June 28: New Music America Chicago 1982 - Radio Preview on Music of the Last Century (aired June 2019)
DJ Notdeadyet’s folder of collected y2b videos related (directly or indirectly) to NMA Chicago 1982
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmyw9E0_Jh8axyQBZy_OcoQKIULR9qxyj
Archive audio link:
https://archive.org/details/190626-1400-nma-82-chicago
Music of the Last Century – Chicago 1982 festival aired on June 26, 2019
x- ♪ the song is ended (last tune from previous program)
1:46 Whiny heavily edited diatribe by a post-teen folk musician from the Yukon (wrongly labeled as “a local jazz musician”) denouncing most of jazz as being dominated by patriarchy that intimidates any woman who would dare to take the stage. (forced station promotional insert)
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♪ 3:13 Laurie Anderson Difficult Listening Hour (MotlC theme) Good Evening. Welcome to Difficult Listening Hour. The spot on your dial for that relentless and impenetrable sound of difficult music.
3:35 Georges Dupuis Music of the Last Century, 1982 San Francisco* (sic) New Music America.
♪3:45 LA: So sit both upright in that straight back chair, button that top button and get set for some difficult music. Ooh la.
4:07 gd: And welcome to my program Music of the Last Century. My name is Georges and I am broadcasting, we are broadcasting from the traditional Coast Salish territories of the Songhees and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples, here on CFUV 101.9 FM and as I brekin-, begin every episode, ah it’s going to make me another 200 episodes, I guess – ah, we are going to continue with the reading of A River of Oranges by Aldo and I am up to the chapter called Viale Camice Nere.
The time is April 1945, the war is more or less just ending and Aldo is eight years old and he’s going to have to leave where he is now, but this is the last ah, aspects of him being in the town of Fiume, the city of Fiume.
5:09 reading from Aldo Nazarko’s A River of Oranges
Full audio book can be found – free download – at
10:10
Gd: And we’ll continue with the reading of A River of Oranges by Aldo Nazarko next week on Music of the Last Century and today on Music of the Last Century, well, actually I’ll wait. We have a quick message and then we get into New Music America 1982 in Chicago.
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10:59
Gd: So today on Music of the Last Century, the fourth of twelve programs on the New Music America festival, held in Chicago in 1982. I’m going to try and present excerpts from many works but if you search the phrase “1982 N-M-A Chicago”, “1982 N-M-A Chicago”, do that on You Tube and you can find full versions of all the pieces that I’ve played today, and more pieces that were presented at the 1982 festival, including the rare video that accompanies Meredith Monk’s work Turtle Dreams.
♪ 11:39 Meredith Monk Turtle Dreams (excerpt)
12:42 Joan La Barbara Klee Alee (excerpt)
13:42
Gd: Joan La Barbara, composer and performer Joan La Barbara, performing her composition Klee Alee, and before that, Meredith Monk with the work Turtle Dreams. Both were at the New Music America festival in 1982 and Joan co-hosted six three hour programs for live radio, all which can be found by going to archive.org and searching with the term “New Music America 1982”.
Jill Kroesen was there as well. Here she does – and there she did – Honey, You’re So Mean
♪ 13:59 Jill Kroesen Honey You’re So Mean (excerpt)
14:45
Gd: Now when I filled in for the – ah, Off the Beaten Track program, ah, I did that twice last month and one of the two programs I did was ah, an extended program into the music of Robert Ashley, specifically one of his operas. At New Music America 1982, his entire opera Perfect Lives – A Opera for Television in seven parts was presented. Here is minute thirteen of part three, called The Bank, featuring the vocalist that we just heard Jill Kroesen, and Peter Gordon.
♪ 15:21 Robert Ashley The Bank (excerpt)
16:14
Gd: An excerpt from part four of par-, Perfect Lives (Private Parts), a video opera by Robert Ashley. And I actually played um, an entire two parts of it on a Friday afternoon, I think about a month ago, at 1:00 o’clock. We also heard on that track “Blue” Gene Tyranny, and “Blue” Gene Tyranny and Peter Gordon have sent to our station, CFUV, a re-issue of their mid-1970s experimental music.
Now, there’s no time for those here, but both Tyranny and Peter Gordon were an integral part of Robert Ashley’s opera Private Lives. Here’s a minute from Episode 4, The Bar.
♪ 16:54 Robert Ashley The Bar (excerpt)
♪ 17:45 Peter Gordon with Love of Life Orchestra Siberia (excerpt)
18:36
Gd: The Love of Life Orchestra from their 1982, ’81 album I think Geneva is the title of the album, Siberia is the name of that track. Ah, and before that, ah, Robert Ashley, “Blue” Gene Tyranny and Peter Gordon who led the Love of Life Orchestra with an excerpt from The Bar, part four of Private Lives (Perfect Parts) – or Perfect Lives (Private Parts). From New Music America 1982, Peter Gordon’s Love of Life Orchestra also featured Jill Kroesen who we just heard before that and before that Robert Ashley’s The Bar was the fourth episode – oh, I said all these things. I’m not great with these scripts, you know.
You head Tyranny on the 1981 New Music America program a couple of weeks ago and the two new titles we just got here are from the 1975 albums Out of the Blue and Trust in Rock, so ask your favorite DJ to play it! Here’s Ronald Shannon Jackson and the Decoding Society with Man Dance which was of course – everything here – was performed at the 1982 New Music America festival.
♪ 19:39 Ronald Shannon Jackson + Decoding Society Man Dance (excerpt)
♪ 20:33 Mitchell, Buckner and Oshita Prelude
21:44
Gd: Two pieces that were showing the emergence of the African-American compositional serious music, separated from jazz. Ah, Ronald Shannon Jackson first and the Decoding Society with Man Dance. And Roscoe Mitchell, Thomas Buckner and Gerald Oshita with Prelude.
Ah, Mitchell’s group, the Art Ensemble of Chicago was actually honored that year, and bridges were being laid to equate different concepts of composition. Bridges desperately needed in Victoria where non-white performers rarely are presented in our classical scene.
22:05
When I heard the Kronos Quartet perform Ornette Coleman’s Lonely Woman in 1985, I realized that there was a heck of a lot of new music that neither campus radio nor the CBC told me about, except for – and this is important to the history of new music in Canada – except for the pioneering early Brave New Waves and David Wisdom’s Nightlines.
Composer Peter Gena in the foreword of the official 1982 New Music America program said, “experimental music is a vague description at best and artists can be categorized only in the presence of their contemporaries”. Peter Gena who also organized the festival said “experimentation may also simply be that which is constantly rejected by individual critics.”
And Gena also said, “experimental music in addition” – ah – “Western musical society has taught us that experimentation varies with popularity”.
22:58
New Music America, Brave New Waves and Nightlines gave me the education that you hear on Music of the Last Century. Remember, I was away from this world for 18 years, so a lot that you’ve heard on the sixty eight hours of this program has drawn from those sources back in the 1980s and 90s because I’m too old to plunge into music of this century.
Here’s some more traditional forms presented at New Music America 1982, starting with Brian Eno collaborator Harold Budd.
♪23:30 Harold Budd The Serpent in Quicksilver (excerpt)
♪24:27 Keppler Quartet – Ben Johnston: String Quartet no 3(excerpt)
♪25:23 Guibbory-Rood-Elazco-LeBlanc – J. J. Becker Soundpiece no. 4 (excerpt)
26:29
Gd: And three pieces that presented a little bit more of the conventional ah serious music, or classical modern classical contemporary classical new music twentieth century music or whatever they called it back then, ah, representation.
And because also the festival wanted to make the link with a lot of American composers, and that includes Canadian composers who were ignored for the most part by the courants of, ah, music, especially like the big halls. This is why composers got together to create their own festival. It wasn’t going to happen that they’re going to break the stranglehold of the New York Philharmonic or the big orchestras and ask them to play music of people who weren’t dead.
27:30
Well, ah, they succeeded. And there’s a lot more about their success – ah, this festival started roughly with probably like a hundred thousand dollar budget, and by the time that it ended and I was involved with it in Montréal, it had a million dollar budget, so that by any measure of su-, ah, of ah, success? I guess, there were audiences too. Lots of big audiences.
Anyway, we heard three pieces, Harold Budd with his quiet piano piece with resonant electronic ah reverberations, called The Serpent in Quicksilver. Ben Johnston ah, with String Quartet no. 3 as performed by the Keppler Quartet and J. J. Becker, Soundpiece no. 4 done by a quartet, Guibbory-Rood-Elazco-LeBlanc and you can find all of these, especially the full versions, as I said, if you go to the You Tube site of ah, DJ Notdeadyet and you can do that by simply Googling 1982 NMA Chicago and you’ll find all the music from this program and you can also find files that have – or playlists that have all the complete versions of the pieces of music that I played in the first three programs of this series. I’ll be back right after this.
28:20 podcast ad
28:47
Gd: So as we do at every half hour, checking out the weather. Although I have a feeling you know what it is. It’s sunny. Ah, today is going to – let’s see what they’re calling for – a mix of sun and cloud throughout the day, high UV index seven or high, so don’t burn yourself out there. Ah, getting rain near midnight, so maybe you might want to leave a plant or two out there to get ah their watering that you haven’t been getting around to doing. Well, maybe I’m talking about myself.
29:14
Um, rain tomorrow, though, ah and sun going through ‘til next week and if we look at the concert listings, well, let’s see – regular stuff tonight but I mean if you haven’t checked it out, you should because these things have been on for a long long time and there must be a good reason for that.
Copper Owl at nine o’clock tonight, karaoke Wednesdays featuring You-Ya-Rocker, free. Ah, the TD-Victoria-International Jazz Fest presents Maureen Washington, ah that’s at Hermann’s Jazz Club at 7:30 tonight. Ah, at the Empress, the Q bar presents Danielle Lebaux-Peterson, that’s a free concert at five o’clock.
Ah more of the TD Jazzfest ah with an evening with Jesse Cook at the Royal Theatre, that’s at 7:30. Um, Spiral Swing has every Wednesday at the Spiral Café presents folk music, [...] kind of folk jazz I think with Barry Damon and Diane Tailor, Don Nathan, Larry Frisch and [Jen-Yens Boldeman] and please correct me ah if you want to about ah any of my pronunciations if I don’t get it right.
Vinyl Envy, finally, at 8:00 tonight presents from Nova Scotia, Mama’s Broke and Dana Siepos, and finally at Vista 18 at the Chateau Victoria at eight o’clock, Los Gringos Locos.
30:30
So all of the music on today’s Music of the Last Century as I said is from the 1982 New Music America festival. Ah, I wrote the current Wikipedia, me, ah so you can ask me about if anything is confusing is about it, if you look it up. And I attended the last seven festivals that they did, so that means I went to the New Music America festivals that were held in Hartford, in Los Angeles, in ah Houston, in Philadelphia and Miami, New York City and finally in Montréal.
And um, so when I get around to 1984 to 1990, you’re not only going to be getting my really really quick introductions to these pieces. Ah, I’ll probably be inserting diary excerpts because I wrote during those festivals, about describing them and those have never been published. So some of that will be coming out ah, probably in about two weeks – no three weeks would be the first of those festivals that I attended and can give you kind of a witness reaction to it.
31:26
Um, now today’s program I will make one exception because he will be my very first musical in studio live concert guest, and that’s on next week’s program. From his new, coming out compilation ah, called Pick of the Pops (2017-2018) here is Sol Mogerman and what did I pick? Chain of Life.
♪ 32:02 Sol Mogerman Chain of Life
35:40
Gd: Sol Mogerman and from his upcoming compilation, ah which is a recording that has ah, taken from his three albums released in January, ah the best of those. It’s called The Pick of the Pops and Pops, and the reference to that is because ah, one of his sons basically selected these tunes, ah, so that people could get a very quick look at his recent work.
Ah, and a little bit of a disclosure here, yes. I wrote ah the liner notes to the Pick of the Pops and I have been accompanying Sol on the recording of his future album for the last few weeks to see his compositional process first hand.
So, back to Music of the Last Century and New Music America 1982.
36:29
Now, in the last six months, the world of composition has lost two major figures. Electric guitar brutalist composer Glenn Branca and legendary percussion Z’ev, z-apostrophe-e-v. Branca performed a different work at New Music America 1982 but his Symphony No. 2 featuring Z’ev came out around the same time. Here is the amazing opening.
♪36:55 Glenn Branca with Z’ev Symphony no. 2 (excerpt)
37:51
Gd: Now those of us who remember Glenn Branca’s records when they came out on vinyl will always remember the little, ah, blurb that says on the album, ah, these must be played at the highest possible volume, at the pain threshold if possible. And there was a good reason for that.
Um, at New Music America 1982, he presented the work Indeterminate Activity of Resultant Masses which comes from his creations that include seven to fourteen electric guitars being played so loud that microtonal harmonics – harmonics are produced just like in overtone chanting you know that [imitates a overtone] where you can produce different sounds by combining the.
Well, he did that with electric guitars only much, much, much louder. His ah works usually start slow except for this one with Z’ev opening up with that big bang, ah and very slowly build up to a crescendo and ah, sometimes terrifying. Here is minute six of the Symphony no. 2.
♪38:59 Glenn Branca Symphony no. 2 (excerpt)
39:48
Gd: The festival not only ah was dedicated and paid tribute to the Art Ensemble of Chicago. The festival’s named – oh, it was something, ah, something in the lake – ha! I’ll remember that later. Um, A Dip in the Lake, yes, The festival is subtitled A Dip in the Lake named after a, ah, outdoor performance that John Cage had created and they invited John Cage to be there and ah he was ah presenting different works, or a different aspect of his work at the festival.
40:18
But at the same festival, John Cage, who ah was known for his mostly zen-like peaceful public presence, ah, declared of Glenn Branca’s music, “my feelings were disturbed. I found in myself a willingness to connect the music with evil and power”. The full 18 minute interview of John Cage talking about Glenn Branca, that too is at DJ NDY’s 1982 NMA Chicago playlist, which you can find on You Tube.
40:52
Here is minute number sixteen of Branca’s Symphony no. 2
♪41:00 Glenn Branca Symphony No. 2 (excerpt)
41:57
Gd: An excerpt from around minute 16 of Symphony No. 2 by Glenn Branca, um and you’ll only find the first movement – that I couldn’t find the second movement and so this is not even ah nearing the ending. People have kind of brought their calming medication to these concerts when Branca was performing.
Another work from New Music America that I would need two hours to present is Alvin Lucier’s Crossing but here are two excerpts from the word – the work inspired by the flow of water around [Colorado trunk streets].
♪41:30 Alvin Lucier Crossings
44:21
Gd: Alvin Lucier and two excerpts from the work Crossings ah and that was part of – Alvin Lucier’s been experimental in a scientific way throughout his career, um, but this would be one of his works that you could con-, include in the emerging field of what was called “environmental music”. Now, ah, Alvin Curran, merit-, um, Alvin Curran is a different composer, he was there too. And he presented uh, Maritime Rites.
That work uses natural sounds, including a lighthouse foghorn from New Brunswick. Now, you’ve got remember that back in the 1970s, ah, unlike now, people could not go out into the world and record natural sounds and create with those sounds simultaneously, unless they had really smart knowledge about technology, because back then the recording devices were way too heavy and they didn’t record for very long, so you’d have to do it in bits and pieces unless you were really smart on how you recorded the outdoors. And if you wanted to include it into any kind of a composition as well.
Um, so these were kind of the pioneering works that set out the possibilities of what could be created, and now, today, we have with these, um, very lightweight, very high quality machines, the ability to go anywhere and create sounds anywhere. So, we should be taking advantage of that.
45:41
Another work that ah would be included in what we’d call “environmental music” but this is a little bit more with ceremony, and I’ve presented his music in the past New Music America programs because he was through most of them – Charlie Morrow ah presented Toot N Suite and that was actually performed on and by boats, and I guess that would be Lake Michigan off Chicago.
And finally Kurt Nurock at the festival created musical bridges between humans and animals. This ain’t Dr. Doolittle. You’re going to hear three excerpts from their works and like I said, full versions at the y2b DJ NDY site, ah, just google “1982 N-M-A Chicago”. So, one, Alvin Curran’s Maritime Rites, minute number six, two, Charlie Morrow’s Toot N Blink from the very beginning ah and three, Kirk Nurock, excerpt from his Singing with the Animals at the Bronx Zoo, something that he did only a couple of months before New Music America ’82.
♪46:56 Alvin Curran Maritime Rites (excerpt)
♪47:53 Charlie Morrow Toot N Blink (excerpt)
♪48:54 Kirk Nurock Singing with the Animals at the Bronx Zoo (excerpt)
49:40
Gd: And have you ever wondered what a vegan’s heaven would look like? Well, this is probably what it would sound like. Ken and Kirk Nurock, ah, presenting his work, ah, what was it called animal, animal something? Animal sounds? Ah, we’ll worry about that later. Anyway, singing at the Bronx Zoo with the animals, using compositional techniques of improvisation and seeing how the animals react and you were reacting to the animals reacting to you. Kind of a neat ah, concept. (whispers) Somebody out there should do it.
Ah, before that Charlie Morrow and his multi-boat extravaganza on Lake Michigan called Toot N Blink and before that Alvin Curran and Maritime Rites, ah, all presented at the New Music America festival, and I’ve got one long piece to finish the program, and that will start right after this.
50:32 program promo
51:05
Gd: And that’s it for Music of the Last Century and coming up is the Fiji Mermaid Radio Program. I’ll leave you know with Steve Reich’s presentation at New Music America 1982, his setting of Hebrew psalms for four women’s voices and minimalist instrumentation, using as title the original Hebrew for psalms, Tehillim.
Ah, they actually recorded on ECM, a very good record. You can find all of the full versions of the music that I presented today at the official Music of the Last Century you tube page, assigned to DJ Notdeadyet. Just search the phrase “1982 N-M-A Chicago” and you’ll be able to find all that I presented and much more.
Ah, next week, Victoria’s Sol Mogerman is going to be here live** and in two weeks, we start the last eight programs in the series. Thank you for listening. I’ll be back next week. Thank you, bye-bye.
♪52:08 Steve Reich Tehillim (excerpt)
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*oops, said San Francisco in the first intro!
**Minutes after finishing the program, after having promoting it for two weeks and having sent three confirming emails and conversations about Sol Mogerman’s guest gig the next week, the idiot music director at the Station decided to tell me only after the program ended that, “oh, I forgot to tell you we won’t have a tech available for the next six weeks. You can’t do the live show.”