October 6, 1987 New Music America Philadelphia Day 5
J. Rothenberg - Relâche - B. Noska - M. Winkler - Laberge & Fonville - Meneses & KIXX - M. Taylor - T. Davidson - SMCQ - E. Sharp - Velez & Redmond - M. Longtin - C. Vivier - G. Tremblay - M. Longtin
Tuesday, October 6, 1987 New Music America Philadelphia, Day 5
New Music Alliance Meetings Day 2
Jerome Rothenberg panel with Toby Wilson, Paul Epstein, Greg Allen Tate, Morton Levitt:
"New Music and the Literary Imagination" lecture and panel
Relâche featuring Barbara Noska
Paul Epstein and Toby Olson: Chamber Music: 3 Songs from Home
Michael Winkler: Word Works
Anne Laberge and John Fonville: Mong Songs for Two Flutes
Jim Meneses and KIXX Industrial Soft Pop
Marshall Taylor - Tina Davidson: Transparent Victims
Société de Musique Contemporaine du Québec
Michel Longtin: Pohjatuuli (Homage to Sibelius)
Claude Vivier: Pulau diwata
Gilles Tremblay: Le signe du lion
Elliott Sharp Ensemble: Masereel
Glen Velez Rain
Glen Velez and Layne Redmond: Internal Combustion
Relâche with Barbara Noska
Romulus Franceschini - White Spirituals
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New Music Alliance meetings day 2 part 1:
part 2:
part 3:
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Relâche with Barbara Noska
Paul Epstein and Toby Olson: "Chamber Music: Three Songs from Home"
Epstein's Chamber Music: Three Songs From Home, tonal and rhythmically fresh, brought stunning elegance to the TMIRM (Turning Minimalism Into Real Music) style. The piece's smooth meter changes and seamless counterpoint transformed intimate poems by Toby Olson into straight-faced, Gertrude Steinish enigmas.
- Kyle Gann, “Quiet Heroics”, Village Voice, November 10. 1987
Poet Toby Olson and composer Paul Epstein, both Temple faculty members, collaborated to produce the gently touching Chamber Music: Three Songs From Home.
The overlapping repetition of simple phrases and melodic patterns, the deliberately commonplace triadic harmonies, and the Relache group's homely accordion, saxophone and synthesizer (plus other winds) combined to produce an image of the non-constitutional sort of domestic tranquility, updating the marriage of the intellectual and the everyday seen in Virgil Thomson's collaborations with Gertrude Stein.
- Andrew Stiller, Philadelphia Inquirer, October 7
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Michael Winkler: Word Works
...Michael Winkler's Word Works, a lengthy (too lengthy - five people justifiably walked out on it) meditation-cum-slide show on spelling and meaning. The multiply oft-repeated, self-overlaid definitions and spellings strongly resembled the early speech-phasing pieces of Steve Reich.
- Andrew Stiller, Philadelphia Inquirer, October 7
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Jerome Rothenberg panel with Toby Wilson, Paul Epstein, Greg Allen Tate, Morton Levitt: "New Music and the Literary Imagination" lecture and panel
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Laberge, Anne + John Fonville: Mong Songs for Two Flutes
actual performance recording via Relâche + Other Minds archive
https://archive.org/details/NMA_1987_10_06_1_c1/C07-01_Mong_Songs_Fonville-LaBerge_Flute_Duo.wav
"Mong Songs", three etudes on idiosyncratic scales by the flute duo of John Fonville and Ann LaBerge, interesting but nothing more.
Andrew Stiller, Philadelphia Inquirer, October 7
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Jim Meneses and KIXX: Industrial Soft Pop
Actual performance via Relâche and Other Minds archive:
https://archive.org/details/NMA_1987_10_06_1_c1/C07-03_James_Meneses_and_Kixx.wav
An afternoon concert at the Painted Bride Art Center was totally dominated by the West German-American avant-rock group KIXX. The group's seamless 50-minute set, titled "Industrial Soft Pop", showed KIXX more adept at the rock than the "avant," which was often so self-indulgently out of control that I wished I could hold up a sign reading "TALK NORMAL!"
- Andrew Stiller, Philadelphia Inquirer October 7
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Marshall Taylor - Tina Davidson: Transparent Victims
Davidson, Tina interview with Augusta Lapaix
Actual performance recording via Relâche + Other Minds Archive
https://archive.org/details/NMA_1987_10_06_1_c1/C07-02_Transparent_Victims_Tina_Davidson.wav
what I presume would be a heartbreaking review…
...a forgettable sax-and-tape piece by Tina Davidson called "Transparent Victims"
- Andrew Stiller, Philadelphia Inquirer, October 7, 1987
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My piece, Transparent Victims was premiered at the 1987 Festival by saxophonist Marshall Taylor. The reviewer, in the Philadelphia Inquirer, dismissed it. The radio interview called it "one of my favorite pieces in the four days I attended the festival," and when I sent a recording to the Kronos String Quartet, they almost immediately called and commissioned me. So, go figure.... And the readers can decide for themselves by listening to the CD recording.
- Tina Davidson’s response, 36 years later, October 6, 2023
Marshall Taylor 2009 recording on Innova:
And I do believe this would be the right place to insert Tina’s memoir, an Amazing Best Seller. Oh, Amazon Best Seller, too. Known under two covers (this first edition, that is), this is my favorite, kinda made me gasp when I saw it, but then I take pianos personally.
https://www.tinadavidson.com/let-your-heart-be-broken/
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Société de Musique Contemporaine du Québec
Michel Longtin: Pohjatuuli (Homage to Sibelius)
...the Contemporary Music Society of Quebec, a veritable chamber orchestra of great accomplishment. It alone among the ensembles I have heard in this festival so far can match the sheer technical pizazz of Philadelphia's mainstream classical organizations.
Pohjutuuli by Michel Longtin, pays homage to Sibelius by interlacing quotations and paraphrases from the Finnish composer with standard new-music gestures and more than a hint of Varèse and Messiane, if little personality of its own.
- Andrew Stiller, Philadelphia Inquirer, October 7
Audio capture from the CBC FM national broadcast a couple of weeks later:
Société de Musique Contemporaine du Québec
Claude Vivier: Pulau diwata
Radio capture from 1987 off that CBC program that used to be on Sunday Nights:
Claude Vivier, who was murdered in Paris four years ago at the age of 35, was represented by his Balinese-flavored Palau Dewata. Vivier's piece leaned much too heavily on Messiaen, stealing outright from Oiseaux exotiques and the Turangulila Symphony.
- Andrew Stiller, Philadelphia Inquirer, October 7
Société de Musique Contemporaine du Québec
Gilles Tremblay: Le Signe Du Lion
Youtube version by Louise Bessette with the Aventa Ensemble
Boudreau, Walter interview Augusta Lapaix from that program I told you about.
Note - there was a mention of a John Rea work being performed but I couldn’t find out which, if any did get played… - gd
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Elliott Sharp Ensemble: Masereel
Program description:
…River (for soprano saxophone and prepared tape).
Sharp moved to NYC in 1979, performing solo and with improvising groups including I/S/M, Surds, Moving Info, as well as rock bands including Human Error, Hi-Sheriffs of Blue and Mofungo. In 1982, Crowds and Power (for 20 musicians, inspired by Elias Canelli's work) was performed at The Kitchen. Also in 1982, he produced the compilations Peripheral Vision: Bands of Loisaida and State of the Union.
Sharp has worked with choreographers Jo Andres, Nina Wiener, Byakko Sha, Poppo, Richard Bull. Commissioned works include pieces for American Composers Orchestra, Soldier String Quartet, Jim Ostyniec.
Masereel: Dedicated to and inspired by the woodcuts of Frans Masereel, this piece translates his dark and ironic vision into a contemporary sonic vocabulary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_Masereel
Radio capture from 1987 from the national (no longer existing) new music show, introduction by the wonderful Augusta LaPaix:
Archive.org via Relâche and Other Musics also had a recording to stream ovf the same performance. The link also includes the performances of the other people on the bill: the Société de Musique Contemporarine du Québec ensemble and Glen Velez with Layne Redmond.
https://archive.org/details/NMA_1987_10_06_2_c1/C08-06_Masereel_Elliott_Sharp.wav
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Glen Velez: Rain
CBC radio capture, also introduced by Augusta LaPaix:
He’s as fun to watch as he is to listen to…
Glen Velez with Layne Redmond: Internal Combustion
I don’t have any information on the performance, but here’s the album:
The festival climaxed quietly when Glen Velez and Layne Redmond, playing nothing but small frame drums, performed two ethnic-sounding improvs of extreme delicacy, virtuosity, and imagination. Velez makes the drum talk, and though his rhythmic structures are repetitive, he never repeats a nuance. He should be included on very festival, for the standard of pure musicianship he sets is a challenge every musician needs.
- Kyle Gann, "Quiet Heroics", Village Voice, November 10, 1987
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Glen Velez, drummer for the Paul Winter Consort, played two improvisatory works for folk tambourines and an accompanying frame drum (the jingleless equivalent) to huge applause. His infectious, good-timey virtuosity showed up much of the dry stuff being presented during the festival, and at the same time seemed somewhat out of place.
- Andrew Stiller, Philadelphia Inquirer October 7
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Relâche with Barbara Noska:
Romulus Franceschini, White Spirituals
Franceschini's White Spirituals were too sincere to have stemmed from minimalism, though their Coplandy treatment of shaped-note hymns was joyous and refreshing.
- Kyle Gann, "Quiet Heroics", Village Voice, November 10, 1987
(gd - I unfortunately lost my copy of this specific program, so I’ve got no further information on the White Spirituals, sung by Barbara Noska; but on the other hand Romulus Franceschini did provide an essay in the official program, which follows.)
Also this recent episode of The Relâche Chronicles:
https://www.relache.org/podcast/episode/79043fde/episode-eight-romulus-franceschini
One more comment. My piece, Transparent Victims was premiered at the 1987 Festival by saxophonist Marshal Taylor. The reviewer, in the Philadelphia Inquirer, dismissed it. The radio interview called it "one of my favorite pieces in the four days I attended the festival," and when I sent a recording to the Kronos String Quartet, they almost immediately called and commissioned me. So, go figure.... And the readers can decide for themselves by listening to the CD recording.
Thank you so much, Georges, for this faithful documentation of the New Music America festivals and Alliance. It was a time when there were few 'established' venues that would perform this music, and the Alliance, almost all composers themselves, took things into their own hand and created this yearly festival - a truly remarkable act. I became the President of the Alliance during the Festival at BAM (1989) and continues until the Alliance dissolved.