July 7, 1982 New Music America Chicago day 3
Charlemagne Palestine - Kirk Nurock - John Cage - Larry Austin - Cordier Quartet - John Becker - Ruth Anderson - John Paul Taylor - Glenn Branca - Glenn Branca and John Cage - Charlie Morrow
Linda Montano’s Hindu Chakra System as related to the performances of Alvin Lucier, John Cage, Glenn Branca, Robert Moran, Robert Ashley and Dary John Mizelle - see each performance to what she said (which also follows along the diagram she helpfully provided in her article in Ear Magazine in 1982.
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Charlemagne Palestine Carillon Concert
Kirk Nurock Natural Sound Ensemble interactive critters performance
John Cage A Dip in the Lake
Salvatore Martirano Sal-Mar Construction (day 2)
Charles Amirkhanian and Joan La Barbara live national radio broadcast night 2
Cordier Quartet - John J. Becker: Soundpiece No. 4
Larry Austin Tableaux Vivants
Ruth Anderson Centering
Joseph Paul Taylor Solo 'Cello
Glenn Branca Indeterminate Activity of Resultant Masses
(Cage, John on Glenn Branca with Wim Mertens - Did he say, “His music is evil”?)
Charlie Morrow Toot N Blink
Robert Ashley Perfect Lives (Private Parts) part 3
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Charlemagne Palestine Carillon Concert
(part of the actual performance is heard at the beginning of the radio broadcast for this evening’s concert)
Noon found a band of aficionados as well as some passers-by at the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel of Chicago University for a carillon performance by Charlemagne Palestine. Palestine's work as a sound- artist (he also works in various other media including video, sculpture, photography and drawing) has often involved extensive use of a note-alternation technique which allows the notes of whatever instrument being used to "resonate and compound with each other, creating complex mixtures of pure strummed sonority and their overtones". Generally this is presented within the framework of an extended performance sometimes lasting an hour or more. Here, however, a technical problem prevented this, namely the inevitable tolling of the tower clock every quarter hour, which forced Palestine to unnaturally limit the length of his pieces. In the end, after two less-than-fifteen- minute works, Palestine embarked on a third. Apparently miscalculating the time, his performance was actually interrupted by the clock. Palestine abruptly concluded in a distracted fashion and the concert did not resume.
- Carl Stone, "Two Reports" Perspectives of New Music, Autumn 1981
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Kirk Nurock Natural Sound Ensemble
interactive critters performance (see July 8 for details)
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John Cage A Dip in the Lake
Screencap of photocopy of John Cage’s drawing/score from the program.
cover of the compilation cassette (which I do not have) with the same title
Track listing at the discogs entry for the above:
https://www.discogs.com/release/494900-Various-Chicago-82-A-Dip-in-the-Lake/image/SW1hZ2U6NDI3NDcx
******
John Cage, the honoree of the festival, has a piece called A Dip in the Lake, which consists of a graphic score and whimsically deployed tape loops - they snake through coffee-cup handles and wine-glass stems - offering a cacophony of Chicago street sounds. It had its premiere Tuesday at a buffet reception aboard the Clipper, which is docked at the pier. Mayor Jane M. Byrne made an appearance to welcome the festival and to cut a cake with Mr. Cage.
- John Rockwell, “Concert: New Music America in Chicago”, NY Times July 7, 1982
***
Mayor Jane Byrne made her new music debut inadvertently at a reception held in honor of John Cage, to whom the festival was dedicated. As she was reading a proclamation, her voice was playfully processed through a vocoder (a primitive vocal synthesizer) causing her to sound suspiciously like new-wave artist Laurie Anderson, much to the amazement of the audience. True to the spirit of the avant garde, Cage (who will be 70 in September) thought it was wonderful. It also provided a suitable introduction to his own work, A Dip in the Lake. The piece, which is a musical adaptation of Chicago's street maps, sounded alarmingly like what one would imagine an urban environment to be during rush-hour grid lock.
- Tina Clarke, "Chicago's new music festival filled with sound and fury" Toronto Globe & Mail, July 17, 1982
***
Two other composers used Lake Michigan. A Dip in the Lake by John Cage set dancers dancing through the streets of Chicago in various colors, dancing onto the beach and into the water...
These were the most human moments of the Festival. Boat captains, dancers, singers, and life guards all getting together to make some music.
- Chris Merrick, KOPN Columbia, Missouri Music Director in Ear Magazine, “Report from Middle Ear”
***
Linda Montana explains how she came to evaluating six performances at NMA Chicago 1982. "By allowing the Festival sounds and events to work on my body/spirit in this way, I was able to determine which pieces produced effective meditation responses.
Although there were many memorable moments during the Festival, I can analyze only six pieces that prepared the ground for deep meditation experiences. Inside/Outside ... These two approaches were 1. Sounds that allowed the listener to go inside and 2. Sounds that allowed the listener to come out."
Focus Outside: John Cage A Dip in the Lake
This event on the S.S. Clipper ship brought me out into a phantasmagoria of sound, touch, smell and sight. It was a party on the love boat, an exercise in choice, an artistic smorgasbord. It was highly celebratory - everything and everyone tipped to the right or left, including the ship.
Tape loops precariously and ingeniously wound themselves around long-stemmed wine glasses.
Found sounds from different Chicago sites filled the inside of the ship, simulating fog horns in our pelves.
Lower chakras were released; participants could sit, listen, eat from a sumptuous buffet, visit, watch extended tape loops and enjoy music freely, on every possible sensory level. The heavens smiled on the event, and responded appropriately with an equally celebratory and intense thunderstorm.
The storm began when Mayor Byrne cut the cake and gave John Cage the first bite.
This traditionally Buddhist blessing (a rain/thunder/lightning storm) heralded the marriage of art and politics.
- Linda Montano, "Moments of Consciousness", Ear Magazine 1982
***
At center stage was guest of honor John Cage, celebrating his 70th birthday and introducing a new work written for Chicago, A Dip in the Lake.
The piece was composed of recorded sounds from city intersections, specified by the I Ching. According to the same determining principle, the tapes were cut into fragments, mixed and reassembled into eighty-eight tape loops.
A Dip in the Lake was premiered at a private birthday party aboard the S. S. Clipper, attended by Mayor Byrne and other dignitaries, and performed only one other time; unfortunately it was not broadcast in any form.
During the premiere the end of the work was drowned out by a thunderstorm. "Beautiful music, isn't it?" Cage remarked.
- M. Staff Brandl + Thomas Emil Homerin, "Big Noise from Lake Michigan", Ear Magazine 1982
***
An important theme at the New Music America festival this year was John Cage's 70th birthday. The composer, poet, painter and philosopher John Cage was strongly represented at the festival - not only with sound, but also with an exhibition of his graphic works at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art.
And John Cage himself was at all the concerts and discussions throughout the week, constantly pursued by TV cameras and microphones. In the festival's program, Cage was hailed as the father of new music. Although it is probably somewhat exaggerated, he is undoubtedly one of the most important musical personalities of our century, if not one of the greatest composers of our time. John Cage is known for his attempts to liberate music from the concert hall and release it into life by turning all sounds in our everyday surroundings into musical material. Then you can enjoy life in the same way as you enjoy music.
- Wayne Siegel, “Rapporter: New Music America Festivalen 1982” (original dutch, google translation), DMT Seismograf, 1982
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Salvatore Martirano Sal-Mar Construction (day 2 of 3)
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Charles Amirkhanian and Joan La Barbara Live broadcast
Program 2 - July 7, 1982
https://archive.org/details/NMA_1982_07_07_1
Radio station WFMT in Chicago presents the second 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. The concert begins with a string quartet by John J. Becker, the first deceased composer to have their work performed at a New Music America Festival. This is followed by a work for solo cello by Joseph Paul Taylor and Tableaux Vivants a work for flutes and two voices, by Larry Austin. Other pieces heard in this concert is Centering by Ruth Anderson which use galvanic skin response sensors to trigger oscillators, and Glenn Branca’s very loud work for nine electric guitars and drums, Indeterminate Activity of Resultant Masses. The action then moves to Lake Michigan where a squadron of boats participate in Charlie Morrow’s environmental sound work Toot ‘n’ Blink Chicago by blowing their horns and flashing their lights in accordance with the instructions given over the radio. Intermission features include a profile of John J. Becker as well as a report by Neil Tesser about his work with Kirk Nurock’s Natural Sound Ensemble. This group traveled to the local Chicago Zoo to perform a number of pieces for both human and animal voices, music in the same tradition of Jim Nollman’s Turkey Song.
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Cordier Quartet:
Shem Guibbory, Richard Rood, Linda Elazco & Jeanne LeBlanc
John J. Becker: Soundpiece No. 4
The actual performance made its way onto a recording (maybe - can’t find a reference on discogs) posted on y2b by “Thorsten Gubatz”
The evening concert at the Navy Pier began with John J. Becker's Soundpiece No. 4 from 1937, performed by the Cordier Quartet, who rushed in at the last minute to replace the Kronos, who were still nowhere to be heard. The piece was some 35 minutes long and more reminiscent of Bartok than of any of Becker's brethren from the New Music Quarterly.
- Carl Stone, "Two Reports" Perspectives of New Music, Autumn 1981
***
July 7th saw an evening of more "traditional" contemporary music.
The Cordier String Quartet gave the first informed and inspired performance of any work by mid-westerner John J. Becker (1886-1961) a long-ignored pioneer of avant-garde and one of the experimentalist "American Five."
Soundpiece No. 4 (1937) was presented at the insistence of Cage and American musicologist Don Gillespie. Why are the compositions of Becker and other early experimentalists like Percy Grainger (honored on July 8) neglected?
- M. Staff Brandl + Thomas Emil Homerin, "Big Noise from Lake Michigan", Ear Magazine 1982
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Larry Austin Tableaux Vivants
with Mark Graf, Dary John Mizelle, Phyllis Bruce and David Barron
Tableaux Vivants was composed and printed in 1973, in collaboration with artist Charles Ringness. I wanted to make a piece of music that you could hang on the wall and he wanted to make a lithograph that would sound. Thus far the piece has been performed/shown in galleries in Florida and Canada where the piece is both seen and heard continuously in a gallery environment. It has been performed in Florida and New York in concert situations where musicians take part and the result is a kind of closed form as in the present performance.
The present version is a 1981 revision of the ’73 realization. In the new version, digital synthesis of the sound was utilized and the choice of performers was changed accordingly.
- Larry Austin’s description from program
***
Larry Austin's Tableaux Vivants for flute, shakuhachi, soprano and bass, plus slides and tape, was composed in collaboration with visual artist Charles Ringness, whose photomontages were projected behind the players solemnly lined up on stage. The presentation was of a recent (1981) revision of the work, originally composed in 1973, now featuring digitally synthesized material (with a pronouncedly analog feel, actually) and a new choice of performers. The choice was for the most part a good one, with Dary John Mizelle and Marc Grafe performing tastefully on shakuhachi and flute respectively and David Barron and Phyllis Bruce handling the bass and soprano roles (she with perhaps too much vibrato to blend well into the slow, almost contemplative textures).
- Carl Stone, "Two Reports" Perspectives of New Music, Autumn 1981
***
Tableaux Vivants by Larry Austin incorporated flutes, voices, and digital synthesis, accompanied by slides of lithographs by Charles Ringness, giving an enigmatic feeling of uncertain losss; the faint images of the lithos evoked vague memories owhich coordinated poignantly with the melancholic mood of the music.
- M. Staff Brandl + Thomas Emil Homerin, "Big Noise from Lake Michigan", Ear Magazine 1982
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Julie Green - Joseph Paul Taylor: Solo Cello
My output from 1978 to 1981 was a series of solos for classical instruments. My interest in this format actually developed out of the electronic music that I had been making before. At that time, I was becoming interested in ordinary speech and its influence on melody and musical meaning; I had begun to write down actual conversations in musical notation, trying to capture the vocal inflections and rhythms as accurately as possible. I also began to consider the way these rhythms group themselves into phrases, these phrases into simple song forms, and song forms into large dramatic structures. From these concerns, the solos began to develop.
None of these pieces involves improvisations or indeterminacy; they are written out in every detail. Each involves pitch patterns ranging from highly irregular, speechlike groups of glissandi to elementary, chanting melodies. The rhythmic vocabulary is also wide. Passages often weave gracefully in and out of meters and through rhythmic textures not organized around a beat. I tried to give the overall form a simple, unified shape. The intended character is singing and lyrical.
- Joseph Paul Taylor, program notes
***
Solo Cello, by Joseph Paul Taylor, featured Julie Green as the soloist. The work is one of a series of solo pieces by Houston-born composer Joseph Paul Taylor, all of which use the vocal inflections and rhythms of speech as models. This work is of a larger and more dramatic scale than the others in the series (which include a work for flute and one for violin) and Taylor's command over the rhythmic language and subtleties of expression, beautifully interpreted in turn by Green, is on the rise. The basic expressions of the piece, so fraught with the peril of being either trite or cute, were handled with precision and taste.
- Carl Stone, "Two Reports" Perspectives of New Music, Autumn 1981
***
Joseph Paul Taylor followed with a piece for solo cello, performed by Julie Green.
The composer managed to translate the inflections of ordinary speech into melody in his own "voice," without reference to Bebop.
- M. Staff Brandl + Thomas Emil Homerin, "Big Noise from Lake Michigan", Ear Magazine 1982
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Ruth Anderson Centering
for dancer and 4 musicians
Each observer wears a galvanic skin resistance sensor connected to a sine tone oscillator. The sensor registers electrical currents passing through the skin, indicating biological changes in the wearer’s state of being. The observers, watching the dancer, experience inner kinetic responses to the movements and energy levels of the dancer. These responses activate the oscillators and create the music for the dance. The dancer responds to the music and in turn creates the reactions of the observers.
Between dancer and observers a continous cycling experience forms, making this work a clear auditory and visual realization of our inter-relationships with one another, of our essential unity.
- Ruth Anderson program statement
***
One of the more conceptually unusual pieces followed after inter- mission, Ruth Anderson's Centering. Written for dancer, 4 observer/ musicians and galvanic skin resistance sensors, Centering is a feedback system-the observer/musicians each control an electronic oscillator with their reactions to a dancer, gauged by the skin resistance sensors. The dancer in turn reacts to the changes in the sounds of the oscillators, which in turn causes changes in the reactions of the observer/musicians. A simple and elegant idea, nicely executed by dancer Judith Ragir, despite the somewhat crude sounds of the simple wave-shape oscillators swooping up and down.
- Carl Stone, "Two Reports" Perspectives of New Music, Autumn 1981
***
The complexity of Austin's work was succeeded by the simplicity of Centering by Ruth Anderson. The galvanic skin responses of four individuals to the movements of a dancer generated the electronic sound of this work.
The wave's repetitive variation between higher and lower frequency became tedious; perhaps it could have been altered through the use of multiple dancers of varying styles.
- M. Staff Brandl + Thomas Emil Homerin, "Big Noise from Lake Michigan", Ear Magazine 1982
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Glenn Branca
Indeterminate Activity of Resultant Masses
(with Ned Sublette and maybe another dozen or so performers not listed)
(Programs and reviews refer to "Slow Mass" from "Symphony No. 2: The Peak of the Sacred" but the live program seems to only indicate the other title and in no place do both titles appear… – gd)
New Yorker Glenn Branca inspired the most controversy with Indeterminate Activity of Resultant Masses for nine electric guitars and drum set. The work, played at a deafening volume, was a spellbinding nightmare causing Cage to refer to Branca's music as politically fascist. It also inspired one Midwesterner to corner a member of the band after the performance to say the piece "sounded just like the bookbinding plant" in which she worked, but she really liked it anyway. Perhaps Branca's music wouldn't have appeared so extreme if it hadn't been the final work of a completely acoustic evening.
- Tina Clarke, "Chicago's new music festival filled with sound and fury" Toronto Globe & Mail, July 17, 1982
***
Glenn Branca's Indeterminate Activity of Resultant Masses stood in large contrast to the simplicity of textures in the Anderson piece, and to everything else during the evening as well. Branca's music is usually scored for electric guitars: Indeterminate Activity was for ten of them, plus drums. The guitars are tuned in microtonal relationships to each other, whether exactly or randomly determined was hard to detect. Each guitarist plays single chords as well as repetitive chordal patterns. The sheer density of sound coming from the number of players and the extreme volume of their instruments results in a massed texture wherein all sounds are fused and the individual identity of each instrument is lost.
At times the effect at the Navy Pier was one of pure tapestry and at others, especially as the piece progresses, of a driving, accented force as rhythms were emphasized by Branca, conducting as he played. These rhythms are further accented by the drums, which also articulate passage from section to section. The structural progression of the work is straightforward: its density characteristics are virtually constant, its registral tendency is to get higher; starting extremely loud, it continuously gets louder.
In Chicago it was almost always at the volume level where a physical sensation from the sound is derived, and also seemed consistently at the upper limit of tolerability. Yet as the work gets incrementally louder, the listener's tolerances expand to accommodate the higher limits. The effect was powerful, compelling and totally exhausting-the experience unlike any I had had in recent times, certainly unlike any at New Music America 1982. As the large audience emerged from the auditorium after Branca's performance, many enthusiastic, some outraged, it chanced upon the evening's coda out on the waters of Lake Michigan, as Charlie Morrow's Toot 'n' Blink Chicago was taking place offshore.
- Carl Stone, "Two Reports" Perspectives of New Music, Autumn 1981
***
Indeterminate Activity of Resultant Masses featured composer-guitarist Glenn Branca leading nine other electric guitarists in one of the loudest works on the entire festival. Branca, who does not read music, composes by ear, developing improvisational sound gestures which he writes down in longhand description. In comparison to his earlier works which were shorter and more succinctly stated, Branca's latest work dragged on for too long without direction. When Branca last performed in Chicago over a year and a half ago under the title of "Music for Loud Guitars", his designs were compact and his ideas simple. This example of his latest work was oppressively pedantic. He failed to sustain interest in his continual search for climax. Controversy arose as a result of this performance. During a panel discussion, "Music and Our Changing Culture", the 'Birthday Boy'-as Cage referred to himself-criticized Branca for abusing sound and repressively forcing it upon the audience. Cage further expressed concern for the control Branca seemed to have over his ensemble, which -in Cage's opinion -was reminiscent of a dictatorship.
- Deborah Campana "Two Reports" Perspectives of New Music, Autumn 1981
***
Linda Montana explains how she came to evaluating six performances at NMA Chicago 1982.
"By allowing the Festival sounds and events to work on my body/spirit in this way, I was able to determine which pieces produced effective meditation responses. Although there were many memorable moments during the Festival, I can analyze only six pieces that prepared the ground for deep meditation experiences.
Inside/Outside ... These two approaches were 1. Sounds that allowed the listener to go inside and 2. Sounds that allowed the listener to come out."
Focus outside: Glenn Branca Indeterminate Activity of Resultant Masses (listed in some places as "Slow Mass from Symphony no. 2")
Branca's event forced everyone out - not gently, but conceptually and violently. Nine guitarists lined up and stood in New Wave, inside-tension, martial-arts stances, strumming what seemed to be out-of-tune instruments.
They did not produce conventional sounds but voices, angel songs, glossolalia, and spoken messages from extraterrestrial guides. It made everyone respond automatically, without foreplay, without adequate aural protection. It was anarchic force.
Anyone wanting or looking for EXPERIENCE was satisfied; hearts were sped up, adrenalin rushed, power centers opened and violent fantasies released. Ears were by-passed; bodies were propelled and physiologically manipulated, producing exhilaration, mindlessness, headaches.
Somehow, I liked being brought out of ordinary thought processes this way - although I resented the sleepless night and next day's migtrane and violent fantasies.
- Linda Montano, "Moments of Consciousness", Ear Magazine 1982
***
From this relatively bland work [Ruth Anderson's Centering, the volume of sound radically intensified in Glenn Branca's Symphony No. 2 for electric guitars and drum - even well beyond the level maintained by most rock bands.
This excessive amplification and exaggerated use of guitars (the troops in his "guitar army" numbered ten), together with Branca's quasi-religious intentions (the title of his Symphony No. 2 is The Peak of the Sacred) lent credence to Cage's controversial but revealing evaluation of such works as having a fascist nature.
Nevertheless, this work and those of Jeffrey lohn (performed July 9th) exemplified frequent moments of genuine drama, particularly when engaging dissonance.
- M. Staff Brandl + Thomas Emil Homerin, "Big Noise from Lake Michigan", Ear Magazine 1982
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Cage, John on Glenn Branca with Wim Mertens "His music is evil"
Guitarist Thurston Moore recalls, "I performed in Glenn Branca's ensemble at New Music America in 1980 [that would actually be 1982]. We did this crashing, monolithic guitar piece, with Glenn conducting in his savage, histrionic way, and Cage was completely put off by it. He did an interview the next day, and said he wasn't sure about Branca's music, because he was witnessing an element of fascism he would like to eradicate from the world of music-making. Glenn was incensed, absolutely freaked-out, because Cage was king, and Glenn respected him completely, and all of a sudden he was alluding to Glenn as a fascist."
- Thurston Moore in interview with Kurt B. Reighley, CMJ New Music Monthly April 2000
***
Many [performances] remain vivid in my mind: I especially remember a performance by Glenn Branca, who created music for a large choir of amplified just-intoned electric guitars, to be played loudly, very loudly, so loud in fact that many people streamed out of the performance. The next day at a public gathering in response to a question about the work, John Cage who customarily never said anything negative about another composer's work, remarked, perhaps jokingly, "Mr. Branca's music made my knees hurt." Later, after talking with Branca he was much more conciliatory.
- Joseph Franklin, Settling Scores
***
Glenn Branca staged a wall-of-sound electric guitar extravaganza which John Cage called "evil," Alvin Curran called "fascist" and others called "exhilarating". Cage retraced his opinion on WFMT radio a few days later, saying that all he wanted out of any experience was to be able to use it in some way.
If so many people liked Branca's piece Cage would just have to re-evaluate the music to see what was there and what he could get out of it.
- Chris Merrick, KOPN Columbia, Missouri Music Director in Ear Magazine, Report from "Middle Ear"
***
The new generation has grown up with rock music and rock culture, and they are no longer content to be poor and forgotten. Some of the participants in the festival are already rock stars in New York. This applies, for example, to Glenn Branca, whose work: Indeterminate Activity of Resultant Masses for 11 electric guitars and drums could probably damage the hearing of even the most hardened rock concert-goer. The piece provoked some violent reactions among the audience and among Chicago's somewhat sipped music critics. Even the otherwise open-minded John Cage (whose participation at the festival I will return to) said of this play that it represented evil. After I had hurriedly left the concert hall during the performance of the piece and stood outside listening to it (only 20 db weaker), I actually thought it was exciting music.
- Wayne Siegel, report (google translation from Dutch original), DMT Seismograf, 1982
actual interview of John Cage with Wim Mertens, posted on y2b by “sirvidia”
I haven’t heard it in its entirety, but I presume it’s what was on the "Dip in the Lake compilation. I’ll be transcribing it in the future. - gd
***
Cam Scott analysis of the controversy after the passing of Glenn Branca in 2019
http://www.redwedgemagazine.com/online-issue/fear-of-ascendant
Branca obituary, May 15, 2018 in New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/obituaries/glenn-branca-composer-who-blended-genres-loudly-dies-at-69.html
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Charlie Morrow Toot N Blink Chicago
This would be the same track that can be heard at the end of the Amirkhanian-La Barbara radio broadcast although the album contains tracks of the work being performed elsewhere.
Recipe: Large boats, at anchor in a semi-circle near shore, toot their horns and blink their lights on command by a conductor. The conducting is entirely by voice over broadcast radio. Power boats zoom from a distance to the performance site. The power boats arrive in a rush to end the performance.
The power boat travel and the crescendo of toot’n blink activity by the anchored craft are timed to coincide – approximately half an hour. The entire composition can be performed in reverse, as a decrescendo. A crescendo/decrescendo version and a decresendo/crescendo version are also possible. In each case, the power boat arriving or leaving plays against systematic numerical toot’n blink patterns and segments of free signaling by permission.
Last but perhaps first, I am a horn player and amateur radio operator since childhood and an admirer of boat spectacle. The correspondences with the Futurists make me acutely aware of coming from a place of childlike excitement with outdoor event-making and not a place of ideology and mass manipulation.
I cherish spontaneity and free dialogue, providing situations organized thoroughly enough to instill confidence and structured just enough to permit spontaneous and free dialogue to prevail.
Since childhood, imitating and playing with sounds has been a favorite activity. My mother’s spontaneous piano improvisations, local brass bands, and the congregational chants of the local churches and synagogues of New Jersey are part of me.
- Charlie Morrow program notes
***
A highlight was Charlie Morrow's Toot 'n' Blink. Twenty boats, ranging from speedsters to a huge paddle-wheeler, all surrounded Navy Pier and tooted their horns and blinked their lights.
A thousand concertgoers crowded to watch. As one of the announcer of the piece I am unavoidably biased, but I found it a refreshing excursion into group music, a festive free-for-all with lots o noise and lots of colors.
- Chris Merrick, KOPN Columbia, Missouri Music Director in Ear Magazine, Report from "Middle Ear"
***
As the large audience emerged from the auditorium after Branca's performance, many enthusiastic, some outraged, it chanced upon the evening's coda out on the waters of Lake Michigan, as Charlie Morrow's Toot 'n' Blink Chicago was taking place offshore. Large boats nearby were flashing their lights and sounding their horns at the command of a radio announcer, whose instructions were broadcast to them over WFMT, thereby making them available to the general public. Power boats zoomed in from the distance, their arrival marking the conclusion of the piece.
- Carl Stone, "Two Reports" Perspectives of New Music, Autumn 1981
***
Following this long session, the audience moved outside to the cool shores of Lake Michigan to hear - and see - Charlie Morrow's Toot 'N Blink.
This ambitious undertaking was composed for horns and lights of boats coordinated - or rather conducted - by radio. This work was ideally suited for Chicago and obviously required live attendance.
- M. Staff Brandl + Thomas Emil Homerin, "Big Noise from Lake Michigan", Ear Magazine 1982
***
Apart from the orchestral concert, all concerts at New Music America were performed in the "Navy Pier Auditorium", which is located on an old pier.
After one of the concerts, Charlie Morrow's Toot N’ Blink was performed by a lot of small and large ships that had sailed into the area. Charlie Morrow was in radio contact with all the boats, telling each one when to push and when to flash its lights.
After this festive piece, however, it was John Cage and not Charlie Morrow who was interviewed by the major television companies - they probably thought that it was more relevant to interview the "father of new music" than the composer.
- Wayne Siegel, “Rapporter: New Music America Festivalen 1982” (original Dutch, google translation), DMT Seismograf, 1982
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Robert Ashley Perfect Lives (Private Parts) part 3 S.S. Clipper – Navy Pier
“dean358” posted this compilation of excerpts from the last four parts; no info so not certain who made the edits.
As the y2b details do point out, you can still get it via Lovely Music: