July 5, 1984 NMA Hartford day 5
Liquid Liquid -Olu Dara -Ellen Fullman -Ruth Miller+Steven Parrish -Jon English -Yvar Mikhashoff -France-Marie Uitti -David Mott -Gary Karr -Stewart Smith -Helen Thorington -John Zorn - James Tenney
Well detailed map from the Hartford Courant special program by Phil Lohman
New Music Alliance Meetings U of Hartford
Old State House 10:00-17:00 video series 4
Liquid Liquid
Old State House noon concert
Actual recording of the performance from a radio capture from a long gone program hosted by the wonderful Augusta Lapaix in 1984.
One day the audience began dancing to the three-person percussion group Liquid Liquid.
- Brooke Wentz High Fidelity November 1984
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Olu Dara and Okra Orchestra
Old State House
Stephen Malagodi pix
Later, the coy and cool Olu Dara attracted a variety of listeners with his Okra Orchestra, blending soulful funk tunes with jazzy horn sections.
- Brooke Wentz High Fidelity November 1984
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Ellen Fullman Longitudinal Vibration
Travelers Court Hall
Ellen Fullman’s own description of the performance at her website/
https://www.ellenfullman.com/performances-archive-19802007/2019/7/15/new-music-america-hartford
Ellen Fullman’s Longitudinal Vibration is played by rosining both the strings and her hands and running one along the other. The extreme 50 foot length of the strings and the unusual way they are played create a sound world one suspects was quite unknown to that other monochord builder, the ancient computer-musician, Pythagoras.
- Ron Kuivila program description
The Travelers Building housed Ellen Fullman's fifty-foot-long sound installation, which she demonstrated by rubbing her rosin-coated fingers over the tightly strung horizontal wires, producing a screechy, high-pitched vibrato sound.
- Brooke Wentz report for High Fidelity 1984 november
On an intricate 50-foot construction of strings, pegs, and a soundbox, Ellen Fullman (with help from David Weinstein) played something called Longitudinal Vibration that seems not so much a piece as a process, though the path she creted as she accepted the implications of each new set of overtones her instrument brought forth seemed both more exacting and more richly landscaped than the path followed by many a structured work.
- Geoffrey Stokes, Village Voice July 24 - "New Music Back to Normal"
New York Times photo:
Artist description from program
Arthur Plant walked into the lobby of the Travelers Insurance building to look over Ellen Fullman's work, Longitudinal Vibration, and like some of the workers who poked their heads in from time to time, he laughed at the contraption. Brass, bronze and iron wires, hooked up to a plywood box resonator at one end to amplify their sound, stretched at shoulder level for 50 feet.
The lobby, with about a hundred spectators, was noisy when Miss Fullman began to play, running her fingers across the wires as she walked up and down the 50-foot length. But it quieted to a hush for the duration of her half-hour performance - no coughing or sneezing, no rustling of papers.
There was no melody, just a sustained line of mellow tones that built and built in tension - not unlike the beauty of deep notes from a cello.
When Miss Fullman finished, there were a couple of seconds of absolute quiet. Then someone shoulted, "Wow!" And everyone burst into applause.
"I'm filled with the emotion of it," Mr. Plant said. "What vision, to brush up against a string and have this result. It's the difference between artists and us ordinary people."
- Jeffrey Schmalz, New York Times July 6, 1984
2017 live performance with Theresa Wong
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Ruth Miller & Stephen Parish Shaky Ground
meet the installation artist – Hartford Arts Center, Front Window ports
Ruth Miller and Steve Parish’s sound and video installation Shaky Ground documents the destruction of Real Art Ways’ State Street location and its re-emergence on Allyn Street. It uses both sound and image to represent the two sites and the physical activity that effected their transformation.
- Ron Kuivila, program notes
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1400-1600 Visual Sound Forum at Hartford Arts Center –
Leif Brush, Alvin Lucier, Liz Phillips, William Hellerman, Jim Pomeroy, Phill Niblock
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Wadsworth Atheneum virtuoso series
Jon English Electrombonics
for amplified trombone and tape delay
Another day, another virtuoso Afternoon Jon English's Electrombonics was nicely meditative a long piece I could live with. It takes its time, with windy noise sculpting space, slowly emerging into sharpened notes which drift above high soft winds, windswept (this feels like English in his own milieu and perhaps explains why he seemed peripheral in the frenetic world of Chris Brown).
- David Hicks, "A Cross Country Music Tour" Perspectives of New Music Vol 22 no. 1-2 Autumn 1983 pp. 519-531
One new music veteran said ruefully that she'd never heard so much air blown tonelessly - humorlessly too, I might add - through so many wind instruments. Sound effects like that can be absorbing and even powerful, as they were when in a piece called Electrombonics Jon English slowly turned the hiss of air into a full-blown trombone note, electronically amplifying, extending, and deepening each stage of the transformation. But I couldn't help wondering if he really needed a trombone. Ten years ago it seemed exciting and even essential to find new ways to play traditional instruments; this year the trombone seemed like an odd source (a purely electronic hiss could have been transformed into a purely electronic tone, after all) for the sounds English had in mind, as quaintly dated as a choice to turn a double bass into a drum (all too common even now) or a clarinet into a broom.
- Geoffrey Stokes, "New Music Back to Normal", Village Voice July 24, 1984
https://www.discogs.com/release/1237297-Jon-English-Candace-Natvig-Triptych
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Jon English blew into his trombone, creating a hiss through the tape delay system.
- Brooke Wentz, High Fidelity November 1984
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Yvar Mikhashoff -
Donald Harris: Balladen (1979)
Yvar Mikhashoff's piano playing gave a taste of the contemporary New Romantic style.
- Brooke Wentz report for High Fidelity, November 1984 (this might also refer to Mikhashoff being soloist for Sellars’ Concertorama)
Veronica Jochum version
♪
Frances-Marie Uitti: Ricercar from Opera for One
Frances-Marie Uitti's cello work, "Ricercar," from her Opera for Onre extraordinary technique using two bows (a "sand- wich" she calls it) renders an astonishing array of non-cello sounds - upper partials, from ponticello playing; stunning registral-intervallic tenuousness; any combination of strings can be made to sound at once; showy and riveting: it's what she does.
- David Hicks, "A Cross Country Music Tour" Perspectives of New Music Vol 22 no. 1-2 Autumn 1983 pp. 519-531
Frances-Marie Uitti fluttered and creaked her double-bowed cello.
- Brooke Wentz High Fidelity November 1984
France-Marie Uitti took us to a faraway, intensely gentle world where (to paraphrase Baudelaire's evocation of the Netherlands, her own adopted land) ships come from all over the earth to provide balm no one knew was needed until it arrived. Anyone could do the same, she seemed to say, if they too played softly on an amplified cello, but of course her "Ricercar" from "Opera for One" was so unusually touching mainly because with two bows at once she plays such sonorous chords on all four strings of the cello, and because the chords themselves obey an unanalyzed logic that makes them sound both unexpected and correct.
Geoffrey Stokes, "New Music Back to Normal", Village Voice July 24, 1984
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World Music Office (I guess that’s a streaming intermediary) version on y2b of France-Marie Uitti with Jonathan Harvey, Ricercare una melodia, August 1992
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David Mott -
Martin Breswick: Tent of Miracles
(world premiere)
Program notes: Tenda dos Milagres (‘Tent of Miracles’, from the Portuguese of the Brazilian novelist Jorge Amado) surrounds the audience from all four sides and above with four channels of taped sound in addition to a solo baritone saxophone. “All of the sounds of Tenda dos Milagres are created by the saxophonist David Mott, with little or no studio alteration. Through its rhythms and noises the piece creates a tent full of Brazilian dance-like music.” – Martin Bresnick
***
David Mott played real-time baritone saxophone over multi pre-recorded tapes, causing one sax to sound like four.
- Brooke Wentz High Fidelity November 1984
Taimur Sullivan version, 2016 performance
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Gary Karr
Eugene Kurtz: The Last Contrabass in Las Vegas
Kurtz’s The Last Contrabass in Las Vegas (1974) was commissioned by the University of Nevada in Las Vegas and was originally scored for a woman, a man, and a contra-bass. The woman is the narrator who, for reasons unknown, has a particular psychological problem – she is obsessed with the double bass. She begins as a gushy saleswoman, but soon gets quite carried away by her imagination. The qualities of the bass, from tenderness to ferocity, pass in review in a virtuosic display of the instrument’s capabilities.
Eugene Kurtz first intended the piece to be performed by one person who serves as both narrator and performer. However, it was transformed before publication into a work for two people to minimize some of the difficulties of the piece. The version I’m now using, with one performer and contrabass, was done at the suggestion of the composer and returns the work to his original concept.
– Gary Karr
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Jerry Errante's timbrally rich clarinet accompanied an eclectic video of moving figures swallowed by flames.
- Brooke Wentz High Fidelity November 1984
This one is labeled “Caracas, early 80s”:
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U of Hartford Lincoln Theatre
Stuart Smith with Wayne Cameron, Robert DeSesa and Salvatore Macchia
Blue (1979-81)
Program description: Blue is a synthesis of early jazz, third stream, and the ‘new thing’, and is “dedicated to Louis Armstrong – So here is one for you, louis- BLUE
– Stuart Smith
Stuart Smith's Blue, dedicated to Louis Armstrong: Evening Pleasantly jazzish trio, OK but why not just cut these guys loose?
- David Hicks, "A Cross Country Music Tour" Perspectives of New Music Vol 22 no. 1-2 Autumn 1983 pp. 519-531
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Helen Thorington with Nusha Martynuk, Carter McAdams and Aurora Manuel
Don’t Wave (1982) processed environmental sound work including fire sirens and tree toads, and violin with a dance performance entitled Stuff.
Helen Thorington's Don't Wave: for 'processed environmental sound" (made me expect much more real-world noise-noises and less music-music) and two dancers. I liked the "stills" of the dancers at the end of the first movement and the slow, g-minor second movement with its dance of victhims and vic- thers. The in-place movements of sirens wound the piece down; the shadows, as echos of the dancers, filled the eyes to overflowing.
- David Hicks, "A Cross Country Music Tour" Perspectives of New Music Vol 22 no. 1-2 Autumn 1983 pp. 519-531
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Helen Thorington incorporated dancers in her "processed environmental sound work".
- Brooke Wentz report for High Fidelity 1984 november
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We lost another one this year:
Helen Thorington obituary, New York Times - June 6, 2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/arts/helen-thorington-dead.html
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John Zorn Rugby (1982)
with Fred Frith, Christian Marclay, David Moss, Wayne Horvitz and (maybe) David Garland replacing Robin Holcomb
Pix from Ear magazine, signed by Zorn dated January 8, 1983
John Zorn (he of Pool and Archery) gives us Rugby (1982): a concoction of ZANY soundsapoppin'; sbix wacky wahoos invent a wild wonderful wigged-out world, a language so witty it's serious (Hey! It's mosquito-time here - bzzzzz! sshwackk! tht! tht!) it's crucial that the performers choose the sounds they make. They're all totally involved, because they get to invent themselves David Moss on percussion and vocals is the cat's pajamas here, but the group-focus is where it is. The setup itself looks like the Professor's Lab in a Betty Boop cartoon; with Katzenjammer Kid Zorn in his red polyester pants; the crowd gives Zorn and Ca a Standing O; I wait for The Wave to start up: no dice, I guess they're taking H. Thorington's advice. * * * *
- David Hicks, "A Cross Country Music Tour" Perspectives of New Music Vol 22 no. 1-2 Autumn 1983 pp. 519-531
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The most charming works of the festival were by improvisers John Zorn and Jerry Hunt. Zorn allows for human interaction and spontaneity while Hunt focuses on man and machines, but both composers use a sign/signal system. Zorn's musicians (Fred Frith, Christian Marclay, David Moss, Wayne Horvitz, and Ned Rothenberg) played Rugby, a game for six improvisers, each cued by a human prompter. Hunt, on the other hand, hit suitcases, banged metal, and flashed lights at his awesome "video-scan and audio cross-scan" computer, which responded to his commands.
- Brooke Wentz High Fidelity Novembr 1984 november
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John Zorn woke everyone up with Rugby, not just because, like a kid playing games with a straw, he blows duck calls into glasses of water, but because his work sounds really new. (I'd argue that his rules for group improvisation imply the germ of a new concept of structure, time, and musical flow, but that's another story.)
- Geoffrey Stokes, "New Music Back to Normal" Village Voice July 24, 1984
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James Tenney
Spectral Canon for Conlon Nancarrow
Creation for Player Piano
James Tenney -
Bridge (1982) for 2 microtonal pianos, 8 hands
with Gordon Monahan, Miguel Frasconi and Casey Sokol
James Tenney injected static microtonal structures in his piece for two-piano, eight-hands.
- Brooke Wentz High Fidelity November 1984
Actual performance from a radio capture from 1984.
Short discussion about Spectral Canon for Conlon Nancarrow with Linda Smith, and radio hosts David Grimes and Lee Majors (not the six million dollar man), aired a week after the festival
Below: James Tenney, from program essay (which seems to be missing the opening sentence…)
Tomas Bachli, Gertrud Schneider, Erika Radermacher, Manfred Werder
Dec 1995 Hat Art Records
https://www.discogs.com/release/937181-James-Tenney-Tomas-B%C3%A4chli-Gertrud-Schneider-Erika-Radermacher-Manfred-Werder-Bridge-Flocking
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Mad Murphy’s late night
Tim Wolf and Paul LeMay present The Anglions – “new rock”.
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DJ Notdeadyet’s You Tube Playlist of tracks found on y2b re: New Music America Hartford 1984 - in order of their appearance at the festival
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmyw9E0_Jh8a_XcDRefD9GLAE6p1I7Wz1