May 10 - 1949 Hans Reichel; 1948 Ingram Marshall
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Reichel
Hans Reichel (who I confess I’ve mixed up with Horst Rickels, but I’ve fixed that reference) performed in Montréal with Tom Cora as part of a sextet named Last Leg. This ensemble included René Lussier and Claude Simard on 2nd and 3rd daxophones and Eric Longsworth and Anne Bourne becoming 2nd and 3rd cellos.
Last Leg / Tom Cora - Hans Reichel
On the French SRC program while doing a wrapup on November 11, this made someone’s “favorites” list, but they only aired 29 seconds worth. Still, a pretty good 29 seconds.
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About that instrument, the daxophone:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daxophone
A song with a rare daxophone solo (which opens the tune) and one which I used for opening theme for my program Music of the Last Century is René Lussier’s Groove d’Enfer (Hell’s groove). This is from Lussier’s first quintet album (guitar/dax, accordion, tuba/euphonium and two drummers), René Lussier Quintette (2019) by the Quintette René Lussier:
(on my to-do list is to reopen my own Wikipedia account - it’s been unused since 2012 when I added “New Music America” - and add René Lussier to the list of “known performers of the instrument”!)
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The Roulette Archives has Hans Reichel playing with Ned Rothenberg and Fred Frith in 1987, but no indication (I’ll have to listen to the stream to find out, eh?) whether he brought along a daxophone for this particular performance:
https://roulette.org/event/hans-reichel-2/
And one of the four tracks from the Cora-Reichel album Angel Carver (Invitations to Dance) is available for immediate sampling until you make the decision to get the whole recording, def with lotsa daxophone.
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Ingram Marshall Mount Vernon, NY 1942
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingram_Marshall
The official website: www.ingrammarshall.net
Ingram Marshall was possibly at the 1980 NMA Minneapolis festival, but under my notes all I have is a title and the words “maybe”, so I’ll have to dig into the Walker Art Center archive contacts to put a fine point on whether this fine work did get performed on June 10, 1980, after all…
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I have little information apart from the program note about his appearance at the next year’s 1981 festival in San Francisco, although the work listed is named Poor People’s Music.
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Fog Tropes was the work performed by the Los Angeles Philarharmonic New Music Group during the 1985 NMA:
From Marshall’s program notes:
Fog Tropes is scored for brass sextet (pairs of trumpets, trombones, horns) and pre-recorded tape. The brass music is processed through a tape delay or digital delay system.
The genesis of the work is as follows: In 1979, performance Grace Ferguson asked me to prepare a "soundscore" for her piece, Don't Sue the Weatherman. I went around the San Francisco Bay and recorded a number of different fog horns. A kind of tape collage resulted, using not only fog horns but other sea sounds, falsetto keenings and gambuh (a Balinese flute). Much electronic processing and tape manipulation were visited upon the raw sounds.
I extracted part of the score, calling it simply Fog, and began playing it as a tape piece before Gradual Requiem. The idea of adding brass music as an overlay - or a trope, if you will - came when John Adams invited me to perform at the San Francisco Symphony's New and Unusual concert series.
He suggested that Fog might benefit from some "live" horns.
So, I composed the new version in January 1982, employing some of the harmonic ideas of Gradual Requiem (e.g. ascending minor triads) and it was premiered at the Japan Center Theatre on February 18th with members of the San Francisco New Music Ensemble, John Adams conducting.
It has since enjoyed performances by other ensembles, including the Pittsburth, St. Louis and San Francisco Symphonies, the Vancouver New Music Society, Solid Brass, and others. A lot of people are reminded of San Francisco when they hear this piece, but not I. To me it is just about fog, and being lost in the fog.
The brass players should sound as if they were off in a raft floating in the middle of a mist-enshrouded bay.
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Also at the 1985 NMA, but Eugene Chadbourne and Weba were the musical entertainments for the next meetup with Marshall: his was one of several composer culinary creations (I missed out on this so I don’t have a menu and it was before Carl Stone got a camera so we don’t even get his expert foodie pix) at a special event at the Park Plaza Hotel. Other menu items were provided by Daniel Lentz, Stephen Mosko, Earl Howard, and Art Jarvinen.
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And the last work that Marshall got to premiere during the NMAs was his Hidden Voices, part of a trilogy of works presented at NMA 1989 in New York City along with Fred Frith and Ed Wilkerson. Here’s the Marshall portion with the NY Times review of all three:
ngram Marshall Hidden Voices (Voces Occultes)
The Nonesuch recording for this work:
https://www.nonesuch.com/albums/three-penitential-visions
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Marshall passed away in 2022 and from WNYC, John Schaffer hosted a memorial tribute which they posted on the y2b: