July 7, 1984 New Music America Hartford - day 7 - last day / NMA Birthday: Stewart Dempster
David Hykes - William Albright - Amina Claudine Myers - Glenn Branca - Morton Feldman - Earl Howard - Leo Smith - Khrisna Bhatt - Terry Riley - Beth Griffin - In C 20th anniversary all stars
(gd - I believe that’s Pauline Oliveros on the bottom cut off the list of “In C All Stars”, and “Members of the SEM Ensemble”)
Old state house last day of video showings
Hykes, David Harmonic Choir: Timothy Hill, Rebecca Krause, Theodore Levin, Michelle Hykes Hearing Solar Winds, Parts 1-6
David Hykes and the Harmonic Choir simulated Mongolian chants, producing overtones through circular breathing.
- Brooke Wentz report for High Fidelity 1984 november
Y2b user “Bravehare_” part 1 of Hearing Solar Winds
“IDOL streaming service on y2b” David Hykes & Harmonic Choir: Arc Descents
“CD baby y2b streaming” David Hykes and the Harmonic Choir: Two Poles
discogs entry on the album
https://www.discogs.com/release/3412431-The-Harmonic-Choir-David-Hykes-Hearing-Solar-Winds
Short interview with excerpts of David Hykes with David Grimes and Lee Majors from the national service of radio in Canada from 1984:
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The old truism about how the most meaningful (i.e., the most communicative) artworks are precisely those that are the best crafted was borne out again and again during the festival, of course.
The singing of David Hykes and the Harmonic Choir, for example, made for a transcendental musical experience simply because the rhythmic low and melodic shapes of Hykes' "Hearing Solar Winds" are so inextricably related to the ethereal sound of overtone-coated voices floating weightlessly in a reverberant cathedral.
- James Wierzbicki, St. Louis Globe-Democrat July 14 A comeback for the musical avant-garde?
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Albright, William - George Crumb: Pastoral Drone for pipe organ
Y2b user “zewen sama” performed by Gregory D’Agostino
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Albright, William - Morton Feldman: Principal Sound (1980)
Olivier Latry version with sheet music – y2b user “Le Sheet Music Boi”
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Myers, Amina Claudine and her Voice Choir
The Improvisational Suite for Chorus, Pipe Organ and Percussion: Colors, Earth, Manhattan, Have Mercy Upon Us, Do You Want To Be Saved?
Gospel writer and vocalist Amina Claudine Myers mixed choral resonance with soulful blues organ passages.
- Brooke Wentz report for High Fidelity 1984 november
Amina Claudine Myers Trio recording: Do you want to be saved
from her y2b account, recorded Feb 1983, Milan, Italy
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Albright, William with Camus Celli
Russell Peck: In the Garden (1975) pipe organ + drums
Albright, William Organbook I (1967)
Benediction, Melisma, Fanfare, Recessional pipe organ
Orchard Enterprises Streaming on y2b version
Albright, William William Bolcom: Hydraulis (1971)
Y2b user “ArsX” performed by Helge Gramstrup at Vestervig Church on the Marcussen organ in 1979
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Cathedral of St. Joseph, Wikipedia photo
Glenn Branca Ensemble:
Glenn Branca, Barbara Ess, Greg Letson, Margaret Dewys, Al Arthur, Craig Bromberg, Dan Braun, Tim Sommer, Stephen Wischerth, Dan Witz, Perry Branston
Symphony No. Four (Physics) (1983)
Arlene Schloss’ video about the 83-84 tour of Symphony No. 4 (Physics)
Actual performance recording from radio cap of the last movement:
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Griffin, Beth Morton Feldman: Three Voices
The Joan La Barbara version posted on y2b by “Wellesz Theatre”
At the Cathedral of St. Joseph's, a delicate, celestial work for voice and tape by Morton Feldman calmed all inner ears after the coarse, raw and angst-ridden Glenn Branca blast.
- Brooke Wentz report for High Fidelity 1984 november
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And on the last day of the festival Morton Feldman's Three Voices made me feel like I'd won a free game on a pinball machine. You'd think a work which for an hour and a half rings tiny but willful changes on two or three aural snowflakes (and in which you don't hear three voices but instead a single soprano singing unaccompanied trios with two taped clones of herself) would be hard to take, but after 20 minutes or so it starts to be agreeable as dinner music, though far more emotionally precise. You're in trouble only if you stop listening; even if you drop out for only 30 seconds Feldman may have sidled so far from where he began that you'll be lost when you try to jump back in. Feldman did even more; after six numbing days of New Music America he made me glad to hear music again.
- Geoffrey Stokes, Village Voice July 24 - "New Music Back to Normal"
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That afternoon's programs were held in the magnificent new Cathedral of St. Joseph, a good-guys equivalent of the Temple of Doom (that housed an 8,000 pipe organ). Following inspired performances by David Hykes & the Harmonic Choir and organist William Albright (during which those rock-oriented ears beged for the organ to be turned up), cotton balls were distributed so that the uninitiated wouldn't be caught off-guard by Glenn Branca's upcoming onslaught of sheer volume.
Branca and his 10-piece band let loose with a foundation-shaking set of the last movement from Symphony No. Four (Physics) notable for its compressed fury and the intensity of Branca's free-form conducting/dancing.
- Tristram Lozaw review Boston Rock no. 53 (1984)
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Howard, Earl Naked Charm (1983)
Concerto for alto saxophone and electronic sound
(the accompaniment having been created by Howard on a Serge Modular Music System.)
Earl Howard presented his most evocative piece to date, mingling alto sax with repetitive, bird-crying, water-trickling electronic sounds.
- Brooke Wentz report for High Fidelity 1984 november
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Riley, Terry with Krishna Bhatt The Medicine Wheel
Recorded December 1984:
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Smith, Leo with Frank Gordon, George Alford, Bakida Carroll, Jeanette Moody and Elliott Leib
Journey Unto the Sun in a Rainbow of Love world premiere
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Terry Riley In C
with the In C All Stars: Klucevsek, Williams, Mott, Smith, Goldstein, Uitti, Black, Tenney, Errante, English, Zorn, Oliveros, Bhatt, Celli, Kotik, Noska, Wyckoff, Taylor, Marcucci, Hall, Fulkerson, Mikhashoff, SEM Ensemble members
"In C" 20th anniversary
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… it was the performance of another work that I remember most about the festival.
The year 1984 was the twentieth anniversary of Terry Riley's seminal work In C. To honor Terry and celebrate the impact In C has had on contemporary music, the festival producers organized an "all-star" ensemble consisting of performers and composer-performers featured on the festival. In all there were 30 including singers Joan LaBarbara and Barbara Noska.
Terry Riley, rather than playing piano or saxophone - his usual instruments - joined Joan and Barbara in singing the 53 musical fragments which serve as the score or musical parts for the piece. To gain a better insight into this event, it's important to understand the personalities of this one-time only all-star band.
Almost all of the musicians recruited for this performance were soloists and composers, capable of delivering some truly remarkable performances on their instruments or voices using extended instrumental or vocal techniques, and employing electronic and computer systems to alter and/or expand the range and characteristics of their performances. Earlier in their careers, many of them had been members of orchestras and smaller chamber music ensembles while others were improvising musicians with roots in jazz or rock.
Few of them - at that time – were currently part of an ensemble, most having established their current identities as soloists. Others were used to the give-and-take of improvisional groups where a different kind of ensemble precision was required. In this context, a large group of highly individualized musicians with egos to match their reputations for artistic excellence strive to become a unified ensemble without the guidance of a conductor or other designated leader.
It proved problematic at best. And to make matters more difficult, Terry Riley wanted to perform In C without the "pulse", the two upper high "C-natural" keys on the piano normally played in even eight-note patterns by one of the players to keep everyone together. At the first performance of In C in 1964 Steve Reich, a member of the ensemble, suggested to Terry that they insert the "pulse" in order to keep everyone together. From then on whenever In C was performed the "pulse" was played on the piano. Into this mix of soloists and without the "pulse" to keep everyone together the Relâche ensemble's musicians served as a guidepost of sorts but not without creating some tension within the group.
… In any case, because In C was performed without the pulse and because a true consensus was never reached in terms of certain performance details, the performance was shaky, and, I feel, possibly a bit too long. On the other hand, maybe it was just the right length and the shaky quality was viewed as a virtue: all of these individuals coming together to form a unified whole. Everyone, of course, hears a work like In C in dramatically different ways. The important thing was perhaps not the quality of the performance but the fact it was a celebration of Terry Riley's vision to create a work with such a dramatic, and enduring, effect on 20th century music. It was a very special night.
- From Settling Scores by Joe Franklin
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In the gala In C performance that ended the festival late at night on July 6 (sic), some of the biggest names in new music decided (with Riley's apparent consent; he was one of the performers) to leave out the steady pulse that's supposed to mark the beat, and then - despite hours of rehearsal - couldn't stay together. What kind of example was that to set for eager young visitors from South Carolina, or to the public at large?
- Geoffrey Stokes, Village Voice July 24 - "New Music Back to Normal"
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Terry Riley's In C, given a gala 20th-anniversary performance under the composer's supervision on the festival's concluding concert, remains a classic of the Minimalist school not so much because of the trails it blazed but simply because its chordal shifts and dynamic contrasts are so deftly balanced.
James Wierzbicki, St. Louis Globe-Democrat July 14 “A comeback for the musical avant-garde?”
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The evening concert at Lincoln Theatre featured the 20th anniversary performance of the seminal In C by a 21-piece ensembleled by composer Terry Riley, godfather to modern classicists like Philip Glass and Steve Reich. In C is a modal panorama consisting of 53 short musical figures in a score taht leaves much of the piece to the discretion of the individiaul musicians (the piece ends when all players have finished the 53rd figure). Patterns of notes and pulses, played over a steady C beaten out of a piano, coalesce and dissolve while listeners drift in and out of a semi-hypnotic state. Though the slow, deliberate, hour-long anniversary reading of In C was about 20 minutes longer than the recorded version, it allowed for superbly built tensions that never surfaced in the original.
- Tristram Lozaw review, Boston Rock no. 53 (1984)
Minimalist Terry Riley traveled across the country to present his seminal work In C.
- Brooke Wentz report for High Fidelity 1984 november
posted by y2b user “not-on-spotify”
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NMA Birthday:
Stewart Dempster 1936 Berkeley California
Worth reposting from the 1981 San Francisco NMA with the archive.org description:
Trombonist Stuart Dempster, master of the sewer pipe didjeridu, performs live from San Francisco's Fort Mason's Pier 2, where the sound installation of Bill Fontana, "Landscape Sculpture with Foghorns", created for the 1981 New Music America Festival, was still sounding. Dempster's earlier performance at the Japan Center was a Festival hit, and when Stu went to Pier 2 and heard his alter egos performing across the Bay, he decided then and there to play in concert with the live foghorn feeding from eight locations as they were transmitted live by telephone line to the pier. Sit back and enjoy this two hour sensuous soundscape. (from KPFA Folio)
https://archive.org/details/OTG_1981_08_03_c1
Also worth noting was his appearance at the 1987 Philadelphia festival
performing David Mahler’s Fantasy on an American Theme
and at the 1981 his featured work was this one:
wikipedia photo (uncredited):
and a pretty good wikipedia profile with links: