July 8, 1982 Chicago day 4 / NMA birthdays Percy Grainger, Ge Gan-Ru
Percy Grainger - Charles Amirkhanian - Kirk Nurock - Alvin Curran - Don Malone - Kyle Gann - Cordier String Quartet - Ben Johnston - Jay Clayton - Michael Byron - Joan La Barbara - Robert Ashley
Percy Grainger, American citizen from 1918 on and a big Grieg fan…
Library of Congress photo
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Percy Grainger - 100th birthday concert - hosted by Charles Amirkhanian
Kirk Nurock - Natural Sound Ensemble interactive critters performance
Alvin Curran - Maritime Rites for 50 singers and boats
Salvatore Martirano - Sal-Mar Construction (day 3)
Charles Amirkhanian + Joan La Barbara - live broadcast from festival
Don Malone - Soggetto Cavato for 3 singers and tape
Kyle Gann - Long Night for three pianos
Cordier String Quartet - Ben Johnston: "String Quartet no. 3"
Jay Clayton - works for voice, saxophone and bass
Michael Byron - Ensembles for strings, organ, and 2 piano
Robert Ashley - Perfect Lives (Private Parts) parts 4 and 5
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Percy Grainger 100th birthday concert -
Music for two pianos and band
Charles Amirkhanian presentation, in person and for radio…
https://archive.org/details/NMA_1982_07_08_01
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This year's NEW MUSIC AMERICA, having already broken an unspoken tradition of only presenting the works of composers born in this century when it offered the music of John J. Becker, went on to present an afternoon recital celebrating the 100th birthday of Percy Grainger. The conservative composer seemed out of place in a festival devoted to the presentation of the avant-garde until Charles Amirkhanian pointed out in his introduction that Grainger devoted the last twenty years of his life to developing a system of electronic music composition which he termed "Free Music", notated with zig-zags and curves. Although the experiments never got more than a few feet off the ground (Amirkhanian played a short taped example and later the Cordier Quartet sightread their way through a transcription), the foreknowledge of Grainger's exploratory tendencies and the peek at his eccentric history gave new insight into his piano compositions. Chock-a-block with quirky rhythms and turns of melody and harmony, a number of his works for solo piano, piano four-hands and duo piano ten-hands were performed deftly by a pool of pianists that included Dennis Russell Davies, Yvar Mikhashoff and Neely Bruce.
- Carl Stone, "Two Reports" Perspectives of New Music, Autumn 1981
***
There was an excellent concert celebrating Percy Grainger's 100th birthday, with an informative slide show by poet/composer and Grainger scholar, Charles Amirkhanian.
- Chris Merrick, KOPN Columbia, Missouri Music Director in Ear Magazine, Report from "Middle Ear"
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Kirk Nurock Natural Sound Ensemble
interactive critters performance – Lincoln Park Zoo
Two afternoons of Sound Rituals with the Animals.
Directed by composer Kirk Nurock, a chorus of 20, plus contemporary accordionist William Schimmel will form processions through the Zoo while singing to and with the Sea Lions, Wolves, Monkeys and Birds. The score is based on Nurock’s Natural Sound techniques which encourages everyone to explore his own voice and body sounds regardless of past musical background. Visitors to the Zoo will also be invited to join at certain locations if they choose.
Originally commissioned by the Bronx Zoo in New York, the work is both stimulating and fun. Meditative “om chants,” “rhythm chants,” and mellow chorales communicate healing resonance to other species and develop a feeling of kinship and mutual respect.
- Kirk Nurock’s Program notes
***
Scheduled next that day was a trip to the Lincoln Park Zoo along with Kirk Nurock and the Natural Sound Ensemble, who are an accordionist and a chorus of twenty. Everybody, including all visitors to the zoo, was invited to travel in procession while singing to and with the sea lions, wolves, monkeys and birds in accordance with a score based on Nurock's "Natural Sound" technique which encourages everyone to explore their own voice and body sounds regardless of past musical background. As I could not attend, I have no idea which species found this easiest to do.
- Carl Stone, "Two Reports" Perspectives of New Music, Autumn 1981
***
There was a depressing attempt by Kirk Nurock to communicate with zoo animals through group chanting. The Lincoln Park Zoo is lousy and I couldn't go along with eighty people hollering at a group of wolves inside a concrete pit.
- Chris Merrick, KOPN Columbia, Missouri Music Director in Ear Magazine, Report from "Middle Ear"
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Alvin Curran - Maritime Rites
This recording is from 2004 and employs many of the foghorns from several performances and locations, though the discogs indicates that the piece originated in 1985; the radio broadcast of the 1982 version would beg to differ!
Photo from Alvin Curran’s website - at this link you’ll find details from other performances of the work:
http://www.alvincurran.com/Maritime%20Rites%20new.html
Two other composers used Lake Michigan. "Maritime Rites" by Alvin Curran put 80 people in rowboats, singing popular tunes and classical deities, moving towards and away from the pier, creating an aquatic spatial effect.
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"
***
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.
Another piece involving boats at the same pier was the brainchild of Alvin Curran. A dozen rowing boats with 4-5 people in each rowed up along the pier. Some in the boats sang while others played conch shells. The boats changed position all the time and thereby also changed the distance to the audience, who sat along the pier. But this piece, which was performed by amateur singers (probably rather "non-singers"), reminded me a little too much of "summer camp" in my opinion.
- Wayne Siegel, “Rapporter: New Music America Festivalen 1982” (original Dutch, google translation), DMT Seismograf, 1982
***
Curran’s full description in Ear Magazine, 1982:
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Evening concert - radio broadcast archival copy.
https://archive.org/details/NMA_1982_07_08_2
Contents as follows:
Radio station WFMT in Chicago presents the third 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. Included in this concert are works by Don Malone, Kyle Gann, Ben Johnston, Jay Clayton, and Michael Byron. Intermission features include a roundup of events from earlier in the day, including a noontime concert of Percy Grainger’s music with pianists Dennis Russell Davies, Yvar Mikhashoff, and Neely Bruce, At the end of the program are segments on microtonal composer Harry Partch, pianist and conductor Dennis Russell Davies, and a brief excerpt from an interview with the “bad boy of music”, George Antheil. (from KPFA Folio)
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Don Malone Soggetto Cavato for 3 singers and tape
Soggetto Cavato (1975) is based on a sixteenth century technique of carving a musical theme from a literary source. The most familiar use of this technique is the BACH (B Flat, A, C, B) theme used by several composers. In this piece the source is the names of the performers which are subjected to vivisection and recombination in an electronic environment. The performers for this realization, DARLEEN Cowles, Sheldon SERGE Atovsky and DON Malone are all Chicagoan composer/performers.
- Don Malone, program notes
~~~~~~~~~~appears on the Amirkhanian-La Barbara radio program~~~~~
Kyle Gann’s preserved archival cassettes included an excerpt from this performance, as well as an excerpt from Jay Clayton’s performance later in the evening
***
The main events of Thursday, July 8th began with the work of a true Chicago original, Don Malone.
Currently teaching at Roosevelt University, Malone has recently been working with his Musica Menta, a music and performance art group.
Soggetoo Cavato was a composition based on notes derived from names of the three singers and employed a sixteen-foot tape loop; visually and aurally stimulating, the performance proved a popular favorite.
(Other works by Malone were featured at Cross Currents, a club which presented additional music following each Navy Pier concert.)
- M. Staff Brandl + Thomas Emil Homerin, "Big Noise from Lake Michigan", Ear Magazine 1982
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Kyle Gann with Salvatore Spina and Katie Hildebrand
Long Night for three pianos
Next was Kyle Gann's "Long Night" for three pianos, a work which takes as its premise the importance of change, as opposed to classical music's normal emphasis on unity.
The conceptual inspiration for the piece came from Heiddeger's "Being and Time", a treatise which challenged the dismissal of changing states, whether of mood or states of mind, as ontologically less important than permanent categories.
Each section of Gann's piece had its own mood and tonality, subtly blending with the next.
This soft, slow unfolding of the work made its frequent dissonance surprisingly beautiful.
The excellence of the performers (Gann, Salvatore Spina, and Katy Hildebrandt) relaxed the audience almost into a state of deep breathing.
In fact, Gann named the piece "Long Night" because of its resemblance to a series of dreams which shift and reform into new patterns, all existentially united.
In terms of both conception and experience Gann's composition established an aesthetic high point for the week.
- M. Staff Brandl + Thomas Emil Homerin, "Big Noise from Lake Michigan", Ear Magazine 1982
***
Kyle Gann’s description of the work for the Sarah Cahill version (playing all three parts) at soundohm:
https://www.soundohm.com/product/long-night-2
I wrote Long Night very much under the influence of the philosopher Martin Heidegger, impressed particularly by his phenomenology of moods and his disavowal of personality as a unified, linear consciousness. I wanted a piece that was a series of moods, connected neither linearly nor abruptly, but in overlapping discontinuity; and a unity that was not felt moment to moment, but that would leap out in unpredictable motives and reminiscences. These were the days, you know, when ambient music was still soft and unobtrusive. Each piano part is constructed in repeating loops, whose lengths can usually be altered at will by the pianists, and the relationship between the pianos is unsynchronized and aleatory – which is why, for a recording, only one pianist is necessary. Part of the discontinuity is that the first four sections are in C, the fifth in A, and the last two in C#. I first performed the piece with friends at Northwestern University, and it was later (last, in fact) played at New Music American 1982 in Chicago.
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version with Sarah Cahill playing all three parts, posted by Naxos Streaming:
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Cordier Quartet - Ben Johnston: "String Quartet no. 3"
Ben Johnston is undoubtedly the most well-known composer associated with the city of Chicago, and of course he was also represented at the New Music America festival. Since 1960, Johnston has dealt with microtonality and new voicing methods. Unlike Harry Partch, who created new instruments in order to work in this area, and unlike many other composers who have used electronic means, Ben Johnston has tried to change performance practice and musical notation in order to use traditional instruments for microtonal music.
Actually, Ben Johnston's new 5th String Quartet was scheduled, but the quartet that had commissioned the work could not be in Chicago at the time, so Johnston's 3rd and 4th String Quartets were performed (in sequence) instead. It was beautiful music and skillful handiwork, which was given a confident performance by the very young Cordier Quartet.
- Wayne Siegel, “Rapporter: New Music America Festivalen 1982” (original dutch, google translation), DMT Seismograf, 1982
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Jay Clayton
with Jane Ira Bloom, Brian Smith and Kirk Nurock
works for voice, saxophone and bass
(Note - Kyle Gann’s preserved recording of a portion of this performance is in the above link that includes Don Malone as well)
Following intermission was one of today's most versatile vocalists, Jay Clayton, performing jazz-vocal interpretations.
Her energetic and exciting performance pointed out the dearth of vocal artists at the festival.
- M. Staff Brandl + Thomas Emil Homerin, "Big Noise from Lake Michigan", Ear Magazine 1982
***
Jay Clayton is a well-known jazz singer who also works in avant-garde or experimental music. Alongside his work with his own jazz quintet and vocal ensemble, Jay Clayton is also a member of Steve Reich's ensemble. She has also recorded some of John Cage's early songs on gramophone records. At the festival in Chicago she was accompanied by saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom, bassist Brian Smith and pianist Kirk Nurock. Jay Clayton's style can be described as a technically superior and expressive blend of experimental jazz and be-bop (there are no lyrics). Equally technically superior and expressive was Jane Ira Bloom's saxophone playing. Jay Clayton was also involved in performing another work at the festival.
- Wayne Siegel, “Rapporter: New Music America Festivalen 1982” (original dutch, google translation), DMT Seismograf, 1982
***
The concert series was not without its disappointments. … Jay Clayton, who in the past has dazzled many with her extraordinary vocal renderings (which grew out of scat-singing experiments), was unimpressive as she sang a duet with herself on prerecorded tape and then was accompanied by a jazz combo.
- Deborah Campana "Two Reports" Perspectives of New Music, Autumn 1981
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Kyle Gann, conductor; Neely Bruce, Anthony DeMare, Peter Gordon, Cordier Quartet and Steve Wilson
Michael Byron: Ensembles
for strings, organ, and 2 piano
The evening's concluding performance, by pianist Michael Byron and accompanying strings and synthesizer, could be said to have culminated the following evening (July 9th) in the simpler, hence more elegant, beauty of "Children on the Hill" a work by his teacher Harold Budd.
- M. Staff Brandl + Thomas Emil Homerin, "Big Noise from Lake Michigan", Ear Magazine 1982
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Robert Ashley Perfect Lives (Private Parts) parts 4 + 5
He (and it) is on Bandcamp, you know. But being a video opera, you’re better off with a dvd or VHS or Beta or whatever Lovely Music is providing these days. Part 4 is The Bar.
“We don’t serve fine wines in half pints, Buddy.”
Robert Christgau’s two reviews of Public Lives (Private Parts)
Private Parts [Lovely Music, 1978]
I cannot tell a lie. On each side of this record, the composer reads an abstract prose fiction over "settings for piano and orchestra by `Blue' Gene Tyranny," and that's it. The vocal style is a kind of hypnotic singsong; the quiet settings are dominated by piano, tabla, and what sounds like a string synthesizer. I like it more than Discreet Music, less than Another Green World, and about as much as A Rainbow in Curved Air. I suppose I prefer side one, "The Park," because I like the verbal content more, although in fact I perceive the reading as music, just like I'm supposed to, and have never managed to follow the words all the way through. A friend who's done yoga to this record--not an arty type, incidentally--is reminded of going to sleep as a child with adults talking in the next room. Then again, a rather more avant-garde friend who made me turn it off is reminded of the spoilsport who used to read the rosary for five minutes just before his favorite radio program. A-Perfect Lives (Private Parts)/The Bar [Lovely Music, 1980]
Ashley's previous recorded excursion into pulse-plus-words quasi-rock was appealingly hypnotic, but I thought it inauspicious that when I heard and saw this piece live early in 1980 I had a hard time staying awake. No such omens with the album, which is like a state-of-the-art update of the Velvets' Murder Mystery. One improvement is that you can follow the words, which offer both hook phrases ("We don't serve fine wines in half-pints buddy") and literary satisfaction (dialogue/confrontation between white common-sense-materialist bartender and black cocktail pianist of mystical mien). Also gratifying is the ironic poppish context Ashley finds for the avant-MOR blandouts of such Soho luminaries as producer-arranger Peter Gordon and keyboardist-arranger "Blue" Gene Tyranny. A
(I didn’t ask for permission, so I’ll recommend you check out the originals at https://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=robert+ashley and don’t say where you got it. Warning: very addictive site due to the very efficient search device. - gd)
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NEW MUSIC AMERICA BIRTHDAYS
Percy Grainger 1882, Ge Gan-Ru 1954
July 8 is the birthdate of two composers who were not present at the festivals but one of them being Percy Grainger, the tributes above would suffice!
On the other hand, Ge Gan-Ru only put in one apparance at NMA and that was in Philadelphia in 1987 during Margaret Leng-Tan’s performance. That was however on a grand piano and the only clip I’ve been able to find of her doing a work named Wrong Wrong Wrong by the composer is more recent, but nonetheless worth checking out, posted on y2b by the Milwaukee Present Music presenters:
After I originally posted this, Margaret Leng-Tan directed me to this video of Ge Gan-ru’s Ancient Music presented at Roulette, NYC in 2007 as part of a full evening’s worth of works (thanks, MLT and Roulette!) :
Margaret Leng Tan performs original works by Tan Dun, Ge Gan-ru, and Somei Satoh, and Erik Griswold's prepared piano arrangements of Sichuan folksongs. Ancient Music is at the conclusion:
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The Steel Qin: New Asian Music for Piano
Bitter Vegetables, Bitter Yinyin (trad. Sichuan)
Little Sister Loves a Hard-working man (trad. Sichuan) Arr. by Erik Griswold - prepared piano WORLD PREMIERE
Dew-Fall-Drops (1999) Tan Dun (b.1957) string piano
C-A-G-E (1993) Tan Dun (b.1957) In memory of John Cage string piano
Cosmic Womb (1975) Somei Satoh (b.1947) live and pre-recorded piano
At 9:45:
Gu Yue (Ancient Music) (1986) Ge Gan-ru (b.1954) prepared/string piano