June 7, 1980 - New Music America Minneapolis - day 1
St. Paul Chamber Orch ● Dennis Russell Davies ● Alvin Curran (audio of performance with transcript and soundbites) ● Steve Reich ● Homer Lambrecht
June 7, 1980 New Music America Minneapolis - Day 1
St. Paul Chamber Orchestra with Dennis Russell Davies and William McGlaughlin
Alvin Curran: Small Circles Great Plains
Official program notes
For ease of reading:
Alvin Curran
Rome, Italy
For many years my father led a popular dance band in Providence, Rhode Island called “Marty Curran’s Orchestra – Music for Every Occasion.” Along about the mid-60s my total rejection of institutionalized music led me to two formative paths: collective improvisation and the composing of pure melody. In the early 70s I gathered fifty or so of these monophonic compositions plus a few tunes that had served in film and theatre pieces and published them under the title Music for Every Occasion.
This volume of seemingly simple melodies wanted to be everything, above all a kind of new “Gebrauchsmusik,” readily available to anyone, anywhere, anytime – a popular music beyond nationality, and for all common rites (births, deaths, new moons, etc.), as well as ones yet to evolve. As music intended for professionals and amateurs alike, they appear in precise western notation, but are left open to any suitable and satisfying musical rendition, from straight-forward monophony to elaborate arrangements and improvisation.
Apart from my wanting to affirm melody itself (so long down-graded by post 12-tone mannerism) these works were an attempt to get to the bottom of all music, beginning from its own origins – human song and a way of bringing my own popular music and new music under one roof. These pieces have continued to have a quiet underground diffusion and have been continually used by myself (notably: Madonna and Child, Under the Fig Tree, On My Satin Harp and Walked the Way Home which appear in Songs and View from the Magnetic Garden).
The present suite, though it brings some of these pieces up from underground, is by no means a contradiction in terms; it is in fact a most welcome challenge – not only because it is my first commission from an American orchestra, but because it obliges me to deal with my own works for a new and quite unusual occasion, and to select and recompose them for instruments which have little place in my recent music (dedicated largely to taped natural sounds, synthesizer, voice and piano). So I have tried to make as varied a selection as possible and at the same time cover up the structural seams, so that the music flows from one place to another as naturally as if the musicians had invented it all at the moment.
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NPR/MPR broadcast hosted by Melinda Ward, Media, Walker Art Center
https://archive.org/details/AM_1983_07_19
Transcript:
Alvin Curran, who lives in Italy, was a founding member of Musica Eletronica Viva, an ensemble of musicians who improvised on both acoustic and electronic instruments. Curran played piano and synthesizer as a member of MEV, M-E-V, and continues to use those instruments in his own compositions, often adding recorded sounds of nature.
On the sixth concert of the festival, Curran performed part one of Small Circles Great Plains, a score for the film and dance collaboration of Molly Davies and Sage Coles. Curran improvised on piano to a tape of nature sounds and synthesizer music. Three dancers moved in front of, behind, and finally through three film screens. Molly Davies’ film begins with images of birds in flight, continues with footage of Sage Coles and two other dancers, near ponds and fields in the plains of South Dakota. And ends with the small circles of a department store revolving door.
Often the dancers on stage appeared indistinguishable from their images on the screens. Here now is part one of Alvin Curran’s Small Circles Great Plains.
♪35:03 Alvin Curran Small Circles Great Plains
51:14
Melinda Ward: That was part one of Small Circles Great Plains with composer Alvin Curran improvising on piano to his own prerecorded music for the dance film music collaboration of filmmaker Molly Davies and choreographer Sage Coles.
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Janos Gereben, San Francisco Examiner July 7:
For its chronological newness, most of the music heard here was firmly rooted in the centuries. The best example of that was a 45-minute piece, Music for Every Occasion by Alvin Curran, an East Coast composer in his late 30s who lives in Rome.
Monophonic, unisonic and pentatonic for the most part, this work practically begged for a koto version to provide musical bridges for the Japanese version of ‘As the World Turns’.
With the orchestra humming at times, bird calls on tape and Curran himself producing an (American) Indian chant, rhythmic and tonal dislocations calling attention to the otherwise patently Hollywoodish core of the piece, this series of mild novelties for orchestra could benefit greatly from major editing surgery. With each ‘episode’ cut in half, its pleasantness may increase – along with a needed condensation of its none-too-obvious essence.
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John Rockwell, New York Times,
June 9 “Avant-Gardist Get A Chance to Roam”
The concert ended with the other commission, a 45-minute work for piano, orchestra and electronics by Alvin Curran. Mr. Curran, an American composer who lives in Rome, has heretofore been best known for his solo appearances, and in this piece's nine minute cadenza for himself at the piano, hammering out a frenzied ostinato, wailing away American Indian style into a sound system that "treated" his voice, and supported by two French horns, he achieved a compelling impact. But his orchestral writing which blended folk songs, Western kitsch and na'ive counterpoint, sounded amateurish.
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St. Paul Chamber Orchestra with Dennis Russell Davies and William McGlaughlin
Steve Reich: Octet (later renamed as Eight Lines)
Nonesuch via y2b, Bang on a Can version from 1997 (why are there 10 people on the cover?)
Program notes
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Janos Gereben, San Francisco Examiner July 7:
Steve Reich was represented by his Octet, the 43-year-old New Yorker’s sequel to “Music for 18 Musicians” and the forerunner of his “Music of Large Ensemble”. Pleasant – once again – and free of anything that would engage the heart or mind, the work takes a simple, whistling bit, repeats it ad ostinatum, with small changes occurring in two or three minute intervals. Then the music stops.
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John Rockwell, NY Times: Avant-Gardists Get a Chance to Roam’ June 9, 1980
Two of the three pieces on the chamber orchestra's opening-night concert were commissions. Unfortunately, the festival opened with one of those commissions, a weak, derivative and rather giddy piece by Minnesota's Homer Lambrecht called "Owl." But then there was Steve Reich's characteristically ingenious Octet, played brightly and industriously by a hardworking band of orchestra members.
Wikipedia details on the work (which was renamed Eight Lines)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Lines
Timothy Judd’s Listeners Club blog analysis of the work:
https://thelistenersclub.com/2022/09/02/steve-reichs-eight-lines-octet-cantillation-meets-pulse/
Version by Ensemble Moderne posted on y2b by “Klavier Ank”
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St. Paul Chamber Orchestra
with Dennis Russell Davies and William McGlaughlin
Homer Lambrecht - Owl
Official program poem artist profile thing
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Janos Gereben, San Francisco Examiner, July 7, 1980:
The opening concert was shockingly unshocking. The music was new, all right, with most of the works written within the past few years, but nobody walked out – and there was no reason to do so. There weren’t even boos (only a few hoots after a piece called “Owl”) and three musicians were actually wearing coats and ties.
The New Music in this small auditorium sounded respectable, rather tame, and pleasat. Pleasant? Yes. Without any evidence of the screechy, ear-hurting public image of ‘modern music’.
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John Rockwell, New York Times June 9, 1980:
Two of the three pieces on the chamber orchestra’s opening-night concert were commissions. Unfortunately, the festival opened with one of those commissions, a weak, derivative and rather giddy piece by Minnesota’s Homer Lambrecht called Owl.
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Screen shots from the program were taken from the downloadable pdf that is part of the late Michael Galbreth’s essay on New Music America. Direct link to the Minnesota program photocopy:
https://www.michaelgalbreth.com/_files/ugd/b4072f_f95031e6eaf6403e88eef8271b7fa39c.pdf