June 13, 1980 - NMA Minneapolis - Day 7
Julia Heyward ● Julius Eastman with Gwen Goldsmith, Peter Gena and Carol Van Nostrand ● John O'Brien ● Eric Stokes ● Anthony Braxton ● ● Birthdays: Alain Trudel, Liz Phillips
Richard Teitelbaum
Buzz Morrison, KFAI Fresh Air radio special
Tom Johnson and the All Minnesota New Music Orchestra
NNB
55401 (ensemble name)
Julius Eastman with Gwen Goldsmith, Peter Gena and Carol Van Nostrand
Gay Guerilla, Evil Nigger
John O’Brien
Eric Stokes Phonic Paradigm
Minnesota Composers Forum - KSJN Radio Special
Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians - KTWN Radio Special
Anthony Braxton
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Liz Phillips celebrates her birthday on the anniversary of her having presented her installation work Windspun during this month in 1980 at NMA Minneapolis.
This is how her work was presented at her wikipedia profile:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Phillips
At the New Music America festival, held in Minneapolis in 1980, Phillips created Windspun, the first of several ambitious wind-activated sound pieces. Windspun made use of an array of multiple anemometers, each one causing sounds to strengthen and fade. Their multiple locations and complex electronics interacted with the movements of participants in the installation space, resulting in tones that ranged from dense drones to sounds like breathing, depending on the direction and speed of the wind. Slow winds resulted in single tone sounds; stronger winds generated large envelopes of sounds, shaping, combining and fading dense clusters of notes in a process that the artist conceived of as akin to the formation and movement of sand dunes. The second installation of Windspun, in collaboration with Creative Time in New York, was at an alternative energy site operated by the Bronx Frontier Development Corporation on the East River in 1981. This installation made use of a wind turbine on the site. Later wind-activated pieces include Zephyr (1984) and Whitney Windspun, a sound piece included in the 1985 Whitney Biennial.
And though there will be a special post about the installations at the conclusion of the Minneapolis presentations, no harm in making the birthday a good reason to post this period video twice!
So many other sighting! Liz Phillips also presented her work Sunspots at the NMA 1981 San Francisco festival. At the 1982 NMA Chicago festival she presented an installation named Windspun Tower (hopefully I’ll be writing about that in July here), she took part at the NMA 1984 Hartford in a visual sound forum at the Hartford Art Center, at the NMA 1985 Los Angeles festival with a cymbal installation at the Los Angeles Theatre centre. She’s been pretty busy since then as well… Here is her home page for further explorations: http://lizphillips.net/w/ and if you want to go even further, many of her creations have been documented on the superior free video service, Vimeo in her folder at: https://vimeo.com/user7559753
Happy birthday Liz!
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Birthday: Alain Trudel
Born in Montréal in 1966 on this date: Alain Trudel, who performed a multi-composer set at the 1990 Montréal Musiques Actuelles festival (including one of his own compositions). Voici sa biographie, en français!
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Trudel
This was the program presentation of that double gig with cellist Claude Lamothe.
And from the year before, Trudel had received a very rare composer profile on the national CBC AM radio program “Sunday Morning” in 1989, made by Luana Parker.
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June 13, 1980 NMA Minneapolis 1980 - Day 7
Julia Heyward
details yet to be found…
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Julius Eastman Gay Guerilla, Evil Nigger
Archive.org recording of Evil Nigger
https://archive.org/details/NMA_1980_06_XX_02/NMA_1980_06_XX_02_A_ed.wav
Intro and extro by Nigel Redden for the inclusion of Evil Nigger (pianists listed as merely “Evil” at the omradio web page).
Transcript:
39:59
Nigel Redden: “While this celebration is quite apolitical, Morrow’s nature inspired compositions often have politically charged overtones concerned with ecology. Julius Eastman is often inspired by political subjects of a different kind. The title of his two compositions that were performed during the festival, Gay Guerilla and Evil Nigger clearly indicate his political concerns.
Eastman, a composer who falls loosely in the minimalist school, yet whose music is clearly rooted in the Western European tradition, often scores his works for unusual groups of instruments. A piece may be written for 13 cellos or as in the case of Evil Nigger, for four pianos, as we are about to hear.
♪40:42 Julius Eastman, Gwen Goldsmith, Peter Gena and Carol Van Nostrand Evil Nigger (20:06)
1:00:53 applause
1:01:08
Nigel Redden: That was Evil Nigger by Julius Eastman, performed on the seventh day of New Music America by the composer and pianists Gwen Goldsmith, Peter Gena and Carol Van Nostrand. This is New Music America 1980. We will be back with the second half of our program after a brief pause for station identification.
**
https://walkerart.org/collections/publications/jazz/julius-eastman-at-the-walker
Cover photo from Walker Art Center online tribute to Julius Eastman; the above link takes you here with a lot of detail about his working with the Walker Art Center and near the bottom is an actual video of the one hour performance in 1980. More on him and these two works in a separate substack posted today as well.
From the Walker Art Center online archives:
As agreed upon the two works to be performed are Gay Guerrilla & Evil Nigger, the lengths of the pieces are 28:30 and 19:35 respectively, a total 48:05. The instruments to be used are 4 violins, 4 violas, 3 celli, 1 Bass.
Good would be 5 three hour rehearsals. I will arrive the day before the first rehearsal, and I am to receive the agreed [payment] in cash on the day of arrival. Let me know by phone if these things are possible.
Yours, Julius Eastman
♪
The separate substack has links to the many new versions of both works.
Eastman’s studio version of Gay Guerilla with Julius Eastman, Frank Ferko, Patricia Martin and Jannet Kattas - Y2b post by “Orchard Enterprises”
Studio version of Evil Nigger with Julius Eastman y2b post by “Believe SAS”
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No information about these performances (yet!):
Tom Johnson
& the All Minnnesota New Music Allstars
at Nicolet Mall
John O’Brien
at the Walker Art Center
NNB
at the Lake Harriet Bandstand
55401 (ensemble name)
at the Walker Art Center
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Eric Stokes Phonic Paradigm
This appears to have been the first in a series of creations, of which the fourth has been recorded and put on a soundcloud by Zeitgeist who have been presented in previous NMA Minnesota posts. This has the latest iteration and a note about Eric Stokes and his long collaboration with the ensemble.
http://zeitgeistnewmusiclibrary.com/eric-stokes-tintinnabulary-phonic-paradigm-iv/
Slightly tongue-in-cheek program notes:
Traditional music institutions (symphony orhestras, string quartets, bands, choruses, etc.) embody assumptions and attitudes as to what is "musical" and what is not. The choice of personnel, the instruments in use (and their tunings), the design of the buildings where they perform and the way the organizations present themselves in performance constitute a fixed, largely unchanging concept of "music."
In the Phonic Paradigm such assumptions and attitudes do not pertain. Instead we hold that all sounds are innocent until proven guilty; that in their innocence they enjoy inalienable rights to proceed from any point of the compass, out of any height or depth however near or far as soeve called forth by their composers or any other compelling life force.
To realize these things most fully we practice a native grammar in which non-institutional sonic resources play the major part. They include things such as ice, leaves, stones, seed pods, scissors, cutlery, zipers, gloves, files, hunters' wild animal calls, glass, springs, etc. Each movement of the Phonic Paradigm is centered on one or a few of these natural inflections and puts into practice some of their conjugations.
The performance of this music looks to that time when people will lhave true Sound Galleries where all musics may find their best places. These Sound Galleries wil be stripped of the institutional prejudices which continue to hold our native musics hostage to alien, backward-looking practices and artist-colonial powers.
*
Eric Stokes is an older composer who has been teaching at the University of Minnesota for some years. But while most of his counterparts in midwestern universities tend to work very seriously within whatever neoclassic or serial boundaries they started with, Stokes continues to have fun and to probe new areas, even at the risk of being considered naïve or unfocused.
The first movement of his Phonic Paradigm, was a zany little ‘spring song’ in which five players made a variety of boing-boing sounds on a collection of metal springs of varying sizes. The second was a little zanier. Here a few assistants provided sound effects by playing bird whistles all around the hall, while two sopranos sang about an outing they were having. The performers swatted flies periodically and finally fled from the imaginary insects altogether.
The last movement was perhaps even zanier. This was ‘Rock and Roll,’ a title Stokes took literally. At first the five players hit rocks together in interesting rhythms from the periphery of the hall, and later they gathered on the stage and rolled their instruments around. One player broke his rock, the audience had a great time, and the whole affair was quite shocking when viewed as the product of a senior professor at a major university. I was delighted.
- Tom Johnson, “New Music America Takes Over A Town”, Village Voice, June 25, 1980
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Anthony Braxton
Walker Art Center
*
But New Music America brought some of the most rewarding sounds Twin Cities music lovers will hear this year in any style. … Virtuosic saxophonist Anthony Braxton gave a marvelous demonstration of the solo possibilities of his instrument on Friday.
- Jon Bream, Minneapolis Star, June 17, 1979
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