Sept 10, 1943 Garrett List - NMA90MMA: Hildegard Westerkamp's "École Polytechnique" and Carolie Shoemaker's "Crackdown"
As explained by creators, despite unintended radio art effects. Also: 2 minutes from Iris Brooks and there's Jean Piché in the middle of ticket taking, time for an interview for the KPFA microphone!
Hildegard Westerkamp’s Breathing Room from the Electro Clips compilation launched at the festival:
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NMA Birthday: Garrett List 1943, Phoenix, Arizona
I only have had one close encounter with Garrett List and I seem it was a moment when there were three of us in probably an airport waiting room. The third person was Somei Satoh who was very charming and engaged with me, to the point of giving me a hand written card with his address. Garrett List on the other hand wanted to see my copy of Tom Johnson’s The Voice of New Music which had been launched during the festival. For the next three minutes, he seemed to be flipping through, seemingly irritated that there wasn’t an index for him to look up his name with.
List did perform twice at the NMAs, with his ensemble the A1 Art Band, featuring himself, Byard Lancaster, Youseff Yancy, and Genie Sherman. There is one version of that group on the y2b, recorded a couple of years later:
The other time of course was in the context of the afternoon long celebration called Wall of Rzewski in New York City as part of NMA 1989. There were reunited the members of Musica Elettronica Viva with this lineup: Steve Lacy - soprano saxophone; Garrett List – trombone; Frederic Rzewski – piano; Alvin Curran - sampler (Akai S5000), MIDI controller keyboard, flugelhorn ; Richard Teitelbaum - synthesizer (Yamaha DX7), sampler (Prophet 2000), computer (with Max/MSP), cracklebox. There is a recording on y2b from their 40th anniversary box set, though someone who attended noted in the y2b comments that this set comes from their Knitting Factory appearance the same week.
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georges special note:
I have been posting notices about these substacks on my own facebook account, and following yesterday’s post, I thought it appropriate that I not skirt an issue or three I have with Charles Amirkhanian’s presentation of New Music America 1990.
This still is an important archival stream for which I’m grateful that his organization Other Minds have put up at archive.org for free. But, as I wrote yesterday when presenting part two on facebook…
The first part of the audio with my fresh transcript is with Shannon Peet talking about her ensemble Sound Pressure and its participation at the festival. Then Charles spots a former boss in the crowd and decides to make it part of the broadcast, since he indicates that he is irritated that things are being delayed.
That pandora's box being opened, I should address the fact that I am getting more and more irritated by Mr. Amirkhanian's own radio-broadcaster offerings. But my writing about him is enough for another substack, so I'll keep my complaints to this particular streamed link.
I really don't like the fact that he hides his own (presumably paid) participation as a festival artist (as part of the Electro Clips series) and he doesn't name Tom Buckner as his collaborator on the Conlon Nancarrow recordings at 1750 Arch.
And despite being someone who definitely knows the consequences of dumb radio juxtaposition, Charles decides to interview Buckner in a noisy crowd while the Université de Montréal Bell Tower is ringing. So much for establishing a mood of solemnity, given that we are about to hear a work about 14 women who were murdered only a year before at this very same university, in the presence of some survivors.
Was it really because all of a sudden he was having a free review offered of Brenda Hutchinson's performance that he didn't bother to attend? ("What a pity, I was double scheduled," Charles explains.) Or because Tom effused praise on tape about that work that Charles didn't feel like mentioning was Charles' (maybe paid) participation at the festival?
Worse yet, through the 90 minute (one episode only) broadcast, his narrations/interviews block out most of the music that he is presenting, most infuriating with his putting Hildegard Westerkamp's "École Polytechnique" as a background to his interview with the work's creator. Imagine airing the John Cage and Wim Mertens interview over the sound of Glenn Branca, only worse because using her work as a background reeks of sexism.
I say without doubt sexism because of the jaw dropping moment in the next post (though it's in the last part of the audio linked in the comments as well) where Charles needs to complain on tape and on the air that there is someone vacuuming (softly) while he is trying to conduct an interview.
Hildegard, someone who works with sound art all the time, probably meaning that as a composer, she said, "It's just down my alley!" to deal with this kind of distraction. Or maybe meant as a university professor. But to which Charles blurts out, ha ha ha "a woman's work is never done!" ha ha ha ha ha, he missed her point, I gather.
e.g.:
1:48:34 Charles Amirkhanian: We are, um, ah, in the ah, (clears throat) Hôtel La Citadelle where next door we were having a beautiful job of vacuuming the floor and our guest on this program is Hildegard Westerkamp here at New Music America 1990 in Montreal.
Your piece, Hildegard, for New Music America, commissioned for this festival, was a very moving one and ah, it was played outdoors at an old Bell Tower which I, as I understand it, not been active for some time. It was still standing as part of a church which otherwise was destroyed. Ah, it’s called, your piece, École Polytechnique, and it featured a choir and several instrumentalists performing. Ah, the ah bells in the Bell Tower and pre-recorded tape. Could you tell us the story of this piece?
Hildegard Westerkamp: Sure, with the vacuum cleaner in the background.
Charles Amirkhanian: Okay.
(gd – still less intrusive than the background music he’s been using)
Hildegard Westerkamp: It’s just down my alley. (Laughs)
Charles Amirkhanian: (chuckles)
Hildegard Westerkamp: (chuckles)
Charles Amirkhanian: A woman’s work is never done! (Laughs)
Hildegard Westerkamp: (Laughs) Right.
Something tells me that there is a potential of my losing the chance at an oral interview with Charles by posting this, and again, I smother-attenuate it with the fact that he has been an important promoter and leader in getting new music out there. Someone should interview him about New Music America, certainly.
Glass half full. He's not as funny as Beavis and Butthead but he's certainly better than R. Paul.
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Charles Amirkhanian on Montréal Musiques Actuelles,
aired December 16, 1990 on KPFA’s The Morning Concert
transcript part 3
https://archive.org/details/NMA_1990_12_13
♪ ♪
Official program note for Hildegard Westerkamp’s work Breathing Room:
Gd loose translation: This is the second part of the series named Breathing Room. Music like a nourishing breath. The breath, like the space musically nourishing. A breath – my breathing – is heard throughout the three minutes. All sorts of musical and acoustic phenomenon occur as I breathe in and out. Each breath evokes a unique position creates a precise temporal space. As the heart continues to beat, dragging with it time from one breath to the next.
1:38:51
Charles Amirkhanian: One of the most challenging pieces that was heard at the 1990 New Music America festival here in Montreal was by the British Columbia composer Hildegard Westerkamp who for years has been one of the most prominent electro-acoustic composers in Canada.
She has um, uh been uh active – mostly on the West Coast in Canada and I imagine Hildegard, that must be different in some way from activity here in Montreal, for example the program notes for our program guide here at the festival indicate that perhaps there’s a kind of ah freedom from European, ah, cultural domination by virtue of your being isolated out in Vancouver. What do you say to that?
1:40:24 Hildegard Westerkamp: Yeah, I think it’s true and I think also that that’s why I like it there because um, there’s a bit more space. Uh, I mean I love the stimulation here in Montreal and what’s in Toronto and on the west- on the East Coast. I love the stimulation of Europe, the cultural stimulation but sometimes it’s in the way of really finding the space for your own expression musically, and compositionally.
And um, I think you can feel that in Vancouver, in general that ah, perhaps people feel a little bit more free to do as the please and ah perhaps you can hear that space a little mo-, a bit more in the music, not too much reference to other, um, traditions perhaps.
1:41:12 Charles Amirkhanian: How would you ah divide up the influences um in Vancouver, there is for example, the Simon Fraser University, there’s a University of British Columbia. Do they fall into separate camps?
Hildegard Westerkamp: Actually, very separate. It’s – it’s quite interesting. You can even see it in the concerts when you go to the concerts, there’ll be the University of British Columbia group going to a certain type of concert, and then there will be the Simon (chuckles) Fraser group coming to another concert.
And the most remarkable concerts are where they all come. (Chuckles) Um, yes there is a real (music grows) difference in – in Simon Fraser University which I’m much more familiar with because I also teach there, um, it’s really very very active in the ah Vancouver new music society, in the electro-acoustic scene and um, in perhaps also the dance and music theatre.
1:43:01 The music section, there is no Music Department at the Simon Fraser University. There is a Centre for the Arts, and music is part of that. And so you have a much more interdisciplinary approach. Also very – shall we say contemporary and modern approach because there really is no requirement for the students to dig into history.
A good example are some courses that are historical but they are called “In Context” so when you learn about other eras in music, you always learn about the social context, the other arts, et cetera, and that’s the kind of approach that you get from Simon Fraser.
(music continues in background)
Um, University of British Columbia Music Department is a lot more traditional in its approach and most of the composers that come out of there are instrumentally trained, and are much more connected with the European tradition. And so you do have much more of a, ah, that kind of sound coming over there, or maybe with the East Coast of – of, ah, the East, eastern part of Canada.
Um, we have of course ah people from Europe. Rudolf Komorous is um, a Czechoslovakian composer. And ah, he has been on the West – on the West Coast for many years now and he has a very string ins-, influence among instrumental composers such as Owen Underhill and um oh, if – a lot of them, I just can’t remember right now.
1:43:35 Um, Victoria – of course also has a strong – that’s where Rudolf was originally. But ah, people like Martin Bartlett, um, ah, John Celona, but there is a, a strong scene also coming from Victoria. So the three universities are really the ones that – that contribute and there are studios in all of them. It’s a very, very vibrant, ah, ah, city in that respect and it’s certainly – I’ve been there for twenty years and the last ten years, things have really started to develop there.
(music continues)
1:44:10 Charles Amirkhanian: Your country, ah, native country, Germany is coming together – this country is seemingly being torn apart. W-, Quebec, and it looks at this point is going to insist on being um, absolutely uh a sovereign state. Any thoughts on that from your perspective in British Columbia?
Hildegard Westerkamp: Well, I – I would hope that Quebec stays inside Canada because I think it really makes the country extremely interesting. It’s interesting to be in Montreal because you really do feel how, um, strictly French it has become. Much more so than for instance five years ago, or – or even three years ago, it’s become very, very um, well, it’s almost militant in – in terms of…
Charles Amirkhanian: How does that manifest itself?
Hildegard Westerkamp: Just in the street, and in the stores, and ah wherever you go it’s French and um, you have to assert yourself with the fact that you don’t speak French and it’s very difficult when you’re guilt ridden ah, it gets real difficulty after (chuckles) you have to just simply say, “sorry, I don’t speak French, I am Canadian but I don’t speak French and ah please, let’s uh let’s try to communicate”.
(choir now in the background)
1:45:20 Charles Amirkhanian: Yeah, I noticed a number of times the correc-, corrections to the programs would be announced and really, ah, half the audience doesn’ t know what’s going on because they don’t quite understand the subtleties of a certain statement as to whether one piece will be before another. And I guess that in itself is a statement, huh?
1:45:33 Hildegard Westerkamp: I think so and I – I must say I’m not even feeling so terrible about that. I think it’s impolite, yes, but I think it’s also something that needs to be done. I think in order to be heard, the Quebecois people almost have to do this, being quite radical in that respect.
Because there is a very rich culture here and if we keep ignoring that and can’t include it somehow, then I think we – we’re at a – it’s a great loss.
Charles Amirkhanian: Hildegard Westerkamp is our guest. Hildegard, tell me the story of your arrival from Germany. Where did you grow up and why did you move here?
(the still unnamed École Polytechnique continues in the background)
1:46:10 Hildegard Westerkamp: I grew up in ah Northwest Germany, in a town called Osnabrück and I was there until I was – in Germany until I was 22, I was studying music for two years in Freiberg, in South Germany. And, um, well my original motivation to leave was because I was following my husband and that was my uh, outward reason for, for immigrating.
But over the years, I recognize that I really did want to leave the country. And wanted to be in an environment that had a bit more space. And um, I – I found it – I think I found Germany a very – well, I know I found Germany a very difficult country at the time to live in. I found it full of pressure and I personally found it very hard to deal with the pressures.
1:46:59 I found school environments, music department environments very very difficult to deal with and um, was kind of almost, um, intimidated by that. And didn’t know how to even find myself. And I think that was really the real reason behind that. Plus that – plus I had a very huge family and I think I needed to get away. And I did.
And I think I made a very good choice because I like the West Coast, I like Vancouver. I find the Canadian culture extremely interesting, both with the Quebec, ah, French-English but also the Native presence and that – and the, the um, environmental issues, um, emerging more and more. I feel very much at home with those kinds of struggles. (music ends, replaced by a very soft sounding vacuum much quieter than the background music)
1:47:43 Charles Amirkhanian: We are, um, ah, in the ah, (clears throat) Hôtel La Citadelle where next door we were having a beautiful job of vacuuming the floor and our guest on this program is Hildegard Westerkamp here at New Music America 1990 in Montreal.
Your piece, Hildegard, for New Music America, commissioned for this festival, was a very moving one and ah, it was played outdoors at an old Bell Tower which I, as I understand it, not been active for some time. It was still standing as part of a church which otherwise was destroyed. Ah, it’s called, your piece, École Polytechnique, and it featured a choir and several instrumentalists performing. Ah, the ah bells in the Bell Tower and pre-recorded tape. Could you tell us the story of this piece?
Hildegard Westerkamp: Sure, with the vacuum cleaner in the background.
Charles Amirkhanian: Okay.
(gd – still less intrusive than the background music he’s been using)
Hildegard Westerkamp: It’s just down my alley. (Laughs)
Charles Amirkhanian: (chuckles)
Hildegard Westerkamp: (chuckles)
Charles Amirkhanian: A woman’s work is never done! (Laughs)
Hildegard Westerkamp: (Laughs) Right. Okay, ah, New Music America approached me, or – or gave me a commission, offered me a commission for the festival and about a month after that, the ah, uh, massacre at the Université of Montréal happened where one man shot fourteen women in the Engineering department of the Université of Montréal at the École Polytechnique.
1:49:08 And, um, it was perhaps a month after that that I thought I would really like to respond to that event. Um, I’m invited to Montreal, I’m a woman, uh, there’s a bell tower and bells as the material for the composition, a big huge choir and I thought it was almost something that I needed, it was really unavoidable. I needed to do that. I couldn’t see myself in any other role, really, coming to this festival.
And, ah, so I decided to do a piece responding to that event and um, I had to go through a fair amount of thought about how to approach this, because first of all I was not from Montreal, I was not an – I was an outsider in that respect. The Montreal-Québec-French issue came up in my mind because I felt like an out-, outsider, an Anglo, ah, from the Anglo side of Canada.
1:50:11 I felt I had to be very clear about why I was doing this and what my motivations were and initially as respect to myself, because of course it’s, ah, it’s something that one could also exploit. But I became quite clear after a while that, um, it was a kind of event that you just simply not stay silent about. And I really needed to speak back to it and um, say that um, this is what – what – this is what we feel about it and let’s have an occasion, during which we can pay homage to what happened, ah, to the women.
During which we can remember what happened, during which we can kind of go through a journey of emotions again and not ignore those emotions. And, ah perhaps then find a way of uh, returning to a so-called normal life, with some kind of energy.
1:51:07 I know how much it affected – this event really went like a shockwave through Canada because this does not happen in Canada. This kind of crime simply does not happen in Canada. So you can imagine the shock that it, um, produced immediately. Ah, there were wakes immediately. All over the country. And so um I – I felt that a year later, approximately a year later, it would be quite appropriate to remember it. And um, think about it, meditate.
So in the piece, I do take uh, in – in the compositional process, I took myself through these, this journey of emotions and then the final structure of the piece is in fact that as well. Um, do you want me to talk about the structure a bit?
1:51:55 Charles Amirkhanian: Well, maybe it would be advisable, um, there – there are so many different elements that it’s hard to put them all together if you’re just listening to the radio. So tell us what to listen for.
Hildegard Westerkamp: Okay. Um, one of the things that I did was I created a tape, ah, underlying the whole piece, it’s about twenty minutes long. And um, the tape for me is the sort of mood setter almost of the whole thing and ah, I guess the instruments in the choir and the bells are the musical expression of all that, of that mood.
And, um what I did on the tape is, I – I went right back to the very basics of the sounds of some symbolizing life and death basically, the sounds of life are breathing and the heartbeat and actually on the recording, the breathing sounds are not all that clearly audible but within each of the breaths a universe of sounds happens.
(the piece is now cutting into the spoken voice at it has a siren imitation)
And you can hear that, you can kind of get the sense of the breath rhythm at least. And um, so the piece starts out with about six minutes of, of um, I would call it, in my mind, I called it sonic meditation, à la Pauline Oliveros. That it was a, a time where the choir and everyone would breathe and make the musical sounds that I had written into the score.
1:53:15 And um, I have a relatively calm sort of atmosphere, but over those six minutes, tension rises and the heartbeats [...] and then that gets disrupted, and that’s sort of when the violence happens, the wave runs happen, it’s all very literal, actually. (Chuckles) The way I’ve done it.
Um, and then I’m very literally, uh, and often I not necessarily criticized for it, but people ask why, why do you, you know, why do you have to do it this way? I actually bring in fourteen shots – it took fourteen women fourteen shot – um, constructed out of all sorts of different kinds of sounds. And um, and then after that, there is a sort of an aftermath type of section with a lot of siren sounds and fairly ugly sounds, into, moving into a – an atmosphere of mourning and ah, remembering and praying perhaps.
1:54:13 Um, and then towards – and – and for me there’s a sort of on the tape, any with – there is a sort of going through the underworld and having to descend to the underworld in order to – to deal with what – what went on, you have to, go inside and under the earth and find out, what, what was this all about and really do the mourning and suffering.
Charles Amirkhanian: And is it at that point that the names of the women are recited by the choir in a kind of mantra.
Hildegard Westerkamp: It’s – it’s before that. It’s ah, the – there’s the aftermath and the mourning, it’s the – the praying and the church bells. That’s the beginning of that section, really, to – to perhaps set the – set the intensity and the mood of that.
Charles Amirkhanian: I couldn’t help but notice, ah many women in the choir, on one side of the choir, had tears in their eyes as they were reading that and it was at – at that moment I looked around the crowd and many other people were feeling the same, ah, shock of recognition of those feelings. And I think that was a very successful aspect of the piece.
(finally getting to hear the piece itself, but not for long)
1:55:16 Hildegard Westerkamp: You call it successful. Other people at that point, um, found it very difficult, that I was exposing them to the pain of that. Why should I remember this? Why be so direct? And um, that’s individual responses. Some people are very afraid of being opened up to that extent, and, uh, my – my sense behind this is that I – I did the same thing as I was composing it.
And I find it very very important to – to actually go through that and really recognize, yes, these were the names of these women. And it could be my own name. It could be somebody else’s name. And let’s value these women and say yes, they had names attached to themselves. You don’t just mow them over. You don’t just kill them like they were nobody.
1:56:26 And, um, people really at that point, that’s – I think that’s the juncture where people respond in very different ways, they either close down or they open up to it.
Charles Amirkhanian: Well, as they do in life, huh?
Hildegard Westerkamp: Yes, exactly, exactly. And then towards the end of the piece, actually, this, after – having gone through that – uh, eventually for me it was very important to pick up some energy again and ah, lead back into life and – and test perhaps even some joyfulness but also melanchony – melancholy. Ah, but energy, again.
And I think that’s one way in real life for me too, you – you gain energy by going through this type of underworld.
♪1:57:11 Hildegard Westerkamp 11 more seconds of École Polytechnique
1:57:24 Charles Amirkhanian: Music by Hildegard Westerkamp, École Polytechnique from the New Music America festival 1990. I’m Charles Amirkhanian and we’ll be back with more after this word.
Part 2
0:00
Charles Amirkhanian: Our next guest on this program about 1990’s New Music America festival in Montreal is a 27 year old composer from Seattle named Carolie Shoemaker who is also an accomplished vocalist. Her work which is influenced by performance art and pop music recording techniques, features interaction between speech and music.
She studied composition with William O. Smith and Diane Thome and voice with Monserrat Alavedra at the University of Washington in Seattle. Her work is composed on tape along with many others and was one of the many f-, performed over an orchestra of loudspeakers in the bar-galerie Les Loges, a small black box theatre in Montreal.
(a different recording; it seems Charles is again going to present most of the work while he’s talking with the creator over it-)
0:47 Charles Amirkhanian: Electro-acoustic music one of the major sources of interest at New Music America 1990 and in Montreal, where there is a deep connection to the Paris tradition of sound diffusion, the composers here have gone in for electro-acoustic music in a rather big way. Diffusion is the process of taking a stereo tape and sending it throughout the hall, using about sixteen loudspeakers, two of which are panned left to right and are the sort of solo speakers.
And the rest of the speakers are all of different characteristics. And they are not panned from left to right but just um fed the two signals equal, uh, from both sides of the stereo spectrum onto both speakers. I don’t know exactly how this effect works but it does surround the audience in a very interesting way, because during the process of performing the piece, the sounds are moved around the room simply by bringing in and out different pairs of loudspeakers throughout a particular performance.
1:52 One of the composers who had her work played today on Sunday, November 4th, at this festival is Carolie Shoemaker, who is here with us to talk about ah, her composition Crackdown. And I guess, Carolie, this is the first time that you’ve had your piece diffused around the room that way. What did you think?
Carolie Shoemaker: I felt that it was a very effective presentation of this kind of medium and about the best you can do in an auditorium expecting people to just sit and listen to tape.
Charles Amirkhanian: I take it you normally have some theatrical element in your work, then?
Carolie Shoemaker: Usually I feel like there needs to be something going on live, whether it’s theatrical, or musical to help the audience interface with the tape. Because otherwise, it could be just sitting at home with headphones on for all they’re concerned.
Charles Amirkhanian: Well, the ah sending around of sound does sort of address that problem and it’s hard to do that at your home, unless you’ve got a lot of loudspeakers and it is kind of, ah, bizarre to hear a sound in the high frequency range starting at the back of the hall and sweeping around to the front.
But I suppose the best way to utilize that would be to compose for it and since um, none of us here in the States think of that when we take our tapes to Paris or to Montreal, ah, it’s kind of a strange experience to see it actually happening, isn’t it?
3:09 Carolie Shoemaker: Well, I don’t know. Most of the composers that I know of that do tape pieces as opposed to electronic computer pieces spend a lot of time in their home studio with their speakers and their headphones, trying to come up with a moving mix.
Now, most of these people I know are more from the pop tradition than the classical electronic music tradition. So they’re listening for different things. They’re thinking about using stereophonic effects à la Beatles White album period and what you end up with is things that are EQ’d sounding like they’re in different rooms and that the EQ changes throughout ah the musical gesture that’s happening.
And, ah, my piece in particular, I had that very strongly in mind and that’s the reason why I enjoyed the presentation in that particular room, in the Acousmonium, because I felt that it took advantage of the work I already put into the piece.
4:10 Charles Amirkhanian: My guest is Carolie Shoemaker here at ah the New Music America 1990 festival in Montreal. We’re going to, ah, listen to the composition that you had played here at the – ah, what they call the Acousmonium, um, where the sixteen loudspeakers were lined up around the audience. (sound starts in background)
But we’re going to hear it of course on radio. So, ah, the piece is called Crackdown and it is about the student uprising in Beijing in June of 1989. Must have had a powerful effect on you.
Carolie Shoemaker: It did. That was the first world event that I was incredibly curious about, because I noticed that in the Northwest, we weren’t terribly informed about it. There were the things that were on the national news but I felt that the whole story wasn’t being presented. And it was something I felt was absolutely overwhelming.
And it’s students, nowadays, in our own country can’t relate to that kind of solidarity any more. It’s, ah, more looking out for your own interest, and what can you get out of school instead of what can I do now that I am here, and with a lot of other people who are interested in the same things.
5:21 And I felt excluded from that event by the insulation – ah, that we have around us, that – that we have available to us. If we don’t want to know something, we don’t have to. We can just go ahead and listen to whatever the media says and believe whatever they tell us. That’s a choice we can make.
If we make another choice, which is to be informed, it’s a lot of work and it’s not comfortable so a lot of people don’t do it. So I did as much research into that event as I could, just the month after that it happened, which ah, meant going to the library and culling through different newspapers and different news sources to see if I could get a different angle that, ah, than I had been exposed to.
6:14 And I found a lot of angles on it that I hadn’t no clue on, ah, including the events that had been happening in Eastern Europe, a couple of months prior to that uprising that helped to spark it. For them, for those students, inspired them to make their rebellion that we didn’t even hear about.
The original idea for the piece was inspired by how irate I was that Life Magazine, the month following the, ah, events in Tiananmen Square did a sixty year retrospective of Jackie Onassis and ah, the student uprising had two pages. So I went in search of the information I needed to feel informed about this event, and this local author and poet and performance artist Jesse Bernstein has a poem that’s very popular in the Seattle area, ah, on the student radio student station, KCMU, called Come Out Tonight.
7:20 It’s about Jackie O. And I thought, if I juxtaposed the text about Jackie O. and the text about China that it would be a, a good political comment on how we only see what the media allows us to see. When I approached Mr. Bernstein about this, he indicated he would prefer to write something new for the work, because that’s the way he likes to work.
I’ve had my heart set on it, okay, in fact he gave me a copy of the poem, just for my own collection. So we set about to collaborate on text. I had already written a poem after I had done all my research at the library and he wrote a commentary, ah, on the subject matter that we were discussing.
8:11 So what I did was – my original idea of juxtaposing two texts, but instead of having one of the texts be about Jackie O., they were two texts about the same event from a different angle.
8:25 Carolie Shoemaker Crackdown (excerpt, very short excerpt but continues in background)
♪
8:42 Charles Amirkhanian: Music by Carolie Shoemaker, ah, who is from Seattle Washington. Crackdown, on the Chinese student uprising.
Among the highlights at New Music America were the world premiere of LaMonte Young’s austere hour-long plus string quartet played by Kronos, Brian Eno’s very successful video installation called The Quiet Room, at the Galerie d’art Lavalin. A large exhibition of audio related visual art created by René Block from Berlin for the Montreal Contemporary Art Museum.
Performances by Leroy Jenkins’ ensemble Sting, Jin Hi Kim, the Canadian group Arraymusic, ah, pianist Joseph Kubera from the United States, Joan La Barbara, the Residents, and Rhys Chatham’s work for 101 electric guitars as well as several multi-media theatre pieces by French-Canadian artists.
Here is the recollection towards the end of this dizzying series of events by one concert goer, Iris Brooks, a critic from New York.
9:45 Charles Amirkhanian: Iris Brooks, for many years, ah, was the editor of Ear magazine and is now covering the event here in Montreal, New Music America 1990 for Soma and other publications for which she writes freelance. Iris, welcome to the KPFA microphone. Tell me a little bit about your impressions of Canada – have you enjoyed being up here?
10:05 Iris Brooks: Oh yeah, it’s been great – it’s been um, a little bit of over stimulus for me because it’s going from one concert to the next and I caught almost all of them up to this point. And my ability to remember what I’ve heard now is, ah, not quite at a hundred percent (chuckles) but I’m having fun.
Charles Amirkhanian: Tell me a little bit about the different venues that you’ve been in and what they’re like.
Iris Brooks: Okay, well right now we’re in the lobby of the Spectrum, which strikes me as kind of a dinner club. It’s ah, kind of a nice place to do a – a club like concert with a casual atmosphere and a fairly substantial um room for audience. I think it seats probably about 500 I’m guessing, I really don’t know.
Charles Amirkhanian: Big black hall with lots of ah sparkly lights around.
Iris Brooks: Yeah, the – the neon Christmas lights on the wall add to the décor. It’s not quite as smoky as ah, one of the other venues that I’m having a little bit more problem sitting through and the volume tends to be not quite as loud here as it is at the late night venue, um…
Charles Amirkhanian: Which is called Foufounes Électriques, huh?
Iris Brooks: That’s right.
Charles Amirkhanian: Electric Fanny.
Iris Brooks: Yeah. (Laughs)
11:17 Charles Amirkhanian: Oh, and that’s where a lot of the ah smaller bands that play a little louder go in. And in some cases, some of the ah new music groups like um Sound Pressure and others that are simply not, not so wild and industrial.
Iris Brooks: Yeah, I think that was one of the mistakes in the programming, to use those spaces for that kind of thing.
Charles Amirkhanian: But there were also concerts in orchestral halls, and ah lots of other gallery spaces around. It’s been a wide variety and it’s been a good introduction to the city for us.
Iris Brooks: Oh, definitely. And I think that some of the most successful concerts have been in ah, uh, more unusual spaces like the church bells concert out in the street, that was a real highlight for me.
11:57 Charles Amirkhanian: I wonder if ah, you’ve discovered any one or two individuals as performers that you really thought were special and unique and new?
Iris Brooks: Um, yes. Today I heard a group called Tuyo that I didn’t know anything about. They’re based in Montreal and they create their own instruments. Many of them are made out of PVC pipe. They’re all percussion and some wind instruments and it was done in a very theatrical manner, their performance and that was a refreshing surprise. It was also completely acoustic performance, which I enjoyed after hearing ah so many electronic things this week.
12:33 Charles Amirkhanian: Anything else that comes to mind? Or…
Iris Brooks: Um, well I never heard Fred Frith’s quartet before even though he’s been around for quite a while and it was, it was nice to get a chance. I couldn’t see him in the performance space, it was so crowded, but it really wasn’t necessary to ah, to see the quartet and they played a piece by Nick Didkovsky, um, it was very beautiful, I enjoyed that particularly.
12:57 (back to the studio)
Charles Amirkhanian: Iris Brooks, critic from New York talking about New Music America 1990. This is KPFA or KPFB in Berkeley, KFCF in Fresno. Next up, the energetic and irrepressible director of the festival, composer Jean Piché, seen tonight [nov 8 - gd] guarding the door with the bouncer and ticket-takers as the popular and very political English industrial post punk band Test Department takes the stage.
13:33 Charles Amirkhanian: It’s my pleasure to welcome to the KPFA microphone…
(he’s conducting the interview during the playing of Jerusalem which opens the performance)
…the director of New Music America 1990 here in Montreal, which ah has a second name, doesn’t it, Montreal…
Jean Piché: Montréal musiques actuelles.
Charles Amirkhanian: Mon-, Montréal musiques actuelles.
Jean Piché: Voilà.
Charles Amirkhanian: Musique actuelle is what – what exactly literally?
Jean Piché: Well, “musique actuelle” is probably a term that doesn’t, ah, that doesn’t have an equivalent in, in English. We kind of distinguish between contemporary music, which is the traditional new music, instrumental, acoustical, from the European tradition, the concert music. Whereas ah “musique actuelle” refers to all types…
(audience applauding Jerusalem in the background is on tape)
14:14 …all types of music from all kinds of, of roots, may it be rock, jazz, contemporary, classical, in sound installation, so on and so forth, that musics that push a language, that they – that they use. So it’s – it’s a broader term than “new music” and it, unfortunately, it doesn’t have an equivalent in English. Actual music, I suppose, I don’t know, today’s music.
Charles Amirkhanian: (chuckles) It must have been quite an experience organizing this over what, a two year period?
Jean Piché: Ah, yeah, two and a half years, we’ve been working really hard over two and a half years.
Charles Amirkhanian: This is the first time the festival’s been held outside Canada. How do you feel about it as we’re about to read…
Jean Piché: Well, the first time outside the U.S.
Charles Amirkhanian: …outside the U.S., I’m sorry.
Jean Piché: Yes.
Charles Amirkhanian: Ah, ah – ah, how do you feel about it now that it’s three fourths over, you’re – you’ve literally exhausted yourself working day and night, not only taking tickets but administering the thing and ah being kind of diplomat and mediator between lots of artists and ah tech people and so forth. Was it worth it?
Jean Piché: Oh, absolutely. Although I can’t really tell because it’s not finished yet. You know, I’ll tell on Monday morning or I’ll probably collapse and say, well, this is it, it’s done, it’s finished and it’s over and it’s been wonderful.
15:24 Charles Amirkhanian: And what has it meant to Montreal in particular?
Jean Piché: I think that everybody here, it was – was just galvanized by – by the activity. We’ve never had so much attention given to – to musique actuelle here, or new music and ah, the crowds have been really good. Ah, we had very good halls, very appreciative audiences and I think that a lot of people that didn’t know about this, know about it now.
And that was the ultimate mandate of the festival.
Charles Amirkhanian: In order to ah, bring this into the mainstream culture in some way, in other words make it ah known to a wider group of people and specialist, huh?
Jean Piché: I think that it has to be and there was no point in making a festival if it was going to stay within the specialized group that usually goes with it. The mandate that I had was to enlarge that audience and I – you know, it’s very difficult to judge…
(Test Department sound explodes)
…whether – (just speaks louder) whether you’ve succeeded or not. But I think that we have, so far we have anyways.
(back to studio)
Charles Amirkhanian: Music of Test Department in the background, a group from London and that closes our special report on New Music America 1990, produced for KPFA radio. Thanks to our interview guests, Linda Bouchard, Jan Wolff, Shannon Peet, Tom Buckner, Hildegard Westerkamp, Carolie Shoemaker, Iris Brooks and Jean Piché.
For more information on the rich variety of music by Canadian composers, here’s an address you can write to. The Canadian Music Centre, 20 St. Joseph Street, (the big bouncing sound of Jean Piché’s Steal the Thunder) Toronto, Ontario M4Y 1J9. You can get from them for example this music by Jean Piché for percussion and tape on a Centredisc recording. That’s the Canadian Music Center, 20 St. Joseph Street, Toronto, Ontario M4Y 1J9.
This program was made possible by the support of subscribers to listener-sponsored KPFA-FM, Pacifica Radio, Berkeley, California. This is your producer and host, Charles Amirkhanian.