July 7, 1984 New Music America Hartford - day 7 - last day / NMA Birthday: Stuart 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
David Hykes and the 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 High Fidelity November 1984
David Hykes and Harmonic Choir:
Ascending and Descending
David Hykes & Harmonic Choir: Arc Descents
David Hykes and the Harmonic Choir: Two Poles
Short interview with excerpts of David Hykes with David Grimes and Lee Majors from the national service of radio in Canada from 1984:
***
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, “A comeback for the musical avant-garde?” St. Louis Globe-Democrat July 14, 1984
♪
William Albright - George Crumb: Pastoral Drone for pipe organ
This recording performed by Gregory D’Agostino but the video also has shots of the score and notes. There are a few others that have been added to the Hartford y2b files at DJ Notdeadyet’s account.
♪
William Albright - Morton Feldman: Principal Sound
Olivier Latry version with sheet music
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Amina Claudine Myers 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 High Fidelity November 1984 november
Amina Claudine Myers Trio Do you want to be saved - Feb 1983, Milan, Italy
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William Albright with Camus Celli
Russell Peck: In the Garden (for pipe organ + drums)
A streamable version found on Peck’s website (not this performance):
https://russellpeck.com/compositions/chamber-music-compositions/in-the-garden/
♪
William Albright: Organbook I
Benediction, Melisma, Fanfare, Recessional
William Albright - William Bolcom: Hydraulis
Here performed by Helge Gramstrup at Vestervig Church on the Marcussen organ in 1979
♪
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)
Arlene Schloss’ video about the 83-84 tour of Symphony No. 4 (Physics)
Actual performance off radio capture:
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Beth Griffin - Morton Feldman: Three Voices
The Joan La Barbara version
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 High Fidelity November 1984
***
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, "New Music Back to Normal", Village Voice July 24, 1984
***
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 begged 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)
===== EVENING PERFORMANCES ==========
Earl Howard 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 High Fidelity N 1984 november
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Terry Riley with Krishna Bhatt The Medicine Wheel
Recorded December 1984:
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Leo Smith
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
From the program:
Terry Riley's composition In C, in its first performance in San Francisco in 1964, revolutionized an art form, pioneering the practice of gradual process in Western music. John Rockwell of the New York Times listed it as one of the ten most important compositions of the past two decades.
Riley has since carried his ideas about the beauty of melodic development, repetitive and slow change into the realm of improvising performance. His music, layered and rich, gives the feelin of an entire wind ensemble.
Riley has been a devoted student of North Indian Master Vocalist Pandit Pran Nath since 1970. He has recorded on Columbia Mastreworks and other European labels. The performance of In C at the 1984 New Music Amreica festival will mark the 20th anniversary of its premiere performance.
"At the time I saw that the opportunity was open to me to go on and do In A and In B-Flat and make each more elaborate. But I felt that In C was really complete, that it's the beginning and end of an idea.
A lot of people have tried to rewrite it, but I haven't. In fact, I never wrote any more music after that: I started improvising. For me, improvisation has become the more important element in the music, the real thing that breathes inspiration and life into it." - Terry Riley
***
… 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 improvisational 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
***
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, "New Music Back to Normal", Village Voice July 24, 1984
***
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, “A comeback for the musical avant-garde?” St. Louis Globe-Democrat July 14
***
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 High Fidelity November 1984
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NMA Birthday:
Steuart Dempster 1936 Berkeley California
At the 1981 festival, Stuart Dempster’s performed this in concert:
After the festival, he returned to the site of Bill Fontana’s work at Pier 2 and that event was broadcast live with host Charles Amirkhanian’s on KPFA.
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
at the 1981 festival, his featured concert work was this one:
wikipedia photo (uncredited):
and a pretty good wikipedia profile with links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Dempster
♪ Los Angeles 1985
In 1985, Dempster joined a group performing Robert Suderberg’s “Freeway Concerto” and this would be an Uber-Los Angeles work as everyone but Dempster played parts of an automobile (even though many of the players were also members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic).
Stephen L. Mosko cond., with 17 musicians incl Todd Winkler and Stuart Dempster - Robert Suderberg: Freeway Concerto
♪ Philadelphia 1987
And in 1987, Stuart Dempster participated in the world premiere of David Mahler’s Fantasy on an American Theme, the theme being “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”. It was to be presented on an outdoor diamond, but in true baseball fashion, that performance was rained out and recreated in a indoor gymnasium. I saved a little bit of what I was able to record, and Joseph Franklin recounted the whole event in his memoir, Settling Scores.
Stuart Dempster – David Mahler:
Dempster’s Fantasy on an American Theme
My recording at a distance of about fifteen minutes worth - it was presented as I remember in a gymnasium where the baseball diamond was diagrammed on the floor.
*
When we accepted David Mahler's proposal for a piece using baseball imagery I suggested that we stage the performance on a baseball diamond in Fairmount Park. Intrigued with the prospect of realizing his work on an actual baseball field and not in an indoor performance space, David agreed although with reservation. After I suggested we have a back-up plan to move the performance indoors in case it rained he felt much better. So did trombonist Stuart Dempster, who would be performing the piece.
Dempster's Fantasy On An American Theme is a collaboration between two close friends, both of whom have used the tape recorder as a musical instrument in the design and realization of a number of musical works. And they are avid baseball fans who often use baseball terminology, strategies and metaphors in their individual and collaborative projects. David and I share backgrounds as players, although my interest in the game has long since diminished, a casualty to the corporate culture that dominates the sport. David on the other hand remains active, playing senior league ball in Seattle where he has resided for 25 years. Unlike me he retains a boyish fascination with baseball, conversing easily about current major league teams and reminiscing about players and teams who excelled in a very different era, before corporate America soiled the game with their selfish promotions and spawned owners
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with an eye only on the bottom line. I'm not certain how much baseball Stuart Dempster played as a young guy but I am certain that he has followed the game closely over the years and is as knowledgeable about current trends and players as is David. Clearly this shared interest and enthusiasm for baseball gives them insight in creating works based on imagery and a legion of richly embroidered metaphors that no other team sport has created.
The production team for New Music America '87 loved the idea of designing a performance scene at an outdoor venue. Production coordinator David Michael Kenney was especially enthusiastic since he too was a former ball player and current fan, as were several members of his team. In collaboration with the sound engineers they designed a set with speakers placed on each base and behind home plate.
Stuart was to stand on the pitcher's mound with a microphone to record his trombone playing and commenting on the mise en scene before him.
While Stuart was performing David would be recording him on a reel-to-reel tape recorder that would eventually reveal the secret to Stuart's seemingly random noise-to-noise playing. After Stuart finished, David would rotate the tape reels so that the take-up reel becomes the source tape; essentially playing back the material that had been recorded just moments before. What is revealed is the song Take Me Out To The Ballgame. Stuart had just played the song backwards. David is a master at using the reel-to-reel tape recorder as a solo instrument, manipulating the recording speeds, reversing the reels to untangle what appears to be spoken gibberish only to reveal a coherent text. These and other techniques he employs in a number of early performance works which have proved popular at New Music events.
With the set ready and everyone in place we were poised to present Dempster's Fantasy On An American Theme on one of the baseball diamonds at Belmont Plateau in Fairmount Park, the site of the afternoon events. But there was a problem: it was clouding up with a forecast for rain.
After consulting with everyone, David decided we should revert to our back-up plan and move the set indoors in a section of Memorial Hall that was reserved for just this purpose. Although most of us were disappointed, we backed David's decision, fully understanding his concerns. It remained cloudy but did not rain that day.
Wearing an antique baseball cap and grey flannel jersey, Stuart played Dempster's Fantasy On An American Theme on his trombone with just the right amount of virtuosity and foolishness, coaxing natural and extended sounds
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from the instrument as easily as Hank Aaron used to roll his wrists and propel a baseball over the left field stands in old Connie Mack Stadium in North Philadelphia. And David rotated the reels on the tape recorder with a gleam in his eye and a bemused look on his face that teased the audience just right.
When the tape played back Stuart's trombone singing "Take me out to the ball game, take me out to the crowd..." in muffled yet easily discerned tones everyone laughed, knowingly of course. It was a great piece but just think how it might have been if it had been played outside on the diamond. Hank would have approved.
- Joseph Franklin Scribing Sound
*
David Mahler's baseball piece combined the national anthem with Take Me Out to the Ball Game to hilarious effect, as trombonist Stuart Dempster made his way around a diamond.
- Kyle Gann, "Quiet Heroics", Village Voice, November 10, 1987