October 5, 1987 NMA Philadelphia day 4

Margaret Leng-Tan, Ge Gan-Ru, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Yori-Aki Matsudaira, Somei Satoh, Deyhim-Horowitz, Relâche, T. Albert, L. Montano, R.Possner, Penn Contemp. Players, Borah Bergman, HMP Trio, A. Rudin

Sussan Deyhim and Richard Horowitz from the recording of what they played live on this date (see below for link to full performance audio):

New Music Alliance Meeting 1

Good Sound Foundation demonstrations and lecture

Margaret Leng-Tan, Piano Recital

Ge Gan-Ru: Gu Yue (Ancient Music); Somei Satoh: A Gate Into The Stars / Litania; Toshi Ichiyanagi: Piano Media; Yori-Aki Matsudaira: Resonance

“New Music and Theatre”  lecture and panel discussion

Richard Horowitz and Sussan Deyhim  -  Azax/Attra II

Relâche - Thomas Albert: A Maze (With Grace)

Linda Montano Casio Portraits

Richard Posner Pro American Bandstand

Penn Contemporary Players, Richard Wernick, Conductor: Wernick – “Introits & Canons”

Borah Bergham, piano – Upside Down Visions

The HMP Trio – Lawrence Butch Morris, Wayne Horvitz and Bobby Previte

Relâche: Andrew Rudin – Memories of Texas Towns and Cities

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New Music Alliance Meetings 1

gd note - for your convenience and putting it in the right place in the space-time continuum, I re-insert that day’s New Music Alliance sessions - I was the recording secretary for these public meetings - but I have already transcribed the first four days with two more transcriptions to come later on this year. This is one of the sessions with the Quality Inn buzzsaws adding their own sonic disruptions. Go to my September 22 post for the transcription to this one, link at the bottom of the page. Roll call: Michael Galbreth (chair), Yale Evelev, Jerry McCathern, Roger Page, David Moss, Stewart Boesalager, Georges Dupuis, Patrick Darby, Brian Johnson, Steve Cellum, Ray Gallon. Yup, no women.

New Music Alliance, October 5, 1987, part 1

New Music Alliance meeting part 2

New Music Alliance meeting part 3

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Good Sound Foundation demonstration and lecture

My recording from the hall, nowhere as good a sound as the one these people offered to the festival. Funniest thing is hearing how they had to deal with Borbotemagus! (I’m not 100% sure whether this was recorded on October 3 or 5.)

Excerpt from lecture, part 1

Lecture, part 2

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Margaret Leng-Tan at the Philadelphia Ethical Society

(see separate posting today for way more detail including an interview she made at the time with Augusta LaPaix)

Performance recording from Other Musics/Relâche (not including Litania)

https://archive.org/details/NMA_1987_10_05_1_c1

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Herbert Blau, lecture; panel with Don Shewey, Arthur Sabatini, and Roger Oliver

Schubert Theatre, Philadelphia College of the Arts

“New Music and the Theatre”  lecture and panel discussion

My recording from the audience of this session, part 1

Part 2:

1630-1800  Painted Bride

Richard Horowitz and Sussan Deyhim  -  “Azax/Attra II”

Actual performance recording in five parts begins here:

https://archive.org/details/NMA_1987_10_05_2_c1/C05-02_Richard_Horowitz_and_Susan_Deyhim_Part_1.wav

Other Minds/Relâche archive.org notes:

This is followed by a lengthy set of mostly unidentified works by Richard Horowitz and the Iranian vocalist and composer Sussan Deyhim. These feature syncopated beats with sounds of flutes, bass guitar, and other sundry aural elements all of which serve as the tapestry over which Deyhim lays down a wide variety of breathy chants and vocalizations. While more world beat than typical 20th century classical music, and perhaps thus a bit of a deviation from New Music America Festival's typical fare, there is no doubting the energy and spirit that went into this remarkable performance. While versions of some of the works heard here were later released on their 1987 album Desert Equations: Azax Attra, others appear to be either extended improvisations or radically different versions than those later commercially released. Either way this concert is a rare live performance by two early progenitors of world fusion. tribal beat music.

*

One of the most fascinating performing duos I have ever seen, this was a prelude to the killer performance at the BAM two years ago. Her screeches were all the more awesome given her Iranian background and the current fear at the time of Iran and all of that tyranny. And at the Painted Bride, it turned out to be a very intimate affair. Later, I was to serve her tea in our hotel room as she was the guest to the two Good Sound Foundation guys. What a pleasure to meet such a graceful performer, both on and off the stage.

- gd notes written in 1987

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Program notes for above and below:

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Relâche - Thomas Albert: A Maze (With Grace)

https://archive.org/details/NMA_1987_10_05_2_c1/C05-01_A_Maze_With_Grace_Thomas_Albert.wav

Relâche/Other Minds description:

The fifth concert of NMA '87 began with musical chamber ensemble Relâche performing Thomas Albert's A Maze (With Grace), a 1975 composition in which the American composer incorporates themes from the well known song into a more sedate sonority of resonant extended notes and atmospheric vocals.

*

Albert's A Maze (With Grace) was a decade-old meditation piece fashioned quite logically from the hymn embedded in its title.

- Kyle Gann, "Quiet Heroics", Village Voice November 10, 1987

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1800-1900  Painted Bride – exhibit opening

Linda Montano – Casio Portraits

Linda Montano played Casio Portraits by channeling people's vibes; mine, at least, was uncannily insightful.

- Kyle Gann, "Quiet Heroics", Village Voice November 10, 1987

*

gd memory: As part of the work, she interviewed me and I would have to say that my ego in the context of a NMA artist asking me personal questions like “Who would you like to be in any time?” remembers that part but not the musical component. I answered, “Me, now, because I’m really enjoying myself here.”

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Richard Posner – Pro American Bandstand

Program notes:

In Philadelphia and across the nation, Americans lift their glasses in a toast to 1987, the 200th anniversary of the Constitution of the United States.

This year also marks the 30th anniversary of the American Bandstand television program.

A coincidence which conjures up visions of Dick Clark, the Dorian Gray of American culture, spinning patriotic platters from a Hit Parade review stand - while fresh generations of boys and girls are encouraged to march, mambo and hully gully off to war.

Pro American Bandstand is a collection of transparent war records - glass LPs based on a read hearing (The Winter Soldier Investigation), about a novel idea (the journey some vets make from being agents and victims of violence, to becoming teachers who foster healing and reconciliation) - in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

- Richard Posner - installed at the Painted Bride Art Center

2030-2230  Port of History Auditorium

Penn Contemporary Players, Richard Wernick, Conductor -

George Crumb: Songs, Drones and Refrains of Death

Performed by Inner Pulse Ensemble in this video:

George Crumb’s music has also profited from extended piano techniques. During a New Music America program at the Port of History yesterday evening, some of his moody piano effects could be heard in the Philadelphian’s fine Songs, Drones and Refrains of Death, from 1969.  It was given a stirring reading by the Penn Contemporary Players under able conductor Richard Wernick.  Wernick’s rather intellectual Introits and Canons was also part of the program.  

• - gd - I seem to have misplaced the clipping that tells me who wrote this!

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Richard Wernick: Introits & Canons

Program notes:

Contrapunctus I - Introit I: Maestoso; Canons I: (with isorhythm); Canons II

Contrapunctus II - Introit II: Maestoso; Chaconne (canons III);

Contrapunctus III; Introit III: (Scherzo); Passacaglia: Reprises and Reminisences (Canons IV); Recessional: Maestoso

Introits and Canons is a series of extended and developed canons, connected by a recurring homophobic motif (or Introit). It is essentially a contemporary view of baroque forms and consists of a number of 20th century variances of polyphonic music.

Relâche did its civic duty by programming local profs George Crumb and Richard Wernick plus a piece by younger academic Melinda Wagner that sounded like the Reader's Digest version of Berg's Three Pieces for Orchestra.  The audiences for these works cheered lustily and left at intermission, and Wernick later conceded that Crumb is the country's most oft-performed composer. 

- Kyle Gann, "Quiet Heroics", Village Voice November 10, 1987

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Borah Bergham, piano: Upside Down Vision

preview article in the Philadelphia Inquirer by Francis Davis

Based on the principles of ambidexterity, the "split" brain and the ability to create independent "left" and "right" ideas simultaneously. Comprovisation - a word I coined in 1981 describing the synthesis of composition and improvisation.

- Borah Bergman

1. Upside Down Vision

https://archive.org/details/NMA_1987_10_05_3_c1/C06-09_Upside_Down_Visions_Borah_Bergman.wav

2. Spirit Song

https://archive.org/details/NMA_1987_10_05_3_c1/C06-10_Spirit_Song_Borah_Bergman.wav

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The HMP Trio – Lawrence “Butch” Morris, Wayne Horvitz and Bobby Previte

https://archive.org/details/NMA_1987_10_05_3_c1/C06-04_New_Works_Part_1_HMP_Trio.wav

Other Minds/Relâche archive post at the link - program notes:

The HMP Trio had performed in New York since 1983. Led by composer and keyboardist Wayne Horvitz, the Trio utilizes compositions which emphasize organic interaction between thematic, harmonic and structural elements with improvisation. Besides the primary instrumentation of cornet, piano and percussion all three members play a variety of computer based electronic instruments, keyboards and mallet instruments. The aggressive percussion style of Robert Previte and the introspective lyricism of cornetist Butch Morris bring a fragile intensity to the music. Their debut album, "Nine Below Zero," was released in January 1987.

The title track from that album:

Joseph Franklin:             HMP Trio was comprised of Bobby Previte, Wayne Horvitz and Butch Morris.  Three, three really fine, ah, instrumentalists and composers.  Each of those guys brings a strong background in improvisational music and playing in varieties of new music ensembles from that period.  Each of them wrote a lot of material.  Much of their musical life has been as side men.

20:15     ●            It’s a tri-fold thing.  They’re – they’re composer-performer-listeners.  So a lot of what you hear in that group…

20:21     ●            …a key thing about that is that so many of the musicians on New Music America were drawing on such different traditions.  And such different performance styles.  And different ways of combining musical material. 

- Joseph Franklin, The Relâche Chronicles

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Relâche: Andrew Rudin – “Memories of Texas Towns and Cities”

The episode from which Joseph Franklin’s quote came from (the full episode is transcribed):