June 7, 1981 - NMA San Francisco - Day 1
Humbert & Rosenboom ● Robin Kirk welcome ● KPFA Amirkhanian series ● Paul Demarinis & Anne Klingensmith ● Stuart Dempster ● (Wadada) Leo Smith Ensemble ● Terry Allen ● Nicolas Collins ● Liz Phillips
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Jacqueline Humbert and David Rosenboom
Paul Demarinis with Anne Klingensmith - songs
Maggi Payne - electronics
Stuart Dempster Didjeridervish
Leo Smith Ensemble
Terry Allen - country songs with solo piano
Nicolas Collins Water Works
Liz Phillips Sunspots
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(May 30, 1981)
Jacqueline Humbert and David Rosenboom - J. Jasmine Review at Macy’s
from the Unseen Worlds label y2b channel:
This performance preceded the first day of concerts, and I had thought I had placed it somewhere else, so there may be a duplication for the time being. But certainly one worth repeating…
The J. Jasmine project was multi-faceted and this album made in 1978 was rereleased by Other Minds in 2018.
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June 7, 1981 - New Music America San Francisco - Day 1
(from KPFA folio at https://archive.org/details/kpfafoliojun81paci )
Full festival program available as hour-long pdf rentals at
https://archive.org/details/newmusicamerica80000vari/page/n3/mode/2up
A blurry but appreciated b+w photocopy of full NMA 1981 festival program can be found as a downloadable pdf (no time limit!) at the website of the late Michael Galbreth. Scroll down in that document and you’ll also find full program reproductions of 1979’s New York City New Music New York, 1980’s Minneapolis, 1980, Chicago 1982 and Washington 1983 as well.
https://www.michaelgalbreth.com/new-music-america
https://www.michaelgalbreth.com/_files/ugd/b4072f_efcb98c9bb70451e8ef98fbc89cf2f41.pdf
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NEW MUSIC AMERICA '81 FESTIVAL A Festival of Contemporary Music presented by the New Music Alliance and the San Francisco Examiner. Copyright 1981 New Music Alliance/New Music America NEW MUSIC AMERICA '81 JUNE 7-13, 1981
Welcome essay from the official program, 1981
by Robin Kirk
A friend of mine called this the "one-day-at-a-time-decade". Things are changing so rapidly in our lives that it is difficult to project beyond the immediate. However, that shortsightedness can mean relinquishing control over the direction of the change. We all need the support and commitment of friends and colleagues.
It is my hope that this festival will bring diverse groups of people together. The festival's visibility will introduce new music to new audiences, composers working from a broad range of concerns will have an opportunity to interact with one another, new sources of funding for contemporary arts will be tapped, and people will work collectively to solve problems.
Sources of funding are shifting and circumstances are economically uncertain. Federal funds are reduced and rather than that becoming a divisive force in the field, we will have to find new means of supporting our art.
It is my intention for the festival to be an expression of our unity. For me it has been an exciting and satisfying project. I have received support, commitment and energy from numerous individuals and organizations. I especially want to thank Rose Butte, Deborah O'Grady, Marina LaPalma and the rest of the staff and advisory committee without whom New Music America '81 would not have occurred.
From each event like this, new ideas and changes evolve. A basic premise behind new music is that artists experiment with new techniques and ideas. In each year, the region that produces a new music festival will be able to express ideas and music unique to that time and place.
I would like to give special thanks to the San Francisco Examiner for co-sponsoring the festival with the New Music Alliance. I would also like to thank the Exploratorium, Mills College, the Center for Contemporary Music, 80 Langton Street, the San Francisco Symphony, the L.J. and Mary C. Skaggs Foundation, the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music, Satellite Program Development Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, Bay Area Art Services, Paul Fromm Fund for Music, Chevron U.S.A., the Pacific Telephone Company, and Levi Strauss & Co. as well as Meet the Composer, Jeanne Marc, and all of the other institutions and individuals whose cooperation and support made this event possible.
Robin Kirk, Festival Director.
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Charles Amirkhanian and KPFA present a series of programs
KPFA Focus magazine essay:
Program number one:
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Paul Demarinis with Anne Klingensmith [songs]
“Paul DeMarinis has been a research fellow at the Center for Music Experiment at the University of California, San Diego, and has taught at San Francisco State…
♪
On a morning radio program at KPFA aired June 18, 1981, Charles Amirkhanian and Han Reitziger discuss the opening piece which can for the most part be heard in the background at a 10% level. Amirkhanian makes some kind of vague implication about radio listenership in the midwest and Alaska, and speculating on how they’re reacting to this opening number of the opening program broadcast live. https://archive.org/details/NMA_1981_06_18
Charles Amirkhanian: …and ah also, on the festival there was a fascinating opening, I remember the shock that I had ah when I was introducing the first concert of the evening and we said, “now the first event from New Music America,” mind you this is going to forty stations from Kodiac, Alaska to…
Han Reitziger: Yeah.
Charles Amirkhanian: …Miami, Florida…
Han Reitziger: That must be a sensation…
Charles Amirkhanian: Every, everybody’s listening and – and I can just see somebody in Lawrence, Kansas saying “ah, this music by Paul DeMarinis, this is really what, what I thought it would be like!”
Han Reitziger: Yeah.
♪18: 24 Paul Demarinis (12 seconds before Amirkhanian starts talking over it)
Charles Amirkhanian: This is one of those speak and spell toys which has been reprogrammed to say more mu-, ah music maestro, please…
Han Reitziger: Yeah.
♪ 18:44 Paul Demarinis (to 19:18 until Amirkhanian starts talking over it again)
Charles Amirkhanian: This is one of the ah songs by Paul Demarinis which opened New Music America ’81 on Sunday, June 7th and we’re talking with Han Reitziger who is the Music Director of VPRO radio in the Netherlands.
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♪
Maggi Payne Ling
Program notes:
Maggi Payne was born in 1945 in Texas. Her performances often involve the use of video, film, abstract slides, and/or dance. Since 1972 she has been a recording engineer and synthesizer instructor at the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College and is currently on the faculty at Mills.
Ling was completed in January of 1981. It was composed using a Moog synthesizer and auxiliary equipment, including some Ling peak/notch filters from which the piece derives its name. The original tracks were then transferred to a twelve track tape machine, segments of which included numerous premixes involving up to thirty-two tracks at one time, and then remixed in both quad and stereo versions.
Spatial location of sounds and complex timbral changes were major concerns of the work. Structurally the piece is clear, with large areas of clearly differing textures. On a small scale, however, the sounds are continually shifting spatially and timbrally.
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Stuart Dempster Didjeridervish
New Albion Records release:
Charles Amirkhanian: What about ah, did you happen to hear Stewart Dempster?
Han Reitziger: Oh yes, in the – that was the first evening.
Charles Amirkhanian: With the didgeridoo, (chuckles)
Han Reitziger: That was really amazing.
Charles Amirkhanian: Especially in the hall, don’t you think because the ra-…
Han Reitziger: Ah, yeah, I think it – it must have uh, worked better in the hall than it did ah on um, that’s what I saw it on the radio, because in the hall, he walked around and and and turned around all the time with the instrument, and that gives, gives a very special effect.
Charles Amirkhanian: Yeah. He’s going to be doing that on, ah, KPFA August 3rd from 9 to 11 in the evening, we’re going to have him live for two hours at Pier Two where the foghorn installation is.
Han Reitziger: He does?
Charles Amirkhanian: Yeah. You know he went out there and he looked at that installation and there’s a six hundred foot long pier, very very long pier…
Han Reitziger: Is that the Pier Two with the Fontana piece?
Charles Amirkhanian: Yeah.
Han Reitziger: Yeah.
Charles Amirkhanian: He was inside that and playing with his didgeridoo which is a, essentially a black sewer pipe made out of plastic which is about four inches in diameter, and about four feet long. And he gets a tremendous sound of that. Well, he played with the foghorns playing in the background for a while and they decided, since we have phone lines to KPFA where we can just do this, and we hear the ah, foghorns in the background when there’s fog…
(live feed from the Pier demonstrated)
…that he would ah play on an evening and play with the foghorn and we’re going to broadcast it live for a couple of hours. That’s on Monday evening, August 3rd.
- From KPFA’s Morning Concert with Charles Amirkhanian June 18, 1981 San Francisco
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Leo Smith Ensemble [new ‘jazz’] Japan Center Theatre
Program notes:
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Terry Allen [country songs with solo piano]
Golden Gate Ferry Terminal
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Nicolas Collins Water Works installation opening
Description: An acoustically variable room-within-a-room. A patchwork tent of old sails is hung from pulleys. Water ballast is pumped between buckets suspended from the tent. The redistribution of water weight causes sections of the fabric to rise and fall. Installation at PS1, London Island City, Sept.- Nov. 1980. Video shot and edited by Shalom Gorewitz. My earliest installation project for which I have video documentation. Long and pretty minimal.
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Liz Phillips Sunspots installation opening
Computer Music Journal, Fall 1982
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“The first Broadcast (American Radio History Was Made)”
On June 7, 1981, American radio history was made as the first live broadcasts of seven consecutive evenings for New Music America ’81 hit the airwaves. These broadcasts, distributed nationally by satellite, are available to all non-commercial stations free of charge. New Music America ’81 is the third annual presentation of the New Music Alliance, a project which began in 1979 at the Kitchen Center for Music and Video in New York and continued in 1989 at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
Included in this year’s event were sound installations and free outdoor performances in various locations in San Francisco, workshops on computers in music, instrument design and building, improvisation and publishing and distribution of new music, conference and concurrent programming. These activities were highlighted by the evening concerts at the Japan Center Theatre which are planned for broadcast.
Programming of the Japan Center Theatre evening concerts were planned to reflect the major trends in American contemporary music. Idioms as diverse as Gamelan, Electronic, Indian Classical, New Performance and Acoustic were presented on each evening program.
- From NAMES Music Journal, May 1, 1981 (unsigned)