October 7, 1987 NMA Philadelphia day 6

New Music Alliance Meeting 3 re Miami 1988

Susan McClary - Lecture: New Music and Postmodernism

Relâche - Robert Ashley: Complete with Heat

Peter Zummo Ensemble: Selections from The Suite Six Songs

Fast Forward: Pulse Points

Maggi Payne and Ed Tannenbaum with Lynette Kessler, Technological Feets

Marcelle Deschênes: deUS irae

Alain Thibault: E.L.V.I.S.

Peter Rose: Idiots aka Babel

GUY KLUCEVSEK:  POLKA FROM THE FRINGE

=======================

The Vimeo for Peter Rose’s Babel also known as Idiots

==============

New Music Alliance Meeting 3

Progress on the next festival in 1988 at Miami, presentation by Joseph Celli, Mary Luft, Russell Frehling and Marilyn Gottlieb-Roberts. There was only complementary strawberries and champagne for the first twenty people.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

These three have been transcribed and you can find them on the Sept 26-28 posts (it’s around 20,000 words in all):

============

Susan McClary New Music and Postmodernism - talk

gd - I noted Susan McClary’s birthday on October 2 but it may have been overshadowed by Phill Niblock’s 90th birthday being on the same date. More on her in that post.

Her lecture was entitled, “New Music and Postmodernism”, certainly a term au courant at the time (au courant maintenant) but that’s only one of may topics you’ll find her diving into via her biography at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_McClary

She’s produced quite a substantial body of writings and here’s her current bio:

https://case.edu/artsci/music/about/people/faculty/susan-mcclary

But can’t not mention her celebrated slicing and dicing of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony with these words published in the Minnesota Composers Forum newsletter in January 1987. For those who don’t know, that’s the group that helped form the New Music America festivals during the 1980 Minneapolis festival. So, worth quoting again, if only to see the trads wince a bit…

The point of recapitulation in the first movement of the Ninth is one of the most horrifying moments in music, as the carefully prepared cadence is frustrated, damming up energy which finally explodes in the throttling murderous rage of a rapist incapable of attaining release.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

Relâche - Robert Ashley: Complete with Heat

A minimalist piece by Robert Ashley was played by Relâche... [who] ... painted a wide sonic landscape dotted with punctuating figures created by the marimba.

- Charles McCurdy, Philadelphia Inquirer, October 8

Complete with Heat is an earlier work originally written for Bertram and Nancy Turetzky, though open to performance by any number of wind and string players, with or without a tape available from the composer.  Pitches are specified, the duration and tone production are open within specified limits.  It is a piece which requires considerable rehearsal and technical ability, yet opens new areas of positive sound experiences. 

Like the "Detail" for two pianists, to which it is closely related, it is a creative performance work: one of the important contemporary American works of the 1960s and a major addition to the Experimental Music Catalogue.

- From 1974 Experimental Music Catalogue (London)

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

Peter Zummo Ensemble with Tricia Brown

Selections from The Suite Six Songs

This version of the suite is performed with Tricia Brown’s dance piece, Lateral Pass and includes the following songs: Sci-Fi is an evocation; Slow Heart sets a pace; Song IV is based on alternating right and left hand gestures; Song VI is modal and harmonic.

- Archive.org description

Actual performance recording begins here:

https://archive.org/details/NMA_1987_10_07_1_c1/C09-03_Sci_Fi_Peter_Zummo.wav

The third piece on the program, selections from Six Songs, by the Peter Zummo Ensemble, seemed minimalist, a kind of attenuated jazz.  Zummo himself demonstrated a full and gentle sound on trombone, especially when playing without a mute.

- Charles McCurdy, Philadelphia Inquirer, October 8

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

Fast Forward Pulse Points

This is a work for mixed metal instruments. Copper pipes, steel drum and amplified shock absorber springs are used to cover the ground between ultimate control and chaos.

- Fast Forward’s program description

https://archive.org/details/NMA_1987_10_07_1_c1/C09-02_Pulse_Points_Fast_Forward.wav

Fast Forward, an English percussionist who is probably known to his parents by some other name, played after Relâche.  He whipped a steel shock-absorber spring around the concrete floor, threw around copper pipes and played the steel drum in a series of sound creations that worked their way through rhythm to melody.

- Charles McCurdy, Philadelphia Inquirer, October 8

*

When Fast Forward threw a bagful of metal rods around the stage to revel in their vivid but thoroughly predictable sound, I remembered a teacher I had in 1975 who said my generation had missed the avant-garde's exciting period:  10 years earlier he had seen composers drop Ping-Pong balls on the audience.

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

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

“Works for Video, Dancers and Interactive Sound”

Maggi Payne and Ed Tannenbaum with Lynette Kessler - Technological Feets

Their first piece, "Technological Feets (No artificial intelligence added)," featured live and recorded music by Payne.  Tannenbaum, the producer and director, digitally processed images and projected them on a screen.  The work was in four parts, and the first, called "Shimmer," had Tannenbaum waving a stick and hose in front of the camera.  The images were captured and processed into kaleidoscopic patterns.

This served as an introduction for the next section of "Shimmer," which introduced dancer Lynette Kessler, whose movements, combined with the computer-manipulated projection, produced the most exciting work of the evening.

Kessler stood poised at center stage before a camera next to a large screen. Payne and Tannenbaum sat at tables covered with electronic equipment to the right of Kessler.  The position of the performers drew attention to both the process of creating the images and the result, the projected image.  Tannenbaum, in effect, invited the average cough-potato videophile to watch live dance being manipulated by a group of computer jocks.

Kessler's sinuous movements were projected onto the screen in an astonishing series of fragmented, chorus-line-like images.  At one point, thousands of heads, arms and legs scattered across the screen.  Tannenbaum's startling technical manipulation of a moving human body made video art accessible, human and, at times, funny.        

- Charles McCurdy, Philadelphia Inquirer, October 8, 1987

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

Marcelle Deschênes with Jacques Collin, images: deUS irae

deUS irae by Marcelle Deschenes, was filled with baroque imagery and futuristic fantasy.  Walt Disney would have been impressed, for it was all slides, but it seemed like a film.  An annoying sound track of thumping music fortunately later gave way to diverse sounds and voices.

- Charles McCurdy, Philadelphia Inquirer October 8, 1987

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

Alain Thibault with Jacques Collin (images) , E.L.V.I.S.

full credits from the program insert:

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

Rose, Peter "Idiots" aka "Babel"

The timing and imagery of Peter Rose's Idiots was impressive.  The piece made reference to politics and the nonsense of pseudo-technical language.  At one point, a voice like Darth Vader's discoursed on "the third nostril," which supposedly could make new types of communication possible.  Echoes of Monty Python and Woody Allen rose up.

- Charles McCurdy, Philadelphia Inquirer, October 8, 1987

Alternate title: Babel  presented on Vimeo (same as above) with the description and a comment below: 

Uses processed voices, generic babble, kinetic texts, and misleading film and video images to link the linguistic implications of a third nostril to the Tower of Babel and the Strategic Defense Initiative. The video offers a critique of language as a source of authority and as a form of technology. It was presented at the Polyphonix Festival in Paris, at the New Music America Festival in Philadelphia, at the National Video Festival in Los Angeles, and at the World Music Days festival in Cologne, W. Germany

- Vimeo description

“Rose is the Andy Kaufman of avant-garde movies, a filmmaker-performer who speaks in tongues to make us hear English with a clear ear. Babel is a hybrid of The Outer LImits and SCTV in which Rose bravely diagrams the language of politics and the politics of language.”

– Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer

“The most compelling piece in the (National Video) festival…a work of efficacious political art which is also sensuously luscious and rich in ironic humor.”

– Christine Tamblyn, Afterimage

Seriously this whole film changed my life for the better. its so amazing.

- (Comment) Ryan Powell 10 years ago

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

at the Revival Club, from 2300 to 2430, 22 South 3^rd Street, Philadelphia

GUY KLUCEVSEK 

From Joseph Franklin’s memoir, Settling Scores

http://www.josephfranklin.org/?page_id=21

David-Michael Kenney whispered to Guy Klucevsek as he ushered him back on stage to a raucous standing ovation at a downtown Philadelphia night club, "Better get an agent." Guy looked at him, puzzled and asked, "An agent, why?" "Cause you have a hit on your hands," David told him, smiling. Startled at the suggestion but smiling back confidently, Guy shook his head, as if he hadn't realized what had just happened.

Before moving to Brooklyn and eventually Staten Island, Guy Klucevsek spent several years living in southern New Jersey not far from downtown Philadelphia. During those years he performed with the Philadelphia Composers' Forum as a guest before joining the Relâche Ensemble a year or so after it was formed. Guy remained with Relâche for the next 10 years as he simultaneously pursued a downtown New York presence and distinctive solo performance, recording and composing career. During his tenure with Relâche he was one of the ensemble leaders. Everyone in the ensemble respected his acute musical sensitivities and easy-going disposition. He composed innovative works for the ensemble, earning a role as one of the group's more productive composers. Over the years his back-and-forth visits from New York to Philadelphia for rehearsals and concerts forged a close, enduring friendship between us.

When New Music America '87 was taking shape I wanted Guy to have a special role, both as a performer and composer. A year or so before the festival Guy called to tell me about a project he had just launched, one he was going to name "Polka From the Fringe".

…

…continued on a separate post on October 10, completely dedicated to this evening with lots of other stuff, including a short interview he made and a couple of very long reviews. Or you can pick up Joseph Franklin’s book.

Also this if you want to find out more right now:

https://www.relache.org/podcast/episode/7a58a26b/episode-ten-guy-klucevseks-polka-from-the-fringe

http://www.josephfranklin.org/?page_id=21