Strategies of realization for the more abstract Musical Patterns

No 46 from the Book of Musical Patterns

Yesterday I made a recording of No 46 from my Book of Musical Patterns and I thought it’d be interesting to go over my process of realizing these scores.  The scores in the BoMP progress from rather regular patterns to increasingly abstract notation and yet the instructions for the scores remains constant (with the addition of rules at times, but never subtraction).  The musical patterns are always a challenge for the performer in how to take very minimal information and transform that into music. A lot of leeway is given to the performer and yet the instructions are rather rigorous. So apart from the basic challenge present in all of the scores, how to apply these instructions to the more abstract scores is an additional hurdle.  To illustrate the issues of interpreting the scores I shall examine two realizations: No 3, the first one I ever performed and the above No. 46, which would be the most recent.  Since I’ve written about my ideas behind the BoMP on its site (mainly on this page) and also on IHM (in this thread in which I discuss the Pools of Sound in particular)  I’ll jump right into the analysis here and suggest checking out those links if one is unfamiliar with these scores or my ideas behind them.

A quick note on media. I’ve included an embedded player with my realizations of the scores under discussion. It can only play mp3s but I’ve also added download links that include an Apple Lossless version (playable with iTunes).  Additionally all of my BoMP recordings can be downloaded from the Downloads page on the Hollow Earth Recordings Book of Musical Patterns sub-site. The images of my performance scores were taken by a digital camera which is not ideal but my scanner seems to have shuffled off this mortal coil. They have been uploaded at full resolution to Flickr and by clicking on them you can access larger versions of them if you want to examine any aspect of them. They are all collected in my Hollow Earth Recordings Images Flickr set if you want to see them all together. The scores themselves as well as the instructions for them can downloaded here if you want them for reference.

No 3 from the Book of Musical Patterns

No 3 from the Book of Musical Patterns. (download: mp3, lossless)

The best way to consider approaching the more abstract scores is to first examine one of the early regular scores.  Above is my performance score for No 3 along with the recording that resulted from it. This was the very first of the patterns I recorded (though obviously the 3rd one I wrote) and this performance score comes from about two years before I completed the book. You can see that I amended some of the symbols by hand, changes that were then applied to the master document.  As I’ve said before the early scores in the BoMP are more akin to John Cage’s Time Bracket notation as opposed to purely abstract scores such as Treatise. Time Brackets indicate a range in which a (usually notated but not always) sound was to be performed. The BoMP does not provide such precision, instead is gives you the distance between when an event should occur.

To the left is an example of Cage’s Time Bracket Notation (Five (1988), image from Wikipedia). The topmost figure is a good example, it shows playing a note starting at the performers choice between one minute and a minute forty-five seconds and ending between a minute thirty and two fifteen.  So looking at No 3 how does it compare to that?  Well the distances between events can easily be translated into time and the space a symbol uses into duration.  As the instructions indicate that you are supposed to set a fixed amount of time for a realization, which translates to a fixed amount of time for each row for piece like No 3, it isn’t too hard to break it down in that way. It should be noted that based on the sounds chosen there may not necessarily be a direct correlation between the size of a symbol and the duration of a musical event. There can be, but it is only a requirement where mulitple symbols differ in such a way that it is clear that one should take up more time then the other.  The indeterminacy in the BoMP is twofold: one that the time for the piece is up to the performer (thus the structure itself is indeterminate)  but also in the degree of accuracy to which the player works out the timing. In the example above I worked out the starting times of events precisely, but only the absolute length of the long optional events.  To put this in something more like time bracket notation the first two line would read like this:

0’10” –  s2
0’55” – s1
0’55” – 1’0″ – oe1

2’15” –  s1
2’0″  – s2
2’05” – 2’50” – oe1

In the BoMP notation s1 is sound source 1, s2 is sound source 2 and oe1 is optional event 1.  The optional events in this piece stretch over an amount of space that can be translated into time whereas the symbols for s1 and s2 are not so easily translated into time, with the caveat that s1 is clearly longer then s2. If you were playing this on a piano (say) you could pick fixed notes for the symbols and probably create a pretty standard score of it in time bracket notation. However the instructions do not force you into that degree of rigor regarding time, nor does it force you into that degree of rigor involving the sounds sources.

The choice of sounds used in these scores are vital, I spent quite a bit of time working out which ones to use for No 3 and likewise recorded a number of versions of it before I settled on what I used. The sounds that used for this were fixed sources but included those that I was able to create variations within.  For s2 I used a turntable cartridge that was wired directly into the mixer that I manipulated with several different objects (tape, bubble wrap and an emory board are three I remember). For s1 I used a radio tuned to static and for oe1 I used a pure sine wave from an old test tone generator. The cartridge was the most varied in sounds while the others (especially the test tone) were fairly constant.  There were several takes that I did of this piece with different sounds, or different combinations of these sounds that while accurate to my realization just weren’t compelling to me as music. Thus I learned the great lesson that for music made up of few sounds, the choice of those sounds is vital.

No 46 performance score

No 46 from the Book of Musical Patterns (download: mp3, lossless)

For quite a few of the early scores that sort of interpretation works perfectly, but the scores become increasing abstract, first abandoning the confines of rows of events and then eventually even the discrete nature of the symbols. So how to approach these more abstract scores, especially those without additional instructions? The first thing of course is to examine the score carefully, noting the elements it contains and trying to work out a basic structure. No 46 is a solid black oval, with twelve white blobby pools of varying size unevenly distributed throughout its area. The pools contain additional black elements of varying size, quantity and complexity. The first thing to decide is which of these elements are to be considered as part of the structural nature of the piece and which are the sound events.

Overall Structure
My first approach was to lay a 9×9 grid over the circular area and considered playing in in a left to right, top to bottom approach such as I took for No 3.  This approach raised a number of concerns though: there would often be parts of the discrete pools in a grid, sometimes more then one which vertically would be encountered simultaneously. This approach would make it hard for a solo realization without discarding a significant amount of the elements. It also minimized the circular nature of the dominant component of the score, something which I felt must be handled in some way. I had played this score before with my friends in the Seattle Improv Meeting (download an mp3 of it here) in which we did a sight reading of the piece. In this take I had worked my way from pool to pool following the shortest distance between them. This I felt was an adaptable approach, using the distance between the pools. For this realization I chose to follow the pools in a circular pattern, spiraling inward. I started at the bottom where the arrow and X are and went clockwise around the pools. Each of the pools I labeled from A to L so by following those alphabetically you can see the route that took through the score. The bottom shows the distance between the pools and the amount of time I assigned to those distances. Following this notion I furthermore measured the pools and assigned a duration for each of those, which is notated on the right hand side of the sheet. I fiddled with the values to get to the Forty-Five minutes that I had alloted to the piece but they are consistent.

Individual Elements
The next bit of analysis I did pre-performance was on the content of each of the pools. These vary per pool but each of them is made up of a number of discrete elements, most of which are constructed from clusters of smaller elements (you may have to look at the larger images to see this). On the left hand side of the score you can see a rough count of the discrete elements and also a shorthand symbol for the elements basic nature. I decided that in general I’d consider these as discrete events but that since each one is made up of clusters, that they’d generally be of more complicated sounds. That is to say sounds that are themselves clusters of events, like say sliding a rock around the strings as opposed to plucking a single string.

Overarching Elements
The final structuring element now was how to treat the black and white elements. The main circle is solid black and the pools are negative space within it. The most obvious interpretation is sound for the black, silence for the white.  One could of course invert that without any compunction, the difference would be sound events widely seperated in silence versus silence puncturing more continuous sound.  I chose the first interpretation, though I’d kind of like to do an inverted realization of the negative space version. Of course there are a lot more options then just this binary approach, but these are the ones that I considered for this particular realization.

The network instrument and my prepared wire strung harp

Finding the sounds
As I had learned from No 3 the sounds chosen for the realization were vital.  In that case it was because there were few sounds across the duration, but in this case it was because there was going to be a continuous sound played for over half of its total duration.  Now what this continuous sound is constructed from is of course the key, it need not even necessarily be all that continuous. It could be made up of a a wide variety of micro-events that in the whole come across as a unifying whole. Or it could be a single static sound that runs unmanipulated. Between those two poles there are of course limitless shades and there are options beyond these poles as well.  What I chose to do was to work with a continuous non-linear electronic sound. That is I setup a system that was inherently non-deterministic so that it subtly varied under its own accord and perhaps had features that could be slightly permuted as it came and went, thus providing a unified sound that had details for those that chose to focus on them. I tend to think of these things more like kinetic sculptures – they are fixed in their elements but as they move, can be viewed from different angles and  never appear the same, but viewed from a distance are always recognizable as a discrete entity. I setup a version of my network instrument using interconnections  that were right on the edge of feedback as well as inputs from the entirety of my setup that could push it into near chaos.  The way this was setup I had to manually manipulate to pots on my mixer to turn this source on or off and this in itself provided some of that variance I desired as the interaction between the two channels was rather variable depending on their relative volumes.

Set of manipulators for this realization

Having worked out the continuous sound it now fell on me to settle what would be performed in the pools. I decided pretty much right off that since the rather dominate continuous sound would be be pure electronics that I’d use only the prepared wire strung harp for the isolated events.  I set this up with a few preparations and four mics (one contact mic on the strings, the internal contact mics on the soundboard and two speakers on the soundbox used as mics). I laid out a subset of objects I’d chose from to manipulate the harp with (rubber tipped mallets, nail files both cardboard and steel, a bolt, an eBow, a rock, tuning key and the bow from a bowed psaltery). However I went no further then this in preparing for the playing of these events. I’ve played the prepared wire strung harp with these tools for many years now and have a wide array of techniques and approaches that I can take. I decided that to add an additional element of uncertainty to this performance that during the static parts I’d decide how to approach each pool.  I had more then enough options to approach each one uniquely which I felt was integral to the score. The wire strung harp I prepared with a minimum of preparations, ones that I knew would allow for a variety of options but also kept choices to a manageable amount. Limiting both the manipulators and the preparations I felt was appropriate considering that the score, while displaying a wide variety of disparate elements was still rather austere.  With all of the elements taken into consideration and setup it now just was a matter of performing the piece. You can listen to the recording to see how it went.

The Musical Patterns in many ways can seem to resist a musical interpretation and I hope that this shows at least one way that they can be approached.  It is worth noting that my approach is not necessarily as monolithic as looking at these two realizations may make it appear.  I have used a number of approaches on the various recordings that I’ve made of these pieces and these represent only a subset of those (see my description of No 33 in the IHM thread for an example of a different approach). Of course with my own realizations there are other concerns that I also address: those involving accidents, choice of sounds, issues with continuous sounds, process and so on.  These can lead to music that the listener may or may not necessarily find to her taste, completely apart from any issues arising from the score. Hopefully through discussion like this, notions of approach can at least elucidated perhaps inspiring those who’d like to hear these sound different to create their own realizations.  For more information on the score, to download pdfs of the score or any of extant recordings see the Book of Musical Patterns site.

Scores Performance

Julie Davidow's score

As promised, my report on the closing party and performances of the Scores exhibition at the Lawrimore Project. I had poked around on the Lawrimore Project website as well as the site from the curator, Volume, prior to the show and the score posted above was the one that was leading my list of ones I wanted to perform.  I scrambled around Monday morning getting ready (I’ve not been playing out much for the last 6 months or so, so I’d developed a really non-portable studio setup) but was still able to make it to the gallery 45 minutes early.  There was only one other performer there at that point so I was able to get my pick of scores.  A quick survey revealed to me that my research was correct and that the score that appealed most to both my visual aesthetics as well as having the best musical possibilities was Julie Davidow’s score.  Scott Lawrimore, the gallery owner, helped me locate a table and power and then left me to set up. I got myself setup and then spent a bit more time working out an approach to the score. After I’d spent a lot of time looking at it and thinking about it I finally read the card with the title and description. This turned out to be: Evidence of Tudor in a Throusand Plateaus (a mashup in 3 movements). Well this was pretty amazing in my mind that this score was directly inspired by an experience the artist had with a score dedicated to David Tudor. I consider David Tudor a major influence and hero and I feel it’s no coincidence that this was the score which captured my attention.

By this time most of the other performers had arrived, selected their score and were setting up.  All told there were to be eight performers, most of them solo but there was one duo. Apart from the performers and Scott I’d say there was another dozen people there, a mix of art patrons and music aficionados.  The first performer was Emily Pothast of the band Midday Veil and also of the art focused blog, Translinguistic Other.  She was playing a piece by Steven Hull that directly referenced John Cage, including images from Fontana Mix as part of it. This piece was a tall black boxy sculpture with a train that would run through it and then out on the gallery floor. Emily was doing these wordless layered vocal drones that seemed to follow the path of the train and as it would disappear from her view she would stop.  This was quite nice and seemed to be a direct attempt to realize the score. A video of Emily’s performance can be found on Vimeo.  I should mention that not being familiar with the music of any of the people who performed my main interest was the degree to which they tried to play the score.

Pearson Wallace-Hoyt and Jon Sargent performing Nina Katchadourian's score

This performance was followed by the only duo performance, Pearson Wallace-Hoyt and Jon Sargent performing a score that was six pieces of paper about different birds and birdsong. They were playing tapes through effects and later some vocals and guitar work. This was in a sort of crunchy, noisy droney tradition at first which seemed a bit removed from how I recalled the scores. As an aside it should be noted that not many of these scores seemed to be made with music making in mind. They are art pieces with presumably some connection to music in the artists mind, but they are not like a musician attempting to make a piece of music that is best represented graphically.  Anyway as their set proceeded they began to add various sequels and squawks of feedback and distressed electronics that I felt could be thought of as a reading of that score.  Sort of in the vein of the abstract sounds that Tudor used in his Rainforest to so well capture that environment.  This duo was followed by David Golightly, also of Midday Veil, who did a short solo analog synth performance to a score by Laetitia Sonami that was a Flycatcher complete with flies. He was using an Octave CAT to created a sputtery layered environment that could evoke with gridwork of the piece with a few events perhaps representing the flies. A nice short little piece that you can watch in it’s entirety on Vimeo.

Amplified Wire Strung Harp with preparations and simple electronics

I was up after David and while I can’t really comment on my performance I can say how it went for me.  As I sat down I forget to setup a timepiece so I wasn’t really able to judge how I was going. In my experience without using a set time for a graphic score you don’t tend to pace it right.  This piece was in three panels with some common elements between them, but also different tones and feels. Its primary element is a wandering webwork that runs through it.  Personally I felt I rushed the piece at first giving a bit of short shrift to the first panel. I eased back and did better in the later two, but it was hard to sense how it was progressing. My favorite part of the piece was the last panel with its vast expanses of white space.  I interpreted this with a  new approach that I’ve been working with where instead of using silence directly I try to create something that would resemble what you experience when there is silence.

Wyndel Hunt and Fallen Fruit

Following my performance was Wyndel Hunt tackling Fallen Fruit. This piece, which formed such a striking backdrop for the  Trimpin film panel a few weeks back, is one of the better pieces of art in the exhibit in my opinion.  I can’t see I see it much as a score and based on the process it was created (a group gets together with various jars of jam and jellies and has a “jam session” ha. ha.) I’m not sure how much of that was intended. Wyndel did an interesting interpretation on it that began with a lot of vocal samples, manipulated and distorted and then added rather noisy, perhaps a bit in the Thurston Moore vein, guitar on top of this.  Hard to directly relate the voices to the score though a friend suggested that evoked the group process behind it, but the cascading washes of guitar certainly could be read as following the lines of the image.

While everything was fairly free form w/r/t the performances Scott had decided on an order for us to play. He’d annouced the next performer and the artwork they’d be performing in between each piece.  Mixing it up a bit from the arranged orderd, next up was yet another member of Midday Veil, Simon Henneman doing a solo sax take on a video piece by Monique Jenkinson. This video piece seemed about as far from a music score as you could get, but it was a piece that could use a soundtrack, so perhaps if you think of a film as a score for its soundtrack it works that way. It featured images of a woman from the head down, sort of stripping, or dancing or something. It had a very noir-ish feel to it and Henneman responded with a pretty smokey, bluesy sound. Toward the end of the film he strayed into skronkier territory with sheets of wails and some sharper attacks.  I felt this all worked quite well as a soundtrack to the film.

Timm Mason plays a score by David Schafer

The final performance was Timm Mason who did a solo guitar read of a painting of text by David Schafer.  He used the tiniest little practice amp, a little round thing at the end of a chord he tossed away from himself. He appeared to read the entire score and play chords in an angular style as he read.  The tiny little amp made this very tinny and distorted it somewhat, but it was a sort of off the cuff, fairly straight chording with perhaps a nod to Derek Bailey.  A valid approach to the piece for sure, but it seemed to go on and on. Judge for yourself though, a video has been posted of his performance on Vimeo.

After this it was snacks and drinks in the back gallery and Midday Veil did a bit of playing in a side gallery.  I mostly packed up and talked to some of the people who I knew from the Eye Music group. All in all it was a pretty good time and certainly an interesting experience. Only afterward did I recall that this was actually the first solo performance I’ve done. Sure I’ve done two one minute solos and I did play solo at the end of the Vancouver New Music Treatise, but this was the first time in this sort of situation. Must have been why I felt so nervous.

See all my pictures from this event on my Flickr Page.
Find out more about this exhibition at the Scores page on the Lawrimore Project website and at Volume.
Video’s from this event on Vimeo.

AMM in Seattle

Keith Rowe’s guitar, Los Angeles, CA, April 24, 1996⁽¹⁾

“One effect that the AMM approach to spontaneous composition has on the listener is to shift attention away from music as a singular object and toward the musical experience as a process.” – Art Lange⁽³⁾

There was clearly a US tour afoot of the AMM in the spring of 1996. On April 19^th they performed at Rice University, Houston, Texas, which was later released by Matchless recordings⁽²⁾. Five days later on April 24^th they performed in LA, where the photographs posted here were taken. The next day, April 25^th, they played a show at the now sadly defunct OK Hotel in Seattle WA. (* see Additional). Having spent considerable time this week with the available recorded documentation of this tour I can say that this was a particularly strong period for the trio AMM. Since this is the first recording we have examined of the form of AMM that was to outlast any other, perhaps an overview of the trio is in order.

At the end of the 70s Rowe and Prévost reunited and spent a brief period as AMM III. In short order they asked John Tilbury to join the group and the initial trio was formed. The documentation of the early trio is to be found on Laminal disc 2: The Great Hall (Feb. 1982), Generative Themes (Dec. 1992) and Combine + Laminates + Treatise ’84 (May 1985 + 1984)). Then there was the restless period where Rohan de Saram, Evan Parker, Lou Gare, etc were all in and out, or guesting and whatnot. They definitely did consider AMM to be the quartet (with de Saram) for a while and there is that quote from Prévost where he intimated that a quintet AMM (with de Saram and Gare) was a going concern⁽⁴⁾. However all of this transpired with the various members (the story has always been that de Saram was too busy with the Arditti’s and Gare never quite got back into that form of music making) after this period that ran from the mid ’80s to the early ’90s they settled again on the core trio. Clearly the early 90s was a bit of a transition period as we have bootlegs up to May 1994 with de Saram and there had been trio AMM albums recorded in 1992 (Newfoundland) and 1994 (Live in Allentown USA) just prior to that date. It seems from probably around 1992 that they changed their modus operandi to that of a trio but they would do occasional shows with de Saram, Gare, Wolff and others as the circumstances arose.

By 1996 AMM was pretty firmly ensconced in the trio format. The sound world of the trio is not as ossified as it is often portrayed, it actually underwent a continual refinement from its earliest days (documented on The Great Hall – the first performance of this trio) to its final performance in 2005 (released as Apogee). The 80s material is a bit rougher containing some of the energy of the 60s era, constrained by the reduced membership perhaps and experience. Then working with de Saram smoothed out some edges and I think the on and off relationship with him and others led to them becoming able to absorb various additional inputs. This too was an annealing process, certain tendencies, excesses and other dross burned away. So by the time they returned primarily to the trio format in the early 90s they were right off quite different from their earlier incarnation. By the time of this recording under examination here, in 1996 they had arrived at the sound that people tend to think of the trio AMM: sounds floating in space, austere, glacial, beautiful music. It is worth noting that this sound, was really only about 8 years of the trio AMM‘s nearly 20 year span. I alas don’t have any boots of the trio in the 80s so for those curious see the official releases listed above.

Some of Eddie Prévost’s kit, Los Angeles CA, April 24, 1996⁽¹⁾

AMM April 25^th 1996 (*)
OK Hotel, Seattle WA

Right away on this track you hear the warbling of oscillating metal on Rowe’s guitar, the spring or a knife vibrating in the strings. Not aggressive, just these quick jittering sounds pointillistic and textureless. Prévost almost immediately joins in first rubbing drumheads, and then really stuttery playing of the drums, struck, muted or the sound of sticks hitting the edge of the drums or other non-resonate objects. It becomes fairly frenetic but not at all laminal, in fact it is more in a free improv vein, but it comes up and then backs down in a way that you’d never hear there. Radio is dropped in and in the distance there is soft chording (the background nature of the piano could be due to the recording, see the final paragraph). This intro is highly divergent from what people have come to think of 90s AMM, it’s rough and ready, frenetic, disparate sounds not at all ethereal, beautiful or floating.

After the initial outburst of activity Rowe and Prévost drop out and you hear just the piano, sounding a bit mechanical here. Quite audible though probably not as much as it’d have been live. Now it is the guitar and percussion that take a back seat as this odd piano line develops; fragments of radio dropped in, bursts of rubbed drum heads or metallic squeaks. This continues apace and then about 15 minutes into the set things begin to head much more toward how people think AMM sounds at this point. There is a wall, not super aggressive but dense, of feedback from Rowe which he drops in squiggles and modulations and transforms into the wash of the fan on the strings, to which he layers in a long classical radio grab. Tilbury can be heard, working and reworking short patterns on the piano adding to the overall sound as Prévost scrapes metal.

The density is backed way down leaving us with these gorgeous piano chords that sound, linger and fade away before the next is sounded along with soft and delicately bowed metal. After some time with this, Rowe adds in this very soft, dull groaning sounds that adds to this fantastic, melancholy section. Of course this cannot last and slowly more and more elements are added in until Prévost is going at the drums ala Animal, Tilbury is pounding out more Cecil Taylor-ish clusters and Rowe is coaxing his guitar into producing a cacophony of grunts, grinds and squawks. For a bit here they rollercoaster from frenetic and dense to quiet and sparse finally landing on a soft section with this continuous rotating drone, layered with soft drumrolls, gentle piano and these otherworldly tones from Rowe’s electronics. There are fits and starts of energy but overall this less dense section persists, restless, constantly altering with some absolutely stunning passages. But all things must pass and this eventually builds up to a roar that rivals the 60s AMM, with Rowe leading the way with feedback and a wall of growling guitar, as Prévost adds in a bass element with rolls on the floor tom and Tilbury pounds the piano. A fantastic noisy section, much less recognizable then the earlier drum centered densities and more focused and clean then the rougher 60s noise. The set winds down from here, into the fragmented collection of sounds with which it began, not sounding the same but evoking that same textureless feel.

And so this one goes, transforming itself from dense to soft with moments of extreme beauty clashing with sounds that require effort on the listeners to fit together. The softer sections in this piece are some of the best I’ve heard from this era; Tilbury’s piano sounded more hesitant, more fragmented as it explores several stereotyped gestures but never goes all the way, Prévost at his most inventive with the bowed metals but also working the skins in ways that threaten to pull you out ’til you fit it all together and Rowe really working with noise here but in such a subtle and austere way that even when he brings it up to a roar it never obfuscates but reveals. This is one of the longer sets I’ve collected, clocking in at about an hour fifteen. Apart from the fact that the file is very low bitrate it is one of the more solid late AMM sets that I’ve found. A lot of the sets are just good, but you could see why they chose other ones to release. But this one is definitely in the category of releasable sets. It shows a lot more variety then Before Driving to the Chapel…and thus displays their range at the time. However that is probably more continuously solid and serves as an excellent document of 1996 AMM.

—

There is an interesting history to this recording that I happened to have found out from some local Seattle musicians. There apparently are two recordings of this show, each one with it’s own deficient; one where Tilbury is fairly low in the mix (this one I imagine) the other where Rowe is much less audible. The ideal solution would be to matrix the two recordings together but apparently one of the DATs was recording at a inconsistent rate (perhaps due to low batteries, the details escape me) making them nearly impossible to synchronize. I haven’t personally heard the other recording but I do think that this one is actually quite decent. Tilbury does get buried at times, but there are other moments where he is quite audible. Rowe’s guitar, radio and electronic detritus is very clear and Prevost’s drum work, metallic percussion and other events are loud and clear. The biggest complaint from me, is that I’ve only being able to find this in a low bit rate mp3.

* Additional
Okay so some rigorous internetting has revealed two interesting things, first off the show was from April 25^th not May 25^th which fits in with the other dates better and I found a listing of the entire 1996 West Coast Tour!

AMM Tour 1996 (from Beanbenders)

18 April: Austin, Texas, Mexic-Arte Museum
19 April: Houston, Texas, Rice University
20 April: Chicago, Godspeed Hall
23 April: Los Angeles, Avar [sic] Theatre – AMM
24 April: Los Angeles, Avar [sic] Theatre – solos/duos
25 April: Seattle, OK Hotel
27 April: Berkeley, CA, Beanbender’s

Even more additionally, a short report on the April 27^th show:
AMM at Beanbenders.

Sources
1) AMM at the Ivar Theater, Lou Zine republished at the Arcane Candy blog
2) AMM Before driving to the chapel we took coffee with Rick and Jennifer Reed (Matchless Recordings)
3) Before Driving to the Chapel… Review Art Lange, Fanfare, May/June 1998
4) The Crypt liner notes by Eddie Prévost,1992 (Matchless Recordings)
5) Edwin Prévost, No Sound is Innocent, Copula, 1995
6) The AMM page at the European Free Improvisation Home
7) Notes on AMM: Entering and Leaving History Stuart Broomer, CODA Magazine no. 290. 2000

AMM play Cardew, Wolff, Cage & Skempton in Germany

John Cage: Variations III
 

I had heard that AMM used to stage performances various new music pieces at various times in their history ⁽²⁾. Of course Treatise was something they always did, finding a group of simpatico musicians to play that with was part of Cardew’s reason for joining up back in the ’60s.  But from what I understood they also played Wolff, Cage, Brown and others of the Experimental school.  The period where Tilbury first joined the group (early 1980s)  was one these periods, perhaps as a way to ease him into the groups dynamics.  So it shouldn’t be too surprising that at the point when de Saram was brought into the group they also performed those work from the 20^th Century repertoire that he also might have been familiar with.  I’ve not managed to find any recordings of the early 80s AMM playing any of these pieces but recently a recording turned up from the Westfälisches Musikfest in Germany of the Rowe, Prévost, Tilbury, de Saram iteration of AMM performing pieces by Cardew, Wolff, Cage and Skempton.

Excepting the Skempton, these are all pieces that I love and have heard in a number of interpretations.  It is very exciting to me to get to hear AMM tackle these pieces. The Skempton, which I had not heard before this, is an amazing piece along with the Variations III is the highlight of this performance.

—-

May 15^th 1994
AMM play Cardew, Wolff, Cage, Skempton
Ravensberger Spinnerei, Bielefeld/Germany
first concert in the series: “Mobil – Offene Form mit Variations” within the “Westfälisches Musikfest, edition 1994”
recording from the original broadcast on WDR3, June 6^th 1995

Set 1
Cornelius Cardew:  Solo with Accompaniment for 2 instruments ad libitum
A real brooding interpretation of this piece with sounds struck and allowed to fade away. Especially quick bowed and struck gong which reverberates and fades away and either bow length strokes on the ‘cello or quick sequences of notes,  Rowe doing a fast brush over his strings or striking.  The piano is the solo here and it is sparse little figures and chords. This is an amazing take on this piece that you can hear in a much more formal version on the Matchless Cardew Chamber music disc. It shows how AMM, using nontraditional percussion and Rowe’s prepared guitar by musicians who aren’t classically trained can do a brilliant interpretation of this composition.

Christian Wolff: for 1, 2 or 3 people, any sound producing means
The piece opens right up with a circular attack on the head of a drum and some metallic percussive sounds. Little spurts and fits of sound from Rowe’s guitar with occasional outburst of swelled sound. This seems to be percussion, ‘cello and guitar with the characteristic sounds of Prévost: quick snare rolls, bowed metal, short metallic attacks, Rowe: filled strings, swelled attacks, spring-work and edgy bowed guitar and de Saram: scritchy bowing, col legno and short, sharp attacks. The nature of this piece leads to a spacious sound field with bursts of sound and density.

John Cage: Variations III for arbitrary number of players and arbitrary sound originators
This piece opens up with a crunching bit of over driven attack on the spring that evokes the initial moments of Tudor’s version of Variations II. After a bit of this de Saram works in almost a pure tone generated by slow deliberate bowing. Very spacious piece with long moments where you only hear incidental sounds. Quiet sounds such as Tilbury rubbing the piano strings and Prévost pressing an object into a drum head barely transcend these moments of stillness. Again and again though Rowe delivers the sharp attacks on his pickups.  Fantastic version of this piece, fill with space, single plucked ‘cello notes, crunching electronics, soft percussion and extended piano: the best version of this piece that I have heard.

Howard Skempton:  for strings (waves, shingle, seagulls)

“Shingles are little stones like very large grains of sand, that make a sucking sound as the tide comes in and out.” – Keith Rowe⁽¹⁾

Thin wails from de Sarams upper register, and low gentle rumbles from mallets on Prévost’s floor tom open this piece. Tilbury joins in with what sounds like a two handed chord on the piano with the sustain pedal, but oh soft softly pressed so that the piano mallets just caress the strings. Rowe generates a very high pitched, very seagullish I’d say squeal from his guitar. The piece grinds on in this fashion evoking the waves shingle and seagulls for strings that the composition calls for. It ends as it begins, with gentle tapping evoking walking on a shingle beach, the high thin wails from the ‘cello and restless piercing feedback from the guitar. Calm yet sharp. A piece I’d not heard before, but came to immediately love from this performance of it. Slow paced, as of the sea on a calm day and filled with those sounds that can evoke natural processes but are miles away from the instruments from whence they came.

 Set 2
Cornelius Cardew:  February pieces for piano (#2)
Solo piano played by Tilbury. The February Pieces are transcriptions from Cardew’s supremely indeterminate Autumn ’60 and Tilbury has been playing it pretty much from the beginning.  Little clusters of chords and drops of single notes sprinkled amongst the background of these chords.  Short little pauses and a Feldman like attention to sounds duration and placement. A certain points it plays with traditional musical notions: fragments of scales, sections that evoke serialism, subverted near romanticism. It ends with listless wanderings up and down the keyboard leading into some quick muscular chording. It’s a whole musical world in a six short minutes. A beautiful little piece, perfectly rendered by Mr. Tilbury.

AMM:  Improvisation
Right into full volume piano for this as if Tilbury just continued on from the February Pieces. Rohan de Saram jumps right in with short sharp strikes with his bow on the ‘cello strings and Prévost shortly adds in that circular sound of a bowed tam tam.  Only Rowe lays out initially though not too far into it he fades in and out with a mechanical whirr.  This improv, one of the shorter AMM pieces I’ve heard, seems highly informed by the music that preceded it.  It doesn’t quite have the laminal feel so typical of this period of AMM, it is built of short segments, cobbled together from fragments of the pieces that preceded it.

Almost as if compressing a typical AMM hour into it’s thirty minutes length, they do bring it together from the beginning described above. It becomes denser with more pronounced bowing, heavier mallet work on the floor tom and clear chords on the piano.  The alternations between densities that was so pronounced in the quartet AMM is shortly established though through the piece retains some of the flavor of the experimental compositions earlier performed. The piano is more dominate then normal and more Cardew like, Rowe, when he becomes more prominent is in the more fragmented attack and decays of Variations III and de Saram sounds the most Arditti-esque of all the AMM I’ve heard him on.  Only Prévost I’d say switched right to improv mode almost into the excesses of free improv at times with a quite muscular near drum solo-ish style; perhaps trying to create a clear break or perhaps due to being the furthest removed from the experimental tradition and the most heavily invested in improvisation.  The highlight for this piece for me is about half way through there is a low density section where Rowe lays in a quiet, slightly staticy
radio grab of a classical piece, a string quartet it sounds like, probably 19^th Century.  An interesting bit of commentary on this classical festival and the tradition that they have been dabbling in. 

The very end of this piece is much more reminiscent of the previous recording reviewed from this quartet and is simply fantastic. It begins with this series of two note figures from Tilbury, to which de Saram adds some soft bowing and for a time it’s just these sounds.  Then Prévost drops begins this rattly metallic percussion sound and Rowe emits short growls and guttural scrapes from running a serrated edge over his strings. Tilbury moves to low rumbling sustained chords and the density builds into this glacial weight, slow and powerful and then it all just flakes away into it’s constituent parts and from these parts an urgency begins almost a frantic level of short, yet not dense activity. Then the announcer comes in and the piece is faded out, leaving us to question how they ended this from this rather active point and how much longer they played to arrive at that point.

—
 

Not the best of AMM performances I’ve heard, a bit too free improv, a bit too compressed and possibly due to wanting to break from the earlier music it seems to not be as in the moment as normal. Had it continued from how it began into an improvisatory exploration of the experimental tradition that would have been a pretty interesting piece of music. I’ve argued in previous installments that that is where AMM music lies anyway – their concerns didn’t entirely overlap but were in the same realm. So a natural progression from the experimental compositions into their unguided explorations would have made for a natural counterpoint and commentary instead of trying to force the issue.

While the short little section of AMMMusic in this performance certainly doesn’t reach the heights of that they have previously attained it is these performances of New Music compositions that puts this as one of my favorite AMM recordings. This marks the half way point of my transversal of my collection of AMM bootlegs and is the last of the quartet AMM recordings that I have acquired, from this point on it will be the trio AMM.

—
References
1) Keith Rowe interviewed by Gino Robair 1991, Transbay Calendar (11.07, 12.07 and 01.08)
2) Edwin Prévost, No Sound is Innocent, Copula, 1995
3) The Inexhaustible Document Liner notes. Paige Mitchell 1987
4) Rohan de Saram homepage

Eye Music

Eye Music
Friday April 4th, 2008 | 8:00 PM
$5 – $15 sliding scale
Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center
50th & Sunnyside, in Wallingford

So the group that I did that performance of Treatise w/ Keith Rowe is doing a performance this Friday of some of the other Graphic Scores we’ve been working on. Info about the group can be found here and info on the venue can be found here. We’re going to be playing the following pieces, in various combinations of the ensemble:

Mike Shannon Matrix
Toshi Ichiyanagi Sapporo
Cornelius Cardew Treatise (pages 72,73 and 76)
Bob Cobbing Chamber Music
Robin Mortimore Very Circular Pieces
Clifford Burke Upside Down & Backwards
Michael Parsons Piece for 1 or More Guitars
David Toop Lizard Music

Three Scores by Christian Wolff

Three Interesting Scores by Christian Wolff

“Notation is before the fact; incentives and suggestions for action; is, by definition, incomplete, full of omissions; but, I think, should be as practical as possible. I have wanted to be practical about making it possible for musical action, performance, to be direct, each time as though for the first time; and direct too in the sense of moving outward, so that the play is not so much an expression of the player (or composer) as a way of connecting, making a community (the music itself sometimes involving internally those fluid and precise, and transparent, line or projections of connection).”
– Christian Wolff¹

 

In 2007 with the Seattle Improv Meeting, a group focused on structured improv, I explored three scores by Christian Wolff. Christian Wolff was the youngest member of the New York School (and the only currently surviving member) and began his compositional career with very simple, spare scores sometimes using only a handful of notes. A key member of the New York school he followed and led the School in various techniques and solutions. He always was pushing the limits of notation, mutating the meanings of common terms and working to incorporate aspects of improvisation and indeterminacy. In the 60’s after meeting more politically active composers such as Cardew and Rzewlski he began to incorporate political awareness into his work.

“To turn the making of music into a collaborative and transforming activity (performer into composer into listener into composer into performer, etc.), the cooperative character of the activity to the exact source of the music. To stir up, through the production of the music, a sense of social conditions in which we live and of how these might be changed.”
– Christian Wolff⁴

 

As that quote points towards part of this political awareness was the breaking down of the barriers between performers and audience and composer and interpretor. This concern was addressed in his semi-graphic score Edges^III, with it’s lack of instrumentation, reduced musical notation and textual instructions. But for his Prose Collection^V,  this was the primary concern; to compose works that could be played by anyone regardless of any sort of training:

Stones and Sticks, along with the other pieces in the Prose Collection were written for use by non-professional players as well as non-musicians, people, people with an interest in music, especially experimental music, strong enough to make them want to try playing some.” – Christian Wolff⁵

It is these types of pieces that we have particularly been interested in playing in the Seattle Improv Meeting. Like Cornelius Cardew‘s Scratch Orchestra, this group was assembled from trained and untrained musicians all that, as Wolff put it, have “an interesting in music, especially experimental music, strong enough to make them want to try playing some”.  Works that border on improvisation, where the composer has provided some structure has been the particular focus. Working with the scores of Christian Wolff this year has been especially rewarding, leading to some of the greatest challenges in interpretation as well as some of the most satisfying results.

For the rest of this post I examine the three scores that we have tackled and some of the reactions, obstacles and revelations that came from playing them. For each score I have linked to the recordings of our attempts at them, but of course with this kind of music there is near infinite variety in the realizations. In that end I also reference the other recordings I know of for each score without comment. No realization should be considered definitive. All of these scores are readily available, see the references section at the end of this post for information on attaining a copy. The Prose Scores are available for download and by merely gathering sticks or stones you can make your own realization. Post links to these in the comments!

Stones (1968-1971)

Make sounds with stones, draw sounds out of stones, using a number of sizes and kinds (and colours); for the most part discretely; sometimes in rapid sequences. For the most part striking stones with stones, but also stones on other surfaces (inside the open head of a drum, for instance) or other than struck (bowed, for instance, or amplified). Do not anything.
– Christian Wolff²

 

Stones was my first encounter with Christian Wolff’s Prose Scores which I heard on the Wandelweiser Composers Ensemble recording of the piece. The liner notes for the recording included the entire score (reproduced above) which on seeing I immediately desired to tackled it with the Improv Meeting. On several visits to Whidbey and Fidalgo Islands (where I spent my childhood) I gathered a nice collections of sea stones. However we wouldn’t play it for nearly nine months as I was hoping to perform it when all four members of the group were present. Eventually my increasing fascination with Wolff’s music and scores got the better of me and in 2007 gave in and performed it with the reduced group. Later on in an outdoor session we did finally play this piece with the entire group, though we segued from it into a more free improvisation.

There are several things one should note immediately with regards to this score; first off the instructions are pretty opened ended and allows for a lot of activities. But it does instruct that the playing should befor the most part discreet and that it should be made of stones on stones. With those two restrictions you are open to do what you want. When performing the score you quickly find that there are a lot of sounds you can eke out of stones from rubbing them together, rattling small ones in your hands, tapping multiple ones together and so on. When you then add the occasional outside object or technique you are rewarded with a sound perhaps outside of the range that you have been hearing. Of course those for the most parts are important – if you spent the entire time using the stones to play your guitar you’d be violating the score. Likewise if you tossed them in a rock tumbler and let it run for an hour. The sounds are mostly supposed to be that of stone on stone separated enough in time to allow them to be heard. At the same time I think if you don’t stray from the two basic rules at least a little bit then you also aren’t in the spirit of the score. But it is more forgivable in that direction.

Recordings of Stones:

Download the Seattle Improv Meeting recording: Stones

Download the Seattle Improv Meeting outdoors version:  Stones/Improv

Also available on the following recordings:
Stones(Wandelweiser Composers Ensemble)released by Timescraper
YouTube videos:
Anton Lukoszevieze at Zeitkratzer ” Unprotected Music”, April 2007: Stones I, Stones II

Sticks (1968-1971)

Make sounds with sticks of various kinds, one stick alone, several together, on other instruments, sustained as well as short. Don€™t mutilate trees or shrubbery; don€™t break anything other than the sticks; avoid outright fires unless they serve a practical purpose.

You can begin when you have not heard a sound from a stick for a while; two or three can begin together. You may end when your sticks or one of them are broken small enough that a handful of the pieces in your hands cupped over each other are not, if shaken and unamplified, audible beyond your immediate vicinity. Or hum continuously on a low note; having started proceed with other sounds simultaneously (but not necessarily continuously); when you can hum no longer, continue with other sounds, then stop. With several players either only one should do this or two or two pairs together (on different notes) and any number individually.

You can also do without sticks but play the sounds and feelings you imagine a performance with sticks would have.
-Christian Wolff³

After our successful take on Stones I was compelled to tackle Sticks. Sticks had a bit more complicated score (reproduced above) then stone, though at it’s core it isn’t too different. Wolff does include a lot more detailed instructions for how the score should conclude which includes the option beyond sticks of humming. Most interestingly is the addendum  You can also do without sticks but play the sounds and feelings you imagine a performance with sticks would have. With this instruction you could take an orchestra, or rock band and perform this score. Also worth noting is that the restriction placed on the stones of performing certain actions, most of the time, is removed. In this score you apparently can play rapid sequences or on other instruments for a greater amount of time. Though he does state sustained as well as short, which seems to imply not doing one thing the entire time. A good rule to follow in general I think. During my preliminary research for performing this score I found no other recordings of the piece. While informed by our performance of Stones, as well as the one recording I had of that, we were somewhat on our own here.

I gathered up a selection of sticks from my backyard, the local park and my place of work on the day of this performance. I also gathered a lot of pine cones figuring they were stick-like enough or at least would fall under the other instruments clause. Like the stones the variety of sounds that you can produce by the sticks is incredibly varied. Stick like of course but what with breaking them, rubbing them together, whip in the air, beating them together, running them against  a series of other sticks, twisting them against each other and so on there was a lot of different sounds available. Some of my sticks was dried bamboo and that provided the option to blow into the hollows space, to crush them, rattle other sticks inside and on and on. Of course there was the option of the other instruments and in my friends practice room there were percussion, strings and other instruments to apply this to. With the directions on how to end the piece I think that this one took more to wind down. There was some humming from at least one of use, but basically it just got sparse and sparser. Overall this was as intuitive and as dynamic to perform as Stones and I think Wolff’s simple directions pushed this beyond mere screwing around with sticks. A good exercise I think would be to perform the two scores simultaneously.

Recordings  of Sticks


Download the Seattle Improv Meeting recording: Sticks

I am unaware of any other recordings of this piece.

Edges (1968)

Edges Score, Christian Wolff

The year before Wolff began work on the Prose Scores he created the graphic score, Edges^IV. Wolff wrote this score while in London and it was originally performed by the members of AMM plus Wolff and Rzewski⁶. It was performed by as Wolff puts it “drop-outs from conventional music careers” whom then went on to form the basis of the Scratch Orchestra⁶. Edges is a sparse score of various symbols place in space. The performance score can be seen above, but it also contains a legend for the symbols and a set of textual instructions.

“”The idea of the piece and its basic performing instructions are this: the notations on the score are not so much playing instructions as such as reference points, that is, you play around it, at varying distances from the state of being intricate, and you can, but only once in a performance, imply play “intricate”. The general notion I had was of the score’s something like a photographic negative the developed picture of which would be realized by the player; or, to use another analogy, the playing would be like movement, dancing say, in a space containing a number of variously shaped but transparent and invisible objects which the dancing generally avoids, but which as the dancing kept on would become evident, visible so to speak, because they are always being danced around.”
-Christian Wollf⁷

 

I consider Edges one of the most difficult scores that our group has tackled, difficult in wrapping ones head around it primarily. As that quote above implies, the score is like instructions on how to play something else, as if there was an existing sound and you are accenting it, or making it audible through your playing. Of course one can just methodically go through the score as if it was a list of sound events to play and I think that in our first attempt at it that is more or less the tact taken. Some good sounds and interactions come from it but it seemed lacking in its realization. The second attempt, informed by the first, was a step or two closer I feel. There was more of an awareness of the tools at hand to carve our the invisible objects and that helped. We weren’t so much feeling our way in the dark as more confidently wielding these tools in service of the unrealized music. Still I think that it will take a long time to be comfortable with the score and it is something that we should revisit more frequently. The simple elegance of this score underlies its massive potential and I think in performance that makes it seem impenetrable at first. This all I think stands as testament to how well constructed it is and the realization of Wolff’s goals. “The piece is not quite improvisation, but experience with improvisation is very useful in performing it.”⁷. A perfect piece for this group.

Recordings  of Edges:

Seattle Improv Meeting recordings of Edges:

Download:  Edges realization 1

Download: Edges realization 2

Also available on the following recordings:
Earle Brown, John Cage und Christian Wolff released by EMI Electrola
Bread & Roses (M. Goldstein, M. Kaul) released by Wergo
New York School 3 (Kleeb, Dahinden, Polisoidis) released by HatART
Goodbye 20th Century (Sonic Youth, W. Winant, J. O’Rourke, T. Kosugi, C. Marclay, C. Wolff) released by SYR
On YouTube: Edges (though a pretty dreadful interpretation)

—

Christian Wolff has become a favorite composer of mine in the last few years and I have greatly enjoyed performing these accessible and open ended works of his. I highly recommend seeking out the various recordings of his music and listening to these pieces as performed by others and perhaps even more so his through composed works. Additionally his book Cues (I), is an incredibly informative read and well worth reading by musicians and fans of this area of music alike. Wolff’s writing style is very clear and he is quite good at explaining complicated subject matter at multiple levels of detail. Additionally he lived though an incredibly interesting period of musical history and was a key player in it. He has an uncanny ability to talk about the events surrounding and including him at just the right level of detachment.

---

References

I:  Cues:  Writings & Conversations, Christian Wolff, Edition MusikText 005, 1998 Koln
II:  Christian Wolff at Wikipedia
III:  Christian Wolff pages: bio, works, recordings
IV: Edges, C.F. Peters , Photoprint edition from Sheetmusic Plus.
V: Prose Collection, Republished in (I) free PDF available from Frog Peak Music

Citations
1: Christian Wolff,  Before the Fact (I)
2: Christian Wolff, Sticks, Prose Collection 1968-71 (V, I)
3: Christian Wolff, Stones, Prose Collection 1968-71 (V, I)
4: Christian Wolff Wikipedia (II)
5: Christian Wolff, Revolutionary Noise, (I, p. 200)
6: Christian Wolff, Revolutionary Noise, (I, p. 207)
7: Christian Wolff, Revolutionary Noise, (I, p. 208)

Favorite Concerts 2007

These were my favorite concerts from 2007 in the order they occurred.
I ended up seeing a decent amount of great shows all locally – first year in a while I haven’t traveled far for concerts. The Seattle Improvised Music festival was especially strong and at least two more sets from there would immediately follow this list. I should mention that the musical highlight for me this year was the workshop and performance of several pages of Treatise in collaboration with Keith Rowe. One of my favorite pieces of modern composition, with the most important living interpreter (and genuinely great guy) and a collection of great local players, this was an amazing experience.

Great concerts 2007:

Andy Hayleck / Jonathan Sielaff / Kyle Bruckmann
Seattle Improvised Music Festival
February 9th, 2007
Gallery 1412 Seattle WA USA
(Write-up: http://blog.spiralcage.com/?p=139)

Bonnie Jones / Andy Hayleck
Seattle Improvised Music Festival
February 10th, 2007
Gallery 1412 Seattle WA USA
(Write-up: http://blog.spiralcage.com/?p=140)

Andrea Neumann / Gust Burns / Nate Wooley / Jeffrey Allport
Seattle Improvised Music Festival
February 16th, 2007
Gallery 1412 Seattle WA USA
(Write-up: http://blog.spiralcage.com/?p=141)

Nate Wooley
Seattle Improvised Music Festival
February 16th, 2007
Gallery 1412 Seattle WA USA
(Write-up: http://blog.spiralcage.com/?p=141)

Andrea Neumann
Seattle Improvised Music Festival
February 17th, 2007
Gallery 1412 Seattle WA USA
(Writeup: http://blog.spiralcage.com/?p=142)

Joan Lippincott at Saint Marks Annual All Bach Concert
May 4th 2007
Saints Marks Cathedral, Seattle WA USA
(Write-up: http://blog.spiralcage.com/?p=151)

Jordi Savall with Pierre Hantaï and Xavier Diaz-Latorre
Early Music Guild
May 11th 2007
Town Hall, Seattle WA, USA
(Write-up: http://blog.spiralcage.com/?p=152)

Oren Ambarchi
Guitars! Guitars! Festival (Vancouver New Music)
October 17th, 2007
Scotia Bank Dance Centre, Vancouver BC Canada
(Write-up: http://blog.spiralcage.com/?p=176)

Keith Rowe
Guitars! Guitars! Festival (Vancouver New Music)
October 19th, 2007
Scotia Bank Dance Centre, Vancouver BC Canada
(Write-up: http://blog.spiralcage.com/?p=177)

Annette Krebs
Guitars! Guitars! Festival (Vancouver New Music)
October 20th, 2007
Scotia Bank Dance Centre, Vancouver BC Canada
(Write-up: http://blog.spiralcage.com/?p=177)

Bach Redux
Gallery Concerts
November 17th , 2007
Queen Anne Christian Church, Seattle WA USA
( I didn’t write this one up but it was a string trio and a pianist playing music by Classical and Romantic composers who were influenced by Bach. The pieces were either adaptations of Bach pieces, use of fugal technics that Bach excelled and so on. The string trio was excellent as was the guest pianist. Especially nice was that the piano was a period correct Chickering and really an interesting instrument that lacked many of the refinements of a modern piano. It had a very rich sound, especially in the bass. My favorite part of the concert though was a pre-concert performance of Bach’s Suite No. 5 in C minor for the Unaccompanied Cello).

Silence Report – day 3

Silence: John Cage

18 – 21 October 2006
Vancouver New Music Festival 2006

ScotiaBank Dance Centre

Day 3 October 20^th 2006

Atlas Eclipicalis Workshop

Marina had had airline troubles and was running a bit late, so Giorgio had us run through a page of the score whilst we waited. Marina came in during this and watched as we completed the page. Giorgio introduced her to us and she regaled us with some of her thoughts on the score. Since she had been asked to run this ensemble she had spent several months examining and thinking about the score. Trying to deal with it in terms of space – both outer space and in a musical sense. The circular aspect as well – with the clock’s and positioning the score in that frame of reference was another issue, on that she decided to work with by moving our sound around in the space. This she was to do with a specially formulated record that had MIDI time codes on it and a Max patch that would take those signals and use them for audio routing. So she would be adding additional circles – that of the turntable and the sound field.

As for our interpretation so far she felt that we could be even slower, that we should avoid “extraordinary sounds” (as per the instructions) and to try to play as inexpressive as possible. Simple quiet sounds with as short a duration as possible unless indicated otherwise. She was very interested in the intersecting sounds and felt that we should do these as much as possible. Melody she said should be on the edge of possibility, never deliberate but create by chance from the simple events that were performed. She then went around the room and worked with every one individually for 10 minutes or so testing their approach and offering advice.

Set I:

Variations VIII / Variations V (Mark Brady, Sara Gold, Lee Hutzulak, Matthew , O’Donnel, Michael Red, Jean Routhier, Igor Santizo, Jesse Scott, Ben Wilson, Phil Thomson)

These Variations were originally done with the Merce Cunningham dance company whose very movements would interfere with various electronic devices. For this performance they followed this and had four dancers moving about the central space. There was a lot of mvideo setup for this one from a TV on the left hand side with a live camera positioned above it to the central projection video of a previously recorded film of these same dancers. The sounds used were a lot of radio, who were interfered by the dancers, and also other electronics that I believe they had various other triggers, including the aforementioned camera/TV setup. These electronics were in the synthesized low tone range a lot of the times in emulation of the Theremin type machines that were used in the original. The dancers however were most definitely not the Merce Cunnigham dancer company and most of their prancing and moving around the space was an embarrassment to watch.. They would run around, and “play” with each other and a giant white ball, grapple with each other and often run in front of the video camera. The projected video was pretty cheesy – two of the dancers rolling around on each other primarily, with cross-faded close-ups and the like. This was the weakest of the Variations in my opinion and I think it was solely because of the dancers, as the sounds were interesting but their shape was dependent on these dancers.

Artist Chat: Margaret Leng Tan

Margaret arrived late to her chat, just as Gordon Mumma was being drafted to fill in. Margeret began by explaining that the program that she was to play had been chosen so as to cover the entire range of Cage’s piano work – traditional piano, to the prepared piano, to the toy piano. Gordon asked her about the Chess pieces, which were to receive their Canadian premier tonight, and she explained that this was a score where there were notes on each square of the chessboard. This chessboard had long been in a private collection and on finding Cage’s notes about it, it was sought out and she reconstructed the piece from it. Asked about the Black Mountain College days of Cage, she pointed out that this was the period just before Cage had moved into the chance operations. While he had thought up the concept for the so called “silent piece” several years prior it was his exposure to Rauschenberg’s “white paintings” at this time that gave him the “courage” to compose it. She also explained that she had plained to end the program with “Water Music” which apparently has a lot of radio work in it, but that she couldn’t tune anything but static in, down in the main room (a bit odd considering how much radio we’ve already heard, though perhaps the score called for shortwave which I personally had no success in tuning in during the Treatise performance). This led her to an amusing anecdote about the microphones on her piano picking up an Emmylou Harrison soundcheck during a performance of the Sonata’s and Interludes.

Set II:

Lecture on the Weather (Bruce Freedman, Mas Funo, Avron Hoffman, Jay Hirabayashi, Mandido, Steve Miller, Marv Newland, Clyde Reed, Henri Robideau, Stefan Smulovitz, Albert St. Albert, Laurence Svirchev, Jerry Wasserman.)

This piece by Cage was commission for the American Bicentennial and was very controversial in its premiere. In homage to this VNM decided to have it performed by Canadian citizens who were formerly Americans. The piece is twelve people simultaneously reading from excerpts from the writings of Henry David Thoreau. The twelve men, some of them clearly of draft dodger vintage, were arrayed at podiums in front of the audience and each read from their texts in wildly different styles. At several points each of them would take out a small instrument and plonk away at it, in various degrees of musicality. The volumes of their mic’s were being adjusted as well, as per the score I assume. Samples of weather sounds; rain, thunder, wind were played a various times during the readings and toward the end there were various simple geometric shapes projected on the big screen..

I personally found this piece wonderful and very charming, the voices overlapping often incomprehensible and at other times one voice dominating and coming through clearly. Plus I am a huge fan of Thoreau and I delighted in hearing his writings brought to life in a way that I think would have made him chuckle for days to come. Not so the other people at my table who walked out after 30 minutes or so, leaving their companion who relied on crutches behind. At the end of the show she asked me how I felt about it, and somewhat surprised about this question I said it had made me happy (though delight would have been a better term). She informed me that it had made her sad and then hobbled away.

Fontana Net (Rogalsky Brothers)

“Fontana Mix consists of a total of 20 pages of graphic materials: ten pages covered with six curved lines each, and ten sheets of transparent film covered with randomly-placed points. In accordance with a specific system, and using the intersecting points of a raster screen, two of the pages produce connecting lines and measurements that can be freely assigned to musical occurrences such as volume, tone color, and pitch. The interpreter no longer finds a score in the customary sense, but rather a treatment manual for the notation of a composition.” – from here.

Matt Rogalsky created this piece for a performance of different interpretations of the Cage piece, Fontana Mix. For his version there are a number of computers networked together and a pool of samples that make up the piece. They use chance operations to setup up guidelines for the performance of the samples and there is a bit of control from the performers as to how they are played, including where in the sound space they were placed.
The performers were three brothers with Powerbooks on a single table in front of the stage with some abstract visualization made up of parts of the score behind them on the big screen. The sounds utilized included quiet scraping sounds, to almost bird like twittering sounds, to the sounds of a rubbed cartridge or contact mic to various pops, clicks and hisses. There was some super sparse sections, some genuine silences and some really busy parts that would sometimes whip around you as they moved the samples around the sound field.

Artist Chat: Rogalsky Brothers

The information about the piece that I mentioned above was all gleaned from this chat. They passed around the room the transparencies and the pages of squiggles and dots that were used to generate the scores for each of the performers. The end result of this procedure is a series of events in time. The software utilized was Supercollider and Matt Rogalsky had generated the scores and developed the software setup. He had created this for a festival in Berlin that had eight different musicians each doing a different take on this piece. He said that each of the musicians/composers would take this piece and still end up sounding like themselves, Christian and James Tenney being two of the other composers that he mentioned participating (This seems to be the festival program though it is in German only).

The performers of this networked version had a specific duration of twenty-five minutes, utilized a shared score and a pool of the samples – they could trigger a sample that was already in use for instance. The software gave each of the sounds movement in space using a drunkards walk, but they as performers had control over their speed.

Set III:

Bacchanale, Suite for Toy Piano, Dream, The Seasons, Chess Pieces, 4’33″, Etudes Australes, In the Name of the Holocaust (Margaret Leng Tan)

The final performance of this night was Margaret Leng Tan on piano, prepared piano and toy piano. She played the above pieces sequentially from the date of compositions. She with Bacchanale which used the prepared piano and was real vigorous and fully worked the percussive nature of this instrument. Next was the Suite for Toy Piano which was very plinky and you could really hear the sound of the toy piano’s action. This piece was mostly single notes, little runs and short spaces. DreamSeasons was next, and while I give Cage full credit for evoking each season quite clearly I find the piece pretty boring overall. It is mostly made up of short repeated phrases that were sparser and spikier in fall, more dissonant and quiet in winter, sprightly in spring and sedate in the summer. Well crafted but not something I’d want to hear often. Chess Pieces included the score unfolding on the video display square by square as she played the piece and also Gordon Mumma onstage to turn pages. The music was pretty dense with a fairly rapid tempo. Each row of the chessboard was treated as a musical phrase with a short pause at the end. Margaret chose to perform 4’33″ on the toy piano which was an excellent choice. The audience was treated to the sound of new music fans trying desperately to be quiet and even though Margaret had announced at the beginning that we could turn cell phones back on, alas none went off. She went directly from this piece to Etudes Australes which is a piece in the same series as the Atlas Eclipicalis that I was involved with. This also had the score projected and was a sparse, pointillistic affair. The notes seemed be primarily in the upper ranges of the piano and would be in short clusters punctuated by silences. Not really to dissimilar to a way one could play Atlas Eclipicalis. The final piece In the Name of the Holocaust is a powerful moving piece that closed this evening on a fairly somber note. The insides of the piano were played in a fairly continuous fashion for some time and then she moved to deep chords and then both chords and inside work. An almost koto like feeling was evoked creating a deliberate and clear contrast – Japanese music and bombing chords. The sustain held on, dense layers of sound build up which are then punctuated by sharp plucking, followed with pounding and rattley sounds that become sparser and sparser and then it ends by a huge smashed chord.

While I certainly prefer John Tilbury for my New Music Piano, Margaret Leng Tan is a consummate performer who worked closely with Cage and has performed it extensively. I loved seeing her perform and enjoyed the wide range of pieces she worked through. While a lot of the earlier Cage is not to my liking it was valuable to get a chance to hear it performed.

Silence Report – day 2

Silence: John Cage

18 – 21 October 2006
Vancouver New Music Festival 2006

ScotiaBank
Dance Centre

Day 2: October 19^th 2006

Atlas Eclipicalis Workshop

Festival organizer and participant Giorgio Magnanensi led the first day of the Atlas Eclipicalis Workshop up in one of the dance studios on the seventh floor of the former bank. This score is a number of individual parts of four pages each. Each page has five “systems”, made up of zero or more “constellations”, that correspond to forty-five degrees in a circle. Each constellation could contain anywhere from zero to dozens of stars, laid out on an arbitrary stave. The stars are of different sizes based on their magnitude, which corresponded to the volume they should be played. About some of these constellations were numbers that indicated how many sound events should be short as possible or of a natural duration. He began by going over the instructions that come with the score with some question and discussion of what they meant. Marina Rosenfeld who was to lead the community ensemble was not to arrive till the next day, so Giorgio always included the caveat that she may look at it somewhat differently. Giorgio certainly knows his Cage and I found his clarifications of Cage’s score incredibly helpful (and there was very little difference between his and Marina’s take on the score). After spending some time discussing these instructions we tried playing a few sections after which Giorgio suggested that we play quieter and be careful to leave the space between sound events that the score calls for. Then we ran through the whole score, which sounded pretty good if still a bit loud. He gave us advice to go through the score and work out a strategy or idea for each constellation in the score.

“You don’t want to exercise the verb “I want” too often”

Film:

*TIMESPACE*/Time’sPace (Gordon Mumma, documentary film)

The festival began an hour early this night with a film by Gordon Mumma which he introduced it with a brief description and some anecdotes. One point that he really wanted to emphasize was the impact of Cage’s visual arts. He pointed out that people tend to be into his music or his visual arts but can be almost totally unaware of the other. He illustrates this with an amusing anecdote of talking to an elderly patron at a Cage visual arts show in California who informed him that Cage also did some music. Mumma also noted some similarities between M.C. Escher’s notebooks (which only become widely known recently) and the style of Cage’s art. He then continued on with the third aspect of Cage, his writing which even in his lifetime had achieved wider acceptance then his music. Mumma illustrated this with an anecdote of visiting a major university in 1975 and finding Cage was included among a list of ten most influential writers of the 20^th Century.

The film contains some of the earliest recordings of Cage some of which are commercially unavailable. When asked about these Mumma informed us that these were recorded on the blank sides of huge radio discs that were used in the 30s to send “simultaneous” radio and commercials across the country. The film contained both clips of Cage rehearsal and performance but also a number of his art pieces with these early and rare
recordings. Some of this art was pretty striking, they included one that was layers of glass, some almost Rothko-esque prints, and sketch like things. There was a number of the early percussion pieces with Cages actual ensemble. These tended toward wild an chaotic. More interesting to me was a couple electronic pieces one of which was absolutely amazing considering how early it was. Robert Ashely, David Tudor, Gordon Mumma, Merce Cunningham appeared in the film alongside many different clips of Cage.

Really an amazing and unique film that exists in a pretty odd and incomplete form right now. Mumma has been self assembling it from his own archives and things that his many colleagues have recorded. However due to legal issues it would be a man’s job to get it released so he just tinkers with it and shows it at these sort of events.

Set I:

Variations VI, i – Michael Red
Variations VI, ii – Lee Hutzulak, Michael Red, Jean Routhier and Igor Santizo

The first set of music opened with two takes on Variations VI, the first solo and then with more people joining Michael for a second take. He used sounds of feedback, lo res cassettes, various simple sample sounds (tones and the like), room mics, short delays all fed into the surround sound set up.  He worked with some really low frequencies and would layer in hand manipulated sounds from the cassette decks, the sound of tape running over the tape-heads. He would pickup and move the mics and a set of speakers as per the score. At the end he brought things down to a low rumble and then the rest of the performers joined him.

They began by working out the score as they will be playing it. This involved shaking out little scraps of paper onto another scrape of paper and writing stuff down. After getting the score in order they reset the stage with the speakers and the microphones and then proceed to a larger more involved version of the solo take on this. They all had a series of actions they needed to complete, a number of which they did outside of the performance room. So there was an endless procession of them going in and out of the room and sounds filtering in from the out side. Along with the cassette, samples, tones and feedback that Michael had worked with they added a number of percussion sounds, samples of people, ping-pong balls, bells, a contact mic collection of objects and other random detritus. There was much repositioning of the room mics and a bit of use of a megaphone. It was pretty entertaining to watch and there were some great musical elements. The samples in the surround (which were sometimes of people talking) and the doing stuff outside the room really confused some people. These people should have been able to accept outside sounds anyway, it being a Cage performance after all, but it also was fairly obvious what was going on. To me that just added to the amusement.

Artist Chat: John Tilbury

Before the chat officially began I managed to have a few words with John about his forthcoming Cardew biography. He revealed to me that it is in the final stages of editing (indexing, contents and the like) and would most likely appear early 2007. This is great news as there are few books (and definitely no other biographies) that I am anticipating to the degree that I am for this one.

The rest of the crowd filed in and as always Giorgio introduced John and opened the floor to questions. The first questions were regarding his history of playing Cage’s Sonata’s and Interludes, which while John couldn’t give a specific date he said it had to be around 1969 to 1970 most likely in Venice.  The recording that he made of it was done in 1973 in an old church with magnificent acoustics.  He said that his attitude toward the piece has change, that in the early days he was very precise about all aspects of it and now he is more relaxed. Except with the preparations, he has always been very anal about them – until tonight!  He informed us that he was unable to get one preparation on a note that has several others on it to sound right so he left it off. It’s the music that counts he said to us, but then on reflection adding, but that in a way betrays Cage’s ideals doesn’t it? In the past he had prepared pianos strictly following the instruction and not listened to the sound it made, just adapted to it in the performance. For every prepared piano is different and the preparations can never be exactly the same nor behave over time in the same way.

Asked about playing something like Cage compared to improve provoked some thought and interesting comments from Mr. Tilbury.  There is a sense, he said, of alienation from Cage’s material and even with something like Treatise, with improv there is a different commitment to the sound. With improv you are the sound. This lead to his being asked about Cage’s resistance to improvisation an John answered that, well Cage had a composers mentality that he was used to telling performers what to do. He compared this to Christian Wolff who he said tells the players how to play but not what to play. But playing Cage is great practice for the improvising musician, as there are always elements out of you control. As it is with the best moments in improvising the performance takes on a certain autonomy and you are “tracking the sounds”. This leads to the most compelling and sublime moments. Though, he reflected, even with improvisation there is a score – the room.

Set II:

Variations II (Gordon Mumma )
Mumma was at the upright piano with several other gadgets including a cd player and various objects. He played along with the cd most of the time and would occasionally use some of the objects to press onto the piano keyboard. His playing was pretty energetic and lively but it wasn’t overly dense – there was still space and silence amidst the sounds.

Rainforest (David Tudor) (Gordon Mumma & Matt Rogalsky)
For this classic Tudor electro-acoustic piece Mumma and Rogalsky were sat on opposite sides of a fairly large table loaded with gear. Mumma had a mixing board and a sheet of metal that was angled on the table. The metal had several contact mics on it and several objects. He primarily moved things around on the table and adjusted levels on the mixer. Rogalsky had a laptop and turntable and additional contact mic’d items running into his mixer. This piece was written by Tudor for the Merce Cunnignham dance company and his goal was to create the atmosphere of Rainforest with electronic sounds. I was aware of this but as of this performance had not yet heard the piece. These simple materials gerated creaks, scapes, twitters, filter sweeps and other sounds that one associates with primitive electronics and contacted mic’d objects.  But the effect really works, it really does sound like odd insects in the distance, the cry of unfamiliar birds, dripping water, thunder and the general activity that one associates with the rain forest. Absolutely amazing, with a few amusing moments as an item would feedback or loudly spike. Mumma would always grimace and then smile at these events. This piece was really fantastic with a lot of sounds familiar to me from the improve music that I have been listening to of late. The new Gordon Mumma & David Tudor cd that New World has just released became the only CD I would buy at this festival.

Cartridge Music (Kaffe Matthews & Matt Rogalsky)
For this piece Rogalsky moved to the left hand side of the stage, joining Kaffe Matthews at a table filled with objects, mixing boards and seemingly random detritus. A chair was set near center stage and a ladder to the left of the table. On the screen was a very simple analog style clock that ticked away continuously. This piece uses phonograph cartridges to reveal small sounds and cartridges were wired to the ladder, the char and were all over the table usually mounted on small wooden blocks with attachments to the needles. The range of noises that they got out of these was wonderful: hisses, buzzes, creaks and crackles. Sometimes the sounds were small and delicate as when they revealed the sounds of melting ice, a feather brushing over the needle, candles burning nearby. Or huge and towering as when they’d sit on the creaky chair, assault the ladder, smack a wire attached to a cartridge needle or amplify the sound of sparklers. There was a lot of space between the sounds at time and many moments just of the edge of audibility. The set ended with increasing space and silence and as the video was turned off there was only the sound of amplifier hiss in the darkness.

The roots of so much electro-acoustic music can be heard hear, from the artists who play “turntables without records” to the noisy outbursts of those who overload contact mics or manipulate feedback. This was one of the absolute highlights of the fest, topped only by the performance that was to follow.

Set III:

Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano (John Tilbury)
A single grand piano in the center of the stage lit by a white flood light. John comes out in his trademark black leather jacket and sits at the piano. He looks at the first page of the score and then begins those familiar opening notes of the Sonatas and Interludes. After he plays each section he would stop and turn the page. Then we would again examine the page, putting a gap and some silence between each of the sonatas and interludes. A prepared piano never sounds exactly the same and the preparations can shift and subtly evolve during the course of a performance. Of course some parts will be a bit slower or faster and the sound of the room is always different as well. So this piece, which John has played so many times, was familiar yet different. But it was absolutely sublime and fascinating to watch John play it. He would cross hands often to play treble notes with his left hand and bass with the right, most dramatically in Sonata IVX with the simple melodic phrase being played with the left hand whilst underneath it the right continuously massages a couple of keys. Then the left hand would cross back over and pick up a note or two.

Gordon Mumma was overheard saying about seeing Tilbury; “I came for the Sonatas and Interludes, I just put up with all the rest.” This was the musical event of the year for me, my favorite pianists playing an amazing piece of Twentieth Century composition in an excellent setting.

Silence Report – prelude

Silence: John Cage
18 – 21 October 2006

Vancouver New Music Festival 2006
ScotiaBank Dance Centre

Prelude

In January of this year I participated in a workshop put on by Vancouver New Music of Cardew’s Treatise. In June I was emailed by Giorgio Magnanensi, the directory of Vancouver New Music, about participation in a similar community ensemble but this time for a Cage piece. Excited to play some Cage and to see some performed I agreed to participate. I had a pretty busy summer and fall involved in a variety of musical activities and hadn’t been following too much the details of this festival. I knew that John Tilbury was going to be performing there and I was excited by that and for the chance to play some myself. Once there I was immensely impressed by the amount of activities, installations, performances and supplemental material that had been organized for this event. The Silence: John Cage festival was the centerpiece of a city wide celebration of Cage; Begin Anywhere . The festival itself had five hours of performances, artist chats and related material for an intensive evening of Cage for four nights in a row. At the venue they had little chapbooks of writings and drawings from and about Cage, including Brian Marley’s essay on 4’33″ from Blocks of Consciousness and the Unbroken Continuum, some of Cage’s Silence Stories and the transcript of a conversation between Cage and Feldman. Every detail seemed to be thought out for this festival and its scope was impressive. I would be surprised if there is a Cage retrospective of greater breadth anytime soon.

I had to squeeze this festival in with work so I left as late as I could on the first day of the festival and arrived at my hotel about 20 minutes after the first set had begun. I had assumed that I wouldn’t make it for the first set, so I leisurely checked in and grabbed a slice of pizza. I arrived at the dance Centre about five minutes before the second set was supposed to begin. I had been at the ScotiaBank Dance Centre before, for Cosmos a couple of years ago and the Treatise workshop earlier this year. It is really an amazing space for this kind of program – a large, spacious, acoustically sound room with a professional lighting setup and sound reinforcement system. All shows for this festival were in this main room, with little table’s scatted around and ample seating. Outside the double doors was a small concession setup with wine, beer, water and the like plus several merch tables. The various artists had their CDs but their also was an Edition Peters table with a generous selection of their huge collection of John Cage scores plus several of their Cage related t-shirts (which seemed to be big sellers).