October 8, 1987 NMA Philadelphia day 7
Roger Reynolds panel - Relâche - Bob Goldberg - Sound-Image panel - S.Hirsch & D.Weinstein - Shamanistics - A. Coleman - J. Williams - J. Chadabe - R. Kuivila - S.Martirano - L. Spiegel - R.Teitelbaum
New Music Alliance Meetings Day 4: Montreal 1990 proposal
Roger Reynolds lecture and panel:
“Music, Technology and Cultural Change”
1215-1345 Broad Street Concourse
Relâche - Bob Goldberg “Music for Subways”
Douglas Kahn, Linda Montano, Peter Rose, Michael Winkler and Suzanne Delehanty
Panel: “Sound/Image, Technology and Performance”
Shelley Hirsch with David Weinstein: “Power Muzak”
Shamanistics: “Unknown Tongues”
Anthony Coleman: “Ethnic Slurs / Critical Lists”
John Schaefer signs books. Most likely his.
“The New Instrument” in conjunction with The Small Computers In The Arts Symposium presents Works for Small Computers Interacting with Live Performance”
Guest artist: Jan Williams, percussion
Joel Chadabe: “After Some Songs”
Ron Kuivila: “Loose Canons”
Salvatore Martirano: “Three Not Two”
Richard Teitelbaum: “Golem Studies”
Laurie Spiegel: new work
2300-2400 Memphis, 2121 Arch Street Late Night:
Barbara Noska: “Cabaret and Drinker’s Dictionary by Benjamin Franklin”
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New Music Alliance Meetings Day 4: Montreal 1990 proposal
(these have been transcribed and those 20,000 words appear on the posts of September 29 and 30 and October 1)
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Roger Reynolds lecture and panel:
“Music, Technology and Cultural Change”
1215-1345 Broad Street Concourse
♪ Relâche performs Bob Goldberg’s Music for Subways
Yup, found this photo and the memory of recognition came back to me. It’s not often when you imprint at a parking garage!
One of the ongoing thoughts I had in the many years when I thought I’d never return to the world of new music (this was before the days of the internet started changing the rules to the game of possibilities), was of the time I went to see Relâche performing a work by Bob Goldberg named Music for Subways.
While living on welfare in Moncton, New Brunswick, scrambling for pennies in Nova Scotia, adrift in America (but mostly enjoying the adventure), of all my possessions that might mean something to me, the NMA tapes were the objects to protect, and in this case, I turned out to be the only existing recordist for this ensemble’s performance… in a parking garage.
So it pleased me times infinity to get in contact with Bob Goldberg to let him know that my copy of his work had survived the many moves and made it to the digital landscape, so here’s the work previously (and still) on the Soundcloud where it had its “world premiere” recording (I like that phrase, even when it’s applied to each and every improvisation I’ve been creating).
For some reason, I am not able to link directly to my Soundcloud tracks or files, but if you go to this homepage link, you’ll be able to see there’s a New Music America Philadelphia folder with 19 hours of stuff that I recorded or got off the radio shortly after the festival, including of course the six New Music Alliance meetings chaired by Michael Galbreth.
https://soundcloud.com/giorgidimontana/
But pertaining to Mr. Goldberg’s work for a chamber ensemble in a parking garage, here’s are those long perserved tracks!
Relâche - Bob Goldberg: Music for Subways
Part 1
Part 2
Conclusion
===================
Douglas Kahn, Linda Montano, Peter Rose, Michael Winkler and Suzanne Delehanty
Panel: “Sound/Image, Technology and Performance”
====================
Painted Bride afternoon performance
Shelley Hirsch with David Weinstein: Power Muzak
Shelley Hirsch David Weinstein Power Muzak excerpt - A.Lapaix intro extro
WXPN radio (Philadelphia) intro to Hirsch-Weinstein Power Muzak excerpt - fair to bad radio signal aired oct 10 1987
Relâche/Other Musics archive recording of the actual concert:
https://archive.org/details/NMA_1987_10_08_1_c1/C11-01_Power_Muzak_Shelley_Hirsch.wav
♪
Shamanistics: “Unknown Tongues”
Actual performance on archival stream from Relâche via Other Musics org:
*
Philadelphia's Shamanistics improvised for nearly an hour in Unknown Tongues, which did not communicate despite a marvelous array of exotic instruments (plus synthesizer and sampling keyboard) and some fine moments here and there.
- Andrew Stiller, Philadelphia Inquirer October 9
When a member of Philadelphia's Shamanistics group rattled a clamshell necklace on his bongos, or when Charles K. Noyes of Invite the Spirit popped bubble wrap on a snare drum, I thought it was 1969. I heard composers over 40 wonder aloud where these performers had been when they were doing the same stuff. It requires either inexperience or a short memory to call it new. If these improvisers thought they were working within Cage's "let sounds be themselves" philosophy, they missed the point. Cage's music involves a massive effort (as anyone who's sat and thrown coins to realize one of this indeterminate pieces can tell you) to bypass what the mind comes up with out of its own habits, to produce something livelier and more unexpected than is possible in spur-of-the-moment improv.
- Kyle Gann, “Quiet Heroics”, Village Voice, November 10, 1987
♪
Anthony Coleman: Ethnic Slurs / Critical Lists
Actual performance from Relâche/Other Minds archive:
Anthony Coleman's Ethnic Slurs/Critical Lists was 20 minutes of nothing in particular, a sort of generic postmodernism without personality.
- Andrew Stiller, Philadelphia Inquirer October 9
Anthony Coleman ... in Ethnic Slurs/Critical Lists he approximated a serial rigor that transcended the genre by light years. Writing for four keyboards (here an inspired combination of piano, accordion, synthesizer and marimba), Coleman presented forceful textures and discrete pitch structures that would suddenly retreat into atmospheric stasis. Uptown sounds with downtown urgency, it was the festival's most challenging music, and some of the most rewarding.
- Kyle Gann, “Quiet Heroics”, Village Voice, November 10, 1987
♪
John Schaefer signs books. Most likely his.
======================================
“The New Instrument” in conjunction with The Small Computers In The Arts Symposium presents Works for Small Computers Interacting with Live Performance” Guest artist: Jan Williams, percussion
♪
Joel Chadabe: “After Some Songs”
I've been to a lot of live computer concerts in my time, and before yesterday none of them was anything better than instructive.
Yet last night's program at the Port of History Museum proved one of the highlights of the New Music America festival. Maybe it was the luck of the draw, but I suspect that the most important factor was the continuing improvement of the technology, which has become so user-friendly that composers can finally afford to pay more attention to the music than to the hardware and software.
Chadabe's After Some Songs was the undeniable hit of the evening - doubly surprising from a composer who, though he has created some memorable gallery installations, has in the past concert works shown little sense of form. His new work benefitted from an invigorating inflection of pop-derived materials: jazzlike transmogrification of There'll Never Be Another You and Stella by Starlight, plus two "originals" with infectious rhythmic pulses.
It didn't hurt, either, to have Jan Williams, one of the world's great percussionists and a 25-year new-music veteran, as the improvising collaborator to Chadabe's trademark lovely, chiming computer tones.
- Andrew Stiller, Philadelphia Inquirer October 9
Joel Chadabe - Jan Williams perc - After Some Songs - intro/extro A. Lapaix:
♪
Ron Kuivila: “Loose Canons”
Ronald Kuivila kept up the old tradition of handmade hardware with his Loose Canons, which gradually imposed rhythmic order on a chaotic computer output. It could almost have been called Eventual Computer Boogie".
- Andrew Stiller, Philadelphia Inquirer October 9
*
Ron Kuivila - Loose Canons excerpt - A.Lapaix intro/extro:
1988 excerpt from a performance at NYC’s the Kitchen:
♪
Salvatore Martirano: “Three Not Two”
♪
Richard Teitelbaum: “Golem Studies”
♪
Laurie Spiegel: Passage
Last at the 1981 festival in San Francisco, Laurie Spiegel returned to present a new work for electronics and improvisation at NMA 1987 in Philadelphia but at the time, the program only noted that it would be a "new work" (as listed on the program insert). She got in touch with me recently to confirm that it was the work Passage which appears on her album Unseen Worlds. About the work, she writes,
Pauline Oliveros had been on my case that I should be performing my music live more. So I schlepped my TX816 synth rack, Mac, and some DSP on a luggage cart on and off trains to get to NMA in Philly and do a live mix of that piece for Pauline. (IMHO it's always better music if it's a version I can tweak endlessly in my studio vs playing anything on stage live.)
♪
2300-2400 Memphis, 2121 Arch Street Late Night:
Barbara Noska: “Cabaret and Drinker’s Dictionary by Benjamin Franklin”
It being the 200th anniversary of the Signing of the Constitution (an event so large, it made getting hotel rooms a miserable experience for some).
About the “Drinker’s Dictionary”, there is such a thing.
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-02-02-0029
