July 26 - 1933 Yomo Toro; 1949 Kevin Volans NMA birthdays (and Joseph Franklin too!)
Yomo Toro, 1933 Guanica, Puerto Rico
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yomo_Toro
(wikipedia photo by Victor Guillermo Toro)
+ Kevin Volans, 1949, South Africa
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yomo toro
I have a funny story about Yomo Toro. Well, maybe not funny ha ha but rather funny a living nightmare. It was New York City, 1989, the club was called The World and upstairs all night Deborah Harry was having her big comeback concert. Unfortunately, that was not the New Music America gig. The NMA gig was downstairs, a triple bill featuring Miniature, Zeena Parkins’s band No Safety and to finish the evening a duet featuring the legendary cuatro player Yomo Toro in a duet with Ned Sublette.
But upstairs during the NMA gigs downstairs was a version of this concert (from a month before) that went on in the upstairs main room of the club named The World:
The details of that evening will be elaborated upon when I get around to transcribing the particular New Music Alliance public session that tackles the question, but I think I had been late and missed Miniature, and I think No Safety tried to play but there were big feedback sounds and mysterious bloops penetrating their set which caused them to stop.
Then it became apparent that the sound was intentional - we were apparently occupying a normal dance club room and for some reason the regular DJs getting ready for a post midnight concert started testing their equipment during the live performance at the other end of the room.
Things had been running late as well due to the club not supplying proper loading personnel and as Ned Sublette and Yomo Toro attempted to set up their own music, the big big bass glitch sounds made it pretty well impossible to get clear sound from the front to the hundred or so New Music America folks.
And Boom went the back doors, and I thought we were being invaded, but by whom was a bit confusing. Reminiscent of that Drew Carey musical episode where the cast of Little Shop of Horrors meets with the cast of the Rocky Horror Picture Show on the street for a dance off. Except we weren’t off-broadway, we were New York Art City vs Dance City (with a side order of Punk CIty).
We were in the space that at one o’clock precisely with not a second of delay, the after-party for Deborah Harry was to be held.
Well, “invasion” was my first thought - as we were apparently the invaders of their space. When the back doors literally burst open and in came in at least fifty people led by a gentleman in only a tasteful black bra and panties (am I misremembering a Captain’s hat?) claimed the dance floor as their own and all of new music people decided to pack it in.
René Lussier was there, and saw that I had the little recorder I had been bringing with me all week. “You’ve got to get this tape out, man, this is history” or something to that effect became a proud moment for me as a journalist with maybe a story, but that feeling fizzled and popped and I went to the hotel room and discovered the pause button had been on all night and all I got was ten seconds of No Safety.
And I never did get to see Yomo Toro play with Ned Sublette. It would have been awesome.
And from the man who brought you the upgraded Buffalo Skinner Blues and Cowboys are Frequently Secretive, Ned Sublette doing his Cowboy Rhumba in a summer video right up there with David Johansen’s Hot Hot Hot…
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Birthday: Kevin Volans, 1949 South Africa
And I’m not sure about the quality of the sound, but I am sending to the Houston archives my tapes from Miami which included the Kronos Quartet performing Kevin Volans’ Songlines in an incredible evening that featured a work by Eleanor Hovda (Lemniscates) so quiet that it was at least a minute in before anyone knew it was being performed.
That created a church hush so deep that you’d think a Pope had walked into the room. But not for the following piece. I don’t think anyone’s described John Zorn that way, but before Volans and after Hovda, the Kronos played the Raymond Scott-Carl Stalling inspired Cat o Nine Tails (which they had actually performed on the cruise ship gig earlier in the week - more about NMA Miami in December).
And this was what the Kronos performed that night, this version by the Balenscu Quartet, posted by Universal on y2b:
The performance concluded with the world premiere of Steve Reich’s Different Trains, which will get its own post when I write about that anniversary, also in December.
As for me, one work by Kevin Volans has been never far from my mind’s wanderings - his five part White Man Sleeps has luscious harmonies that soothe me. Two parts also have the fiddles imitating the Brazilian berimbau, an instrument I proudly had and played until it broke after ten years, and they’re kind of hard to find if you’re anywhere near afro-brazilian culture…
The Kronos Quartet presented it on their album Pieces of Africa, an album that pop culture magazine Entertainment Weekly gave an A+ rating. In 1993, I broke up with someone and one of the last straws was her saying, “I’m not going to help you out financially - why don’t you sell that CD?” She never really did get me, and that’s probably for the best…
If you’ve ever heard the string quartet version of White Man Sleeps this might come as a shock - the original draft for two harpshichords (“African tuned”), a viol de gamba and percussion.
And the version that belonged to the A+ rating album - the Kronos by the way are celebrating their 50th anniversary in 2023, a subject that I’m sure I’ll have further opportunity to note… posted by Nonesuch on y2b:
Kevin Volans - Wikipedia entry. Studied with Stockhausen, eh?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Volans
His official website, though it doesn’t seem to have been updated since 2017.
Oh, and a P.S. which I’ll be repeating on tomorrow’s substack - July 26 is also the birthday of Joseph Franklin, who was the artistic director of the 1987 Philadelphia New Music America, which I’ll be previewing in October. I whipped up this little bit for him, which didn’t go out with the original email sent to subscribers.
Happy birthday to Joseph Franklin,
artistic director of the 1987 Philadelphia festival and a long-time member of the Relâche Ensemble. Franklin’s book Settling Scores from 2006 indicated to me that there was a potential market for all of those experiences I had in my travels. The quotations I use, matched up to the descriptions, are from his book, from which I snagged the NMA texts from thanks to a Google Books preview I was able to find in the mountains of Montana in 2012.
https://www.amazon.com/Settling-Scores-Hardcover-Joseph-Franklin/dp/0865344787
His own webpage gives you all the details you need to know (presumably), including the fact that the cover is a creation by artist Jack Ox:
http://www.josephfranklin.org/
Think this might be a good place for me to name drop my first solo album, created during the three weeks prior to my own 63rd birthday last year?
More on this as well over the next few weeks!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmyw9E0_Jh8aidXxELRSyqUJ_7EUgYFXy