June 9, 1981 - NMA San Francisco Day 3
Mary MacArthur ● David Behrman & Bob Watts & Bob Diamond ● The League of Automatic Music Composers ● Joe McPhee ● Joseph Kubera ● John Adams ● Peter Garland ● Robert Ashley
Mary MacArthur, chair - New Music Alliance meeting
David Behrman with Bob Watts and Bob Diamond Cloud Music
Various instrument creators - instrument design workshop
The League of Automatic Music Composers - computer music
Joe McPhee - solo saxophone
Joseph Kubera - John Adams: China Gates for solo piano
Peter Garland with Ronald Erickson and John Tenney Matachin Dances with archive audio (10m excerpt)
Robert Ashley Perfect Lives (Private Parts)
June 9, 1981 in San Francisco…
New Music Alliance, Mary MacArthur [“functions”] at Exploratorium
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David Behrman with Bob Watts and Bob Diamond Cloud Music
Fort Mason Conference Centre
This is from a new presentation in 2013 and the newer artist description:
Cloud Music is a hybrid sound and video installation by Robert Watts, David Behrman, and Bob Diamond. A closed-circuit TV camera is directed at the sky. Custom electronics read the moving image like a sheet of music, transforming the movement of clouds and changing light into a living composition of musical notes. The resulting electronic score fills the space with subtly shifting harmonics, transporting the natural environment into the gallery for an immersive audio-visual experience. At once a playful and conceptual homage to chance, Cloud Music enables us to "listen" to video as a nature-driven event unfolding in real time, creating a new way to experience the world.
https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/cloud-music-86231
And the video that led me to the above link:
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[most likely instrument makers and their fans]
“instrument design workshop” 80 Langton Street
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The League of Automatic Music Composers
Japan Center Theatre
Nice description of the ensemble with a funny note about a rebellious soundman who just wouldn’t give in to the League’s demands!
https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2013/computer-improvisation/
Essay by Rich Gold of the LoAMC in official program
League of Automatic Music Composers profile
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Joe McPhee [solo saxophone]
maybe Anamorphosis?
Japan Center Theatre
Program Notes (retyped below for easier reading)
Born in 1939, Joe McPhee began his musical career playing trumpet, at age 8; since that time he has been on a musical search through improvisation, conceptual studies and composition, encompassing many aspects of acoustical and electronic music. This search has brought wide acclaim across Europe, and increasingly here in the United States. For over 18 years, he supported himself and his music by working in a factory. He is currently Promotion Director for Hat Hut Records.
In the October 1980 Downbeat, reviewer Riggins describes a McPhee performance of Anamorphosis:
This work is distinctive, too, for it possesses inklings of a linearly conceived musical process as opposed to a purely horizontal statement. Going from middle register broken lyricism to upper register harmonic flurries and microtonal explorations, it reveals the saxist’s research into the peculiarities of his horn.
Perhaps the most intersting aspect of McPhee’s work is that, unlike many of his predecessors, he’s almost accomplished the control of strange sound areas of his horn, as well as the soundual (sic) predications they imply thematically - allowing somewhat residual sounds to be fully realized as legitimate.
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Han Reitziger: Um, Joe McPhee, his solo saxophone piece…
Charles Amirkhanian: Very nice.
Han Reitziger: …was, was very nice.
Charles Amirkhanian: Extremely lyrical.
Han Reitziger: Extremely lyrical.
Charles Amirkhanian: And yet he was exploring all the outer reaches of the instrument.
Han Reitziger: Um, yeah.
Charles Amirkhanian: And doing it in a way which was ah, pretty – I’ve never heard that done quite that way.
Han Reitziger: No, no, it’s very special. Ah, another thing which was very nice was a piece Atlantic of George Lewis. It’s ah, at low register, I think it was a bass or so, was a Bflat what he was playing, I’m not exactly what…
Charles Amirkhanian: Three tenor trombones.
Han Reitziger: Oh. It was, it was great what he was doing. Well, he had very good players also.
- From KPFA’s Morning Concert with Charles Amirkhanian June 18, 1981 San Francisco
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Joseph Kubera -
John Adams: China Gates for solo piano
Japan Center Theatre
With the score as presented on the y2b channel of Max Midroit, piano
Apparently, it can be explained. At the y2b site of “saint reukk”
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Peter Garland Matachin Dances Japan Center Theatre
Actual audio from performance (10 min) from Other Musics archive
https://archive.org/details/PeterGarland
Audio description: none, but there was one review back in 2006, by “philomel”
favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite - January 18, 2006
Subject: A glimpse at perfectionPeter Garland's music is much neglected, unjustly swept under the rug by critics who don't understand much Peter Garland himself. This piece, Matachin Dances is by no means a folk piece, but it derives its simplicity, spareness and austerity from the unpretentious qualities of the different folk musics he has studied.
This is a piece that does evoke in some ways the Southwest, but in a very non-subjective way. You won't find the pretense of both popular ideas of what the music of the Southwest should sound like, but you will find in its place a beautiful, tonal work that evokes the soundworld that Garland envisions the Southwest as being.
Even though this piece cuts out (I figured the tape ran out), it's still worth listening to.
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Robert Ashley Perfect Lives (Private Parts)
40th anniversary celebration, June 9, 2023 at Roulette in New York City:
https://roulette.org/event/perfect-lives-screening/
From Vice magazine, 2019: “40 Years Later, Robert Ashley's 'Private Parts' Is Still a Hilarious Mystery”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/zmaxwa/40-years-later-robert-ashleys-private-parts-essay-reissue