New Music Back to Normal"
I do believe they performed this one:
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Robert Ashley Perfect Lives (Private Parts)
First Half Old State house 2nd floor
His profile of several lives in a mythical American town had a light-hearted, hallucinatory flavor. Images and icons weaes in and out of this comic video opera. It had something to do with reincarnation. And people from outer space. And maybe the rebirth of the human soul. Probably the rebirth of the human soul.
Parts of the work were tedious, but others - especially his pieces set in a supermarket and in a bank - were funny and imaginative. Though four hours may be a big commitment to be merely beguiled, it's a work that you can see in pieces without a major loss.
"This is great, just great," said Frank Cowal, project coordinator at the Connecticut National Bank, who was dressed in a suit for the noontime events. "Where else can you go out during your lunch hour and be entertained for free? Some of it I liked. Some I didn't. But, you know, most I liked."
- Combined writers of the Hartford Courant, July 3, 1984
David Weinstein at the Hartford Arts Centre Illuminated Man (With Child) - meet and talk Hartford Arts Centre
7/2 The Afternoon Exchange was relaxed and en- Afternoon gaging. People exhibiting their wares, hardselling. We were ourselves installed right next to David Weinstein's installation: Illuminated Man (With Child), while cattycorner to us was John Driscoll's Third Mesa, both of which were gently serenading us.
- David Hicks, "A Cross Country Music Tour" Perpectives of New Music Vol 22 no. 1-2 Autumn 1983 pp. 519-531
David Weinstein's The Illuminated Man, as Ron Kuivila says in the New Music America catalogue, "does not seem to have a lot to do with the physicality of sound. Instead it is a beautiful presentation of musical form as the coexistence of mathematical, indeterminate, and intuitive structures on a 20' by 20' canvas." Exactly right.
Weinstein provides an absorbing visual analogue to some of the most complex ways composers might build form. Patterns crisscross patterns; two large spirals nest within a gigantic checkerboard, and themselves are broken into checkerboard patterns that shrink and grow.
Weinstein wants musicians to transpose his work into music; he doesn't quite know - at least he admits it's a problem - what connection his design (or any other "graphic score," for that matter) might have to the success or failure of any piece based on it.
I think he should let The Illuminated Man rest as what Tom Johnson calls "imaginary music," a musical concept meant to be imagined, not head.
The best realization in sound wouldn't be based on the design at all; it'd be music Weinstein might independently build - as he actually did, in pieces he played on tape in the room where The Illuminated Man was shown - with the same kind of structure.
- Geoffrey Stokes, "Trade Fare - footnotes to New Music America", Village Voice, July 31
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Jan Williams, percussion
Virtuoso Series, Wadsworth Atheneum Avery Theatre
Charles Boone The Watts Towers (1981) solo perc
Louis Siu on y2b via “Orchard Enterprises” streaming intermediary from 1986 recording “Solar One”
Liner note: The Watts Towers is a solo piece performed by percussionist Louis Siu. The steady, driving, rhythms occasionally interrupted by pauses and dramatic pulses echo the hand-hewn architecture of the Towers, jagged edges and jagged rhythms.
Boone’s description of the work from the official program
Available on Charles Boone’s home page (along with other works)
- Edward Diemente For Lady Day (1972) perc and tape
- Joel Chadabe: Follow Me Softly (1984) perc and computer
Chadabe and Jan Williams from joelchadabe.com
https://joelchadabe.net/followmesoftly/
Percussionist Jan Williams showed his considerable talent in the opening concert of the Virtuosi Series at the Wadsworth Atheneum's Avery Theatre Monday, and an audience of about 200 gave him an enthusiastic reception.
Williams offered three pieces: Charles Boone's "The Watts Towers,", Edward Diemente's "For Lady Day," and Joel Chadabe's "Follow Me Softly."
Boone describes his composition as a "musical thanks" to a tile setter named Simo Rodia, who in the early part of this century assembled decorative towers in the Watts section of Los Angeles. The work is scored for bongos and tom-toms, and features a kinetic, urban energy.
Diemente, a Hartt School of Music faculty member and nationally known figure, has written a smoky, sometimes wistful homage to blues singer Billie Holiday, scored for two vibraphones on tape, and a third playing "live." There are apparently no direct quotes in this work from any of Holiday's tunes, but the piece is direct, personal, and occasionally ofers a blues-y, dotted figure. It got a big hand.
The Chadabe piece, which is a dialogue for percussionist and computer ("played" in this case by the composer), is a spacey, spectral work of nearly a half-hour long. Of the three pieces, it best showed off Williams, who handled a bank of mallet instruments with deftness and subtlety.
- Combined writers of the Hartford Courant, July 3, 1984
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SCRIBING SOUND EXHIBIT launch (ongoing until July 15)
introduction/ list of works presented
Other NMA Exhibitions and Installations
Ron Kuivila on Phill Niblock’s “Film and Music Installation”
at the Christ Church Auditorium
Christ Church Auditorium will literally be filled with standing waves created by the complex sonorities of Phill Niblock’s Film and Music Installation. Juxtaposed with his distinctive tone clusters will be films of industrious facility in close-up, creating a powerful environment of light, image, and sound.
Ron Kuivila on his own work “untitled (revision” (that’s the title!)
In my own Untitled (revision), people are presented with an invisible tamboura to walk through, explore, and perhaps play.
Ron Kuivila on David Weinstein’s Illuminated Man (and Child)
Illuminated Man by David Weinstein does not seem to have a lot to do with the physicality of sound. Instead it is a beautiful presentation of musical form as the coexistence of mathematical, indeterminate, and intuitive structures on a 20’ x 20’ canvas.
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SOUNDINGS ART SHOW and VIDEO SERIES
♪
end of day
OPEN MIKE Mad Murphy's
Since this was the first open mike, this was the occasion where the exhaustion of the day or the sheer great feeling at being in the middle of something that was going to last for a week or two brought on a tear during the performance of Guy Klucevsek and Pauline Oliveros in duet. Or maybe, because I didn't know these two at the time, I thought that all amateurs who do new music in the world (remember that this kind of gathering reminded me of Hoot night in Ottawa and that I had walked away from seeing the mighty Sun Ra without knowing it the night before) were this wonderful. Or maybe they opened a part of my brain that hadn't been tweaked by accordion harmonics. But I remember that I slipped a tear during their performance, and this happens rarely (or proportionately).
Now, for the rest of the performers, well, all I remember at this point is the slapping on a woman wearing a jumpsuit which seemed either badly cut or victimized by moths. It was amplified, of course, this was the new music concept within it. Don't remember the name at this point. Stew reminds me of the response: "Can you actually believe that they did that?"
- Georges Dupuis from my diary notes
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NEW MUSIC AMERICA BIRTHDAYS =====================
James Fulkerson 1945 Streator, Illinois
(the day before his NMA84 gig!)
There will be a lot on Fulkerson tomorrow as he had a solo recital at NMA84 but Relâche performed his Sonata No. 2 with Stephen Montague leading the ensemble. This is his biography at the Living Composers website.
http://www.composers21.com/compdocs/fulkersj.htm
♪
At the 1987 Philadelphia festival, Relâche joined Fulkerson for a performance of his Sonata No. 2, presented during the opening gala concert. I was able to find his notes, as well as the Relâche archival stream of that opening night:
James Fulkerson Sonata (Version B, 1982)
When I received the commission for this work, I was interested to look at formal models and formal processes. The sonata form has been one model of understanding the world which has been discredited because it is postulated upon a simplification of material which can now only be seen as a special case — one in which the amount of material has to be too severely limited.
Nevertheless, I was interested to examine this process of transformation using two different musics as opposites to the same central music or “first theme”. Using a completely differing music for Version B has resulted in quite different transformational path in each of the two versions. Neither version A nor B is preferable, each forms part of a commentary upon the other while remaining complete within themselves. - JF
♪
The Fulkerson, despite his own clumsy and pretentious program notes, often deftly contrasted aggressive Minimalist textures for instrumental quintet with softer, more tunefully reiterative sections.
- John Rockwell, New York Times, “In Philadelphia, A Festival of Americana”, October 4, 1987
Actual performance recording:
https://archive.org/details/NMA_1987_10_02_c1/C01-04_Sonata_Version_B_James_Fulkerson.wav
Full first night’s details:
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Stéphane Roy, 1959
The Montréal Electroax composer had one work presented as part of the special series during NMA 1990: Incursions Nocturnes. It was presented in the context of the series named Acousmonium presented at a location named Les Loges one of four evenings of presentations:
This description is a bit beyond my quick translation limited abilities, but I did find a copy of the work for you to sample online from a service I found named Sonus.
https://sonus.ca/artiste/CP-1592/stephane-roy?tri=titre
The full day’s presentations during the 1990 Montreal festival can be found here: