June 12, 1980 NMA Minneapolis - Day 6
Charles Amirkhanian ● William Duckworth (♪ + interview)* ● Neely Bruce* ● Peter Gordon & Love of Life Orchestra* ● Eleanor Hovda ● Leroy Jenkins* & Oliver Lake* ● The Wallets ● ● *with archive audio
John O’Brien
David Behrman Indoor Geyser
Gregory Jones and Roy Sablosky
Information (band name)
Pauline Oliveros - New Music Commissioning Booth
William Duckworth radio special on A Mass for Forgotten Times
Neely Bruce - William Duckworth’s - Time Curve Preludes
Peter Gordon and the Love of Life Orchestra - Geneva
Eleanor Hovda
Leroy Jenkins and Oliver Lake - Duet for the City
Julia Heyward - The Abstractions
Fine Art (ensemble)
The Wallets
June 12, 1980 - New Music America Minneapolis - Day 6
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John O’Brien
David Behrman Indoor Geyser
Gregory Jones and Roy Sablosky
Information (band name)
(seeking information on these events)
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Pauline Oliveros - New Music Commissioning Booth
1986 NMA Houston photo from Michael Galbreth’s essay:
Pauline Oliveros and Mary Luft
(link to Michael Galbreth’s essay at end of scroll.)
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♪
William Duckworth with Charles Amirkhanian
[re work from 1975 and interview in 1980]
https://archive.org/details/P_DUC_WIL_01
Neely Bruce -
William Duckworth: Time Curve Preludes
Program notes:
William Duckworth Lewisburg, Pennyslvania
The Time Curve Preludes reflect my continued intrest in rhythmic structures as a means for formal organization, modal and synthetic scales, and the establishment of musical "centers of gravity' through primary and secondary drones.
In these preludes I have systematically explored several methods of rhythmic organization. First, extensive use is made of the Fibonacci series, a proportional number series in which any number is the sum of the previous two numbers. This series is best expressed in whole numbers as 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, ... I have used these proportions to organize aspects including time lengths, section lengths, and phrase lengths. Second, I have developed additive and reductive systems that, used singularly or in combination, constantly add and/or subtract fixed increments of time. These systems provide formal unity and consistency to the preludes while simultaneously insuring rhythmic variety and asymmetry.
Though they are based on proportional structures, The Time Curve Preludes are not mathematical pieces. Once the formal rhythmic procedures were established, I tried to allow my musical intuition to dominate. This duality of intellect and emotion, and the constant striving to keep the two in artistic balance, defines, for me, a significant aspect of the creative process.
Most Western music achieves musical interest through contrast. In the majority to the preludes, however, I have replaced contrast with a development based on internal unity. Each prelude concentrates on revealing, developing, and sustaining one basic idea, an essentially Eastern concept of organization.
All twenty-four preludes may be considered monothematic. The first piece is a source prelude from which melodic, intervallic, and rhythmic indeas are drawn and transformed. The source prelude is a transformation of an earlier work of mine.
The Last Nocturn, which is based on the Dies irae. This source melody is slowly revealed, from prelude to prelude, by the primary and secondary drones, over the space of one hour. The slowly shifting centers of gravity, produced by holding keys down with lead weights, give the source melody an essentially timeless quality.
*
Description on the Minnesota Public Radio broadcast of the performance:
29:28
Melinda Ward: “William Duckworth is a composer fascinated by rhythmic structures, attempting to use them as a means of organizing music. On the sixth concert of New Music America, Neely Bruce performed Duckworth’s Time Curve Preludes. Bruce is a champion of contemporary music, and Duckworth wrote the pieces with the pianist’s performing abilities in mind.
♪ 29:52 Neely Bruce - William Duckworth: Time Curve Preludes
32:09 applause
Melinda Ward: That was a selection of William Duckworth’s Time Curve Preludes, performed by Neely Bruce.”
Actual concert performance: https://archive.org/details/AM_1983_07_19
Recorded version by Neely Bruce:
https://www.discogs.com/release/416311-William-Duckworth-Neely-Bruce-The-Time-Curve-Preludes
Full version of the work by William Duckworth, also by Neely Bruce in 1979.
*
William Duckworth, a composer who has been teaching at Bucknell University and is now moving to Syracuse, offered ‘The Time Curve Preludes.’ Twelve of these 24 short piano pieces were played by Neely Bruce, a man I knew mostly as the adventurous director of choral activity at Wesleyan University, but who is also a composer and who turned out to be a fine pianist as well, playing with a unique combination of precision and warmth.
The pieces themselves are unique, too. Each prelude seems to be in a different mode, and while these modes are relatively simple, they are also quite unusual. I had the feeling I had never heard any of these combinations of notes before. The music ripples along in fairly regular beats, though it never confines itself to steady eighth notes. The modal qualities, the rhythmic interest, and the purely pianistic discoveries add up to the rather complex sequences that defied my efforts to find specific patterns in what was going on, and yet there was something very smooth and orderly about the way the music progressed. This is no doubt the result of underlying mathematical structures, which, according to the program notes, were derived from the Fibonacci series.
- Tom Johnson, “New Music America Takes Over A Town”, Village Voice, June 25, 1980
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Peter Gordon and the Love of Life Orchestra Geneva
https://archive.org/details/NMA_1980_06_XX_02/NMA_1980_06_XX_02_B_ed.wav
Sparce intro and extro by Nigel Redden for Minnesota Public Radio
1:31:56
Nigel Redden: While Leif Brush is trying to capture the sounds of nature, the sounds of Peter Gordon’s Love of Life Orchestra are extremely urban. Gordon and other orchestra members have been associated with a number of new wave rock bands, as well as with new music groups. They’ve performed in rock havens such as the Mudd Club and new music strongholds such as the Kitchen.
Here now are David Van Tieghem on percussion, Randy Gun and Larry Saltzman on guitar, Al Scotti on bass with composer Peter Gordon playing saxophone and keyboards.
♪ 1:32:22 Peter Gordon and Love of Life Orchestra Extended Niceties (17:57)
1:50:21 (no applause heard)
Nigel Redden: That was Peter Gordon’s Love of Life Orchestra, recorded at Walker Art Center. This has been New Music America 1980, a selection from concerts and musical events that took place in Minneapolis and St. Paul. New Music America was the second in a series of annual new music festivals, the first of which was held at the Kitchen in New York and the third, New Music America 1981, in the San Francisco Bay area.
This is Nigel Redden, director of performing arts at Walker Art Center.
*
The rockiest group on the bill was New York progressive-rock quintet the Love of Life Orchestra, which had a few hot spots that can largely be credited to superb drummer David Van Tieghem, who also performs with Steve Reich.
- Kathleen McKenna, Minneapolis Calendar, July 6, 1980
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Eleanor Hovda
Hopefully a trip to Minnesota might get me more details…
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Leroy Jenkins & Oliver Lake Duet for the City
One month before, they had played Vancouver’s artist run centre, the Western Front; they note that they have audio for research purposes…
https://legacywebsite.front.bc.ca/events/leroy-jenkins-oliver-lake-in-concert/
Two versions of same (Minnesota) performance https://archive.org/details/AM_1983_07_19 and
with Nigel Redden intro
https://archive.org/details/NMA_1980_06_XX_02/NMA_1980_06_XX_02_B_ed.wav
transcript from the archive.org recording with Nigel Redden intros and extros, pertinent to Lake with a clip of Leroy Jenkins
Nigel Redden or Melinda Ward: “We’ll begin with the music of two veterans of avant-garde jazz, violinist LeRoy Jenkins and saxophonist Oliver Lake. Although each musician has a strong reputation in his own right, this marked their first concert of duets together.
Avant-garde, or free jazz, often violates many people’s preconceptions about what jazz should be. Some audience members feel comfortable only with swing, bebop and dixieland. However, musicians like Jenkins and Lake do consider themselves to be firmly within the tradition of Basie and Ellington.
LeRoy Jenkins talks about his own connection to black music.
Leroy Jenkins: We’re not so alienated from our group, our domain, our main body as much as maybe like the White classical ones who don’t seem like – I mean even though the most of our, traditional players, they don’t really like – you know, they don’t – they really wouldn’t play this kind of music. They don’t put it down as strongly as let’s say the traditional classical musician, you know? I mean and we sort of like – most of us in Black music, we like to identify – we don’t like the name jazz necessarily, but we like to identify with all the, you know, the guys who have gone down before. I mean we sort of like learned from them, you know?
But we don’t sort of – we don’t reject them that much. We’re not really rejecting it, you know, we’re not trying to reject anything. Our music is a continuation of what’s been done before.
(extro) Nigel Redden: That was Leroy Jenkins on violin and viola, and Oliver Lake on saxophone in their appearance at New Music America. And all that applause marked a well-deserved standing ovation.
*
But New Music America brought some of the most rewarding sounds Twin Cities music lovers will hear this year in any style. Violinist Leroy Jenkins and saxophonist Oliver Lake, who received the only standing ovations of the Walker concerts, combined for some stirring improvisational duets.
- Jon Bream, Minneapolis Star, June 17, 1980
*
The festival’s only standing ovation went to jazz saxophonist Oliver Lake and violinist Leroy Jenkins, whose combative, dueling solos were an exciting and impeccable illustration of the point of the split-splat-bleep school of improvisatory jazz.
- Kathleen McKenna, Minneapolis Calendar, July 6, 1980
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The Wallets
Re the Wallets (date unknown):
This is not to say that the New Music America Festival was a humorless, academic drudge devoid of eccentrics – there were certainly a few of those. Steven Kramer, former keyboardist with the Contortions, unleashed his no-wave band the Wallets on a downtown shopping mall for a noon concert and outraged the locals, prompting, ‘I thought there was an ordinance against noise’ mutterings and angry phone calls.
Full view of the page:
Screenshots of the Minnesota 1980 New Music America program were taken from the late Michael Galbreth’s essay on the festival. Downloadable pdf direct link:
https://www.michaelgalbreth.com/_files/ugd/b4072f_f95031e6eaf6403e88eef8271b7fa39c.pdf