(Oct 21) RETURN TO THE POLKA PARTY! Guy Klucevsek's "Polka From The Fringe" at NMA87
A transcription of the Relâche Chronicles podcast no. 10 hosted by Joseph Franklin
Relâche Chronicles no. 10 Polka from the Fringe
https://www.relache.org/podcast/episode/7a58a26b/episode-ten-guy-klucevseks-polka-from-the-fringe
♪0:00 Guy Klucevsek (excerpt)
0:13 Joseph Franklin: Welcome to Episode 10 of the Relâche Chronicles. My name is Joseph Franklin and along with…
Arthur Stidfole: Arthur Stidfole…
Joe Kasinskas: Joe Kasinskas…
Joseph Franklin: Together, we’re going to talk about New Music America 1987 in Philadelphia. It was produced by the Relâche Organization. For today’s episode however, we’re going to focus on one composer and that one composer is our old friend Guy Klucevsek. And we’re going to focus on his work titled Polka From the Fringe, a truly unique event in the context of the festivals – notice I said festivals – no other New Music America festival had anything quite like it and we were honored to be able to present it, present the premiere in its solo version that Guy created.
[...] : What made you decide not to produce Polka From the Fringe in a proscenium-style setting?
Joseph Franklin: I never thought of the proscenium theatre. I guess that’s the way to answer it. And I had only envisioned it in a, ah, in a bar-like setting. I am comfortable saying that I knew many of the bars around Philadelphia, and I knew many of the owners personally.
1:08 And my initial thought was to talk to a guy who owned a restaurant on Second Street, and had an upstairs venue. Then I realized that the upstairs venue is probably too small, so I think it went in the conversation with David Michael Kenney – he had an idea to talk to an old friend of his.
[...] : Is this about David Michael Kenney?
Joseph Franklin: Well, one of the issues that we faced organizationally was finding the right person who could serve as production coordinator for a festival this size. Fortunately, we had the person. His name is David Michael Kenney and he’s known to the Philadelphia music and theatre groups as DMK and DMK Productions.
David’s task was enormous. He was responsible to oversee the teams that ran the productions at three separate venues plus five outdoor installations, plus the odd piece, such as Polka From the Fringe. David, what let you to Revival? It turned out to be a perfect venue for Polka From the Fringe.
2:03
David Michael Kenney: (chuckles) Ironically, it was a friend of mine from high school who was a upstart as a club owner and trying to make that, ah, venue work and ah, the – the deal was, hey, I can bring all kinds of new people in here as part of this international, ah, music festival. Ah, if you can give us ah, the stage and ah, let us work with the sound and lighting system.
And he said, well, what kind of music? I said, “accordion!” And he (chuckles) looked at me and I said, but it’s really really different. (Laughs) So we went with it.
[...] : Here we are, years after the fact and we’re talking to Guy Klucevsek about Polka From the Fringe, an idea that came up at an earlier New Music America festival, and blossomed with New Music America in Philadelphia.
2:48
Guy Klucevsek: It was in New Music America Houston – the late pianist Yvar Mikhashoff was playing his Tango Project which he had commissioned those two great tangos for him and at one point, (chuckles) in the break in the action, my – my friend Lois Vierk sitting next to me, and she said, “you know what you should do?” and I got it now, that it seemed like [...] and there it was born, and um, I decided that I would invite ah people that I knew.
And that was – I would not go to any – ah, who I had – didn’t have a personal connection with. And another new music connection was that New Music America Hartford ’84 was where I first heard John Zorn’s, ah, one of his game pieces and in that band, ah, I ended up playing with him the next year for Zorn’s Cobra piece. We did a – his Cobra big band, we did a tour with that.
3:34 And a number of the people that I invited were from that band. But I was also very fortunate at the time that I was – I had, ah, interests in a lot of different fields and I was playing with people with a – from a lot of different genres.
3:48
[...] : You’ve mentioned Carl Finch a couple of times.
Guy Klucevsek: Carl Finch is somebody that I had never played with but I knew his music because his Brave Combo band, which was always one of my favorite bands, and ah, his knowledge of various styles of polkas, waltzes, and every genre under the sun. And one of my favorite stories about him is that ah, we – we co-produced part of an album of mine years ago, where his band was playing some of my music with me.
I had one waltz but I hadn’t arranged for that. Said, okay, well, for the drums, do you want a Slovenian waltz beat, a Polish waltz beat, Czech waltz beat, Cajun waltz beat, Texmex waltz beat, so (chuckles) he knew different patterns – all these genres within a genre, you know? He’s such a historian about dance styles from different cultures and how they differ from one culture to – to another.
4:35 Polka From the Fringe represented a cross-section of the musical culture of New York at the time. There was so much activity and so many different kinds of venues in so many different locations in the city. These places were in Manhattan, where I used to play and where I heard these people and where I played with people. And many different scenes, ah, from experimental jazz to free improvisation, to notated music, to world music.
So to me it was a celebration of that and that’s what made it special, combined with my background, playing Slovenian-American as a kid and where I was at that point in my life, in ’87. And a good representation of that is the piece that kicked the project off, which was ah, The Grass It Was Blue (Ain’t Nothing But A Polka) which I had written a year or two before for a dance company.
5:18 But it kind of encapsulated combining the kind of a new music techniques that I had ah been developing as a classical composer. The whole piece is in 2/4 and it’s – it’s all over a C Major chord (chuckles) and um, with tons of variations and there are quotes from In C and also Sprach Zarathustra and John Williams’s theme for Jaws. So anyway, it was (chuckles), it was a apt piece to kick off of the project with.
Ah, thank you to Joseph Franklin for ah, when I suggested the idea of it for New Music America Philadelphia, he jumped right on it. I have to say it was probably the most memorable musical experience I’ve ever had in my life, certainly as a soloist it was.
5:59 [...] : Well, I think for a lot of the audience, it was completely a memorable event. It truly opened up a whole new horizon for everybody who was in that audience. “You can do that?” (chuckles) And I think the whole field was different.
Joseph Franklin: New Music America Philadelphia was the eighth festival, and I attended six of those, leading up to Philly. One thing that I always came away from this festival with, was everybody was so serious, you know? And then Polka From the Fringe came along. It had everything. People really, really got it and really grooved on it. It was a great night.
[...] : Yeah, that night you really engaged the audience. It was ah, I – I remember that, it was like very, very personal and everyone was at ease. This polka, that polka, it really turned the – the whole notion of polka on its head.
Guy Klucevsek: I mean there were a bunch of firsts for me. It wa-, first – it was the first time I had played for what you call stadium seating, which means everyone was standing. (Laughs)
[...] : (Laughs)
Guy Klucevsek: That, that was a first (chuckles) for me! It’s the first time that I played in life like a big kind of rock club or whatever kind of club that was. Ah, it was the first time that I played in a venue that had bouncers at the door. (Laughs)
[...] : (Laughs)
7:05 Guy Klucevsek: But the other really special thing was that I was playing for an audience filled with – with new music people, whether it was composers, performers, or fans, all of the above, and it was a very large audience. I mean, normally in New York when I was playing alternative events, it would be in a small place, very serious vibe, everybody – all five people sitting (chuckles) sitting in chairs, you know, waiting for the quorum of ten people.
7:29 Ah, and um, this was like – it shattered everything. And – and I had no idea what to expect, really, and I don’t think before then I had really gotten into the habit of ah, announcing pieces. Ah, usually it was printed programs. There was no program there because not every composer had a title, plus who wants somebody holding a beer in one hand and a program in the other?
In fact, I don’t even remember if I had decided beforehand that I would announce the pieces, and I actually, I didn’t for the very first piece, of Christian Marclay’s, that I started off the evening, because it started off with a big LP explosion, you know, of polka beginnings. Christian Marclay does ah samples from LPs in those days, and it was (chuckles) the piece was – the form was ah, beginnings, middles and ends of traditional polkas that he found on LPs. And ah, he presents all the beginnings first, and then all the middles and then all the ends, and what he did was he made a recording for me of that with a lot of holes in it, and the holes were for me to improvise in it.
8:25 So there’s no score, all there is, is the audio tape of what he made from the samples and then he left the space for me to do my own thing. And thus, like whenever I wanted to, I could also improvise over the recorded material, if I – if I felt like it, which I did now and then.
8:39 Joseph Franklin: After the premiere of Polka From the Fringe, he organized a band and made arrangements of the pieces that you’re playing on the, ah, on the premiere. Tell us more about that.
Guy Klucevsek: I played Polka From the Fringe twice, ah, with a band in Japan. And the first time was for Music Today Festival curated by Toru Takemitsu, and from him I had gotten this wonderful postcard that said, “Hello! I am Toru Takemitsu. I am composer. I would like to invite you and anything but a polka band (Laughs) to play.
[...] : (Laughs)
Guy Klucevsek: The name of the band was Ain’t Nothing But A Polka Band! And he got it more accurately, yes! (Laughs)
[...] : (Laughs)
Guy Klucevsek: Anything But A Polka Band, to my festival! And that was in a very formal theatre, the Ginza Season which was at the top of a department store. A lot of the places are. And very formal, and ah, in that one week we played through all the pieces in the first half and all the clapping was like (claps twice) and it was over.
(Laughs)
9:32 And I thought – and we had to do instrument changes between pieces and I thought we were dying.
(Laughs)
And that at intermission, like – when we – obviously we had finished the first half, and then they applauded for like five minutes. So it was considered impolite to – to clap between such short pieces, I guess. And they loved it.
9:49 Joseph Franklin: Each of these pieces are so unique, but a couple of them, you really seemed to get a kick out of talking about them. One of them is Guy de Bievre. [gd – “Polka Dots and Laser Beams”]
Guy Klucevsek: The Guy de Bievre piece, what I said was – was, ah accurate, but in the second section of the piece, he does something different and on the beginning I said I – I said that he counted the number of no-, pitch, pitches like a number of Bs and C Sharps and all that that happened throughout the first section. Then he presents all the Bs at the beginning and then he follows it with all the C Sharps and all that but he keeps the same rhythm of the piece.
Well, in the middle section, he does something different, which he keeps all the notes where they were, but he used some, some algorithm to – to insert rests so not all the notes are playing. (Chuckles) So there’s always holes in the fabric, you know, almost like someone had taken the sheet music and cut it, cut out certain measure, you know?
10:33 But I – I don’t know, um, how to say that in a pithy and understandable way, or if I just did.
[...] : Guy, ah, in listening to Bobby Previte’s polka, it seems ah, rather different, even strange.
Guy Klucevsek: Bobby Previte’s ah, Nova Scotia Polka, a beautiful polka in terms of sheer sonic beauty. I – it’s right up there. Um, two things, one, it’s not really a polka, which Bobby will be the first to admit. (Laughs) But it – whatever it is, it’s gorgeous, and secondly, of all, I tried to give people a time limit of three minutes and that one came in at eight minutes plus! (Laughs)
[...] : (Laughs)
Guy Klucevsek: So I don’t – I was kidding with Bobby, recently, that he broke both rules and then he said, “I felt guilty about that for years!” (chuckles) And ah, I said, “well, if I had my choice between something that lived within all the rules and was generic and something that broke all the rules and was a piece of friggin’ gorgeousness, I would take the latter one every time, and that’s what it is.
11:27 I mean, it’s just stunningly gorgeous, sonically and ah, yeah.
Arthur Stidfole: One of the polkas Guy plays is by Joe Kasinskas.
Joe Kasinskas: Well, it’s based on a traditional ah, Lithuanian polka, but ah, it has, it has a lot of stuttering, a lot of repeated measures and parts of measures so that ah, the name that, that I originally came up with was Pa-Pa-Polka and I – I stutter, but ah, P-P-Polka was likely not a good thing, so it went through a lot of iterations, became Peek-a-Boo Polka. I was, ah, I was filling it at the time with ah, with interruption and so there were these interruptions like for, for no apparent reason.
Joseph Franklin: With that, let’s listen to the premiere performance of Polka From the Fringe by Guy Klucevsek. Guy will play seven of the twenty-one polkas that he premiered that night.
♪12:12 Joseph Franklin: (live) And now, Guy Klucevsek, Polka from the Fringe
(applause)
12:22 Guy Klucevsek: Okay, here we go! I’d like to dedicate this evening to Charles Mingus who once said, “let the White Man develop the polka!”
(cheers)
♪12:30 Guy Klucevsek - Christian Marclay: Ping Pong Polka
Guy Klucevsek: Fred Frith, the title of his, is the Disinformation Polka, which he tells me is due to the fact that he has absolutely no idea what a polka is.
(Laughs)
♪15:35 Guy Klucevsek - Fred Frith: Disinformation Polka
19:13 Guy Klucevsek: I’ve been asked many times what my favorite polka is in the collection, and like a good mother, I say that I love all my children equally. But I do have a soft spot for this next one, The Grass It Is Blue, Ain’t Nothin’ But A Polka. By moi!
♪19:31 Guy Klucevsek: The Grass, It Is Blue (Ain’t Nothin’ But A Polka)
21:44 Guy Klucevsek: Bobby Previte, I met when he was prompting for a piece of John Zorn’s which means he sits in front with a funny little hat and lets everybody in the band know what everybody else is going to do. And then I got to hear him play drums once, and I just fell in love with his musicianship from having heard him play without ever having heard any of his music. And I asked him to write me something without ever having heard his music. His is called Nova Scotia Polka. Bobby Previte.
♪22:12 Guy Klucevsek – Bobby Previte: Nova Scotia Polka
29:44 Guy Klucevsek: Ah, Joseph Kasinskas I’ve known for a long time. He’s a composer with Relâche, always wanted him to write me a piece. Somehow we never got together on one, so I asked him to write me a polka. His original title for the polka was Pa-pa-polka, but when he put it on paper, it started to look scatological, just had two Ps separated by (audience laughs) dots, so he changed it to Peek-a-Boo Polka, but when it’s announced, it’s Pa-pa-polka.
♪30:14 Guy Klucevsek - Joseph Kasinskas: Peek-a-Boo Polka
32:45 Guy Klucevsek: Guy de Bievre, is a Belgian composer. He’s the only European represented because ah, one unique thing about this collection is that I solicited it entirely from friends of mine, and I only know one European composer! Guy is a deconstructionist. In the past he’s laid his axe to Liszt and Bach. When he heard I was doing this collection, he wrote and he asked if he could do a deconstruction of a tuned called Dancing Fingers and I said, sure. Why not?
And the way that he does it is practically a musicologist’s wet dream because what he does (laughter) – he counts statistically all of the pitches at one pitch level that are represented throughout the piece and what he does is keeps the rhythm of the piece exactly the same but he puts like all the high Ds at the beginning of the piece and he comes (laughter) the scale all, the C Sharps, if there were 45 C Sharps (more laughter) that come next – so it’s the original tune, but all the notes are in a different place. (laughter, applause) Polka Dots and Laser Beams!
♪33:58 Guy Klucevsek - Guy de Bievre: Polka Dots and Laser Beams
37:05 Guy Klucevsek: Carl Finch is the composer and accordionist and keyboard player for Brave Combo out of Denton, Texas, and I’m doing an arrangement of a piece he wrote for me called Prairie Dogs Polka.
♪37:18 Guy Klucevsek - Carl Finch Prairie Dogs Polka
39:59 Closing applause
40:09 Joseph Franklin: Well, there you have it. Polka From the Fringe, 1987 in Philadelphia, that was by Guy Klucevsek, who engineered the entire project. Christian Marclay, Disinformation Polka, by Fred Frith, The Grass is Blue by Guy Klucevsek, Nova Scotia Polka, the Peek-a-Boo Polka by Joe Kasinskas, Polka Dots and Laser Beams by Guy de Bievre, Prairie Dog Polka by Carl Finch.
The Relâche Chronicles was edited and directed by Arthur Stidfole, with help from Joe Kasinskas and me, Joseph Franklin. Special thanks to Guy Klucevsek for his polkas and for his commentary and we thank David Michael Kenney. Episode 11 will feature works at various points around downtown Philadelphia. Don’t miss it [...] sounds and some great [...] so keep an ear out for episode 11.
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Full concert recorded by Relâche and posted by Other Minds archives:
https://archive.org/details/NMA_1987_10_07_2_c1
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October 7 substack blogpost featuring my profile of the event, including excerpts from Joseph Franklin’s Settling Scores
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Meanwhile, in 2023:
