Saturday, October 9th, 2010 8:00 PM
Collins Pub
526 Second Ave
Eye Music, the group that I play graphic and textual scores with, has a gig at Collins Pub this Saturday. This is our second show in the last month and features completely new material for this show. Scores include Toshi Ichiyanagi’s Sapporo, David Toop’s Lizard Music plus pieces by group members Mike Shannon and Amy Denio. This also is our first show outside of the wonderful new music cloister that is the Chapel Performance Space. I’ve never been to Collins Pub, but looking at their menu it looks like they have a pretty decent beer selection and the food sounds pretty classy. So come on down and listen to some experimental music as you hoist a pint.
Complete concert details can be found on the Eye Music page.
We had a pretty good crowd at the Eye Music show on Thursday, something certainly not to be counted in a mid-week show late in the “holiday season”. The performances were overall quite nice I thought, my favorites of those I was involved in was Cornelius Cardew’s Tiger’s Mind, which I’ve wanted to play for a long time. This piece is a textual piece, a poetic little scenario with six characters each played by one of the musicians. Like the script in a play Cardew’s score includes character notes for each character with motivations, interactions with the other characters and interesting little asides. The interpretation instructions for the piece suggest you begin with a fixed sextet and do a line by line almost literal interpretation of the piece. As you become more familiar with the piece you can work more with the characters nature as outline in the character notes and eventually you stop directly assigning the characters and the players do so themselves. Thus there could be multiple players assigned to each character but as long as they treat the other players as the other characters it all works out. This piece is basically Cardew’s exploration of improvisation, almost a step by step process from set parts to working with the other players directly. A great piece that I for one would like to play a lot more.
The Tiger’s Mind
Daypiece
The tiger fights the mind that loves the circle that traps the tiger. The circle is perfect and outside time. The wind blows dust in tigers’ eyes. Amy reflects, relaxes with her mind, which puts out buds (emulates the tree). Amy jumps through the circle and comforts the tiger. The tiger sleeps in the tree. High wind. Amy climbs the tree, which groans in the wind and succumbs. The tiger burns.
Nightpiece
The tiger burns and sniffs the wind for news. He storms at the circle; if inside to get out, if outside to get in. Amy sleeps while the tiger hunts. She dreams of the wind, which then comes and wakes her. The tree trips Amy in the dark and in her fall she recognizes her mind. The mind, rocked by the wind tittering in the leaves of the tree, and strangled by the circle, goes on the nod. The circle is trying to teach its secrets to the tree. The tree laughs at the mind and at the tiger fighting it.
We played just the Nightpiece (Cardew specifies that the two parts are to be played on different days) and our performance of the piece was delicate, sensitive and I thought really beautiful. Not to say that it was reductionist in any way, the score certainly calls for more aggressive playing at times: The Tiger burns; He Storms at the circle; The Tree Trips Amy in the dark; The Mind, rocked by by the Wind…and strangled by the circle; the tiger fighting it. The sleeping Amy, the padding of the hunting tiger, the wind tittering and so on, certainly sets a dreamy and floating stage out of which these points of action arise.
My Table of Manipulators
The bulk of the second set was a performance from the entire ensemble of Earle Brown’s December 1952, one of the pieces from his Folio. I love this piece and have played it with the Seattle Improv Meeting as well as with Eye Music. This was the first time I’ve performed it live though and this was my other favorite performance of the evening. The score (which you can sort of make out on the cover of the program up there), implies spaciousness, sounds coming as discrete events twinkling out of a sea of silence. The loose “instructions” that Brown includes with the piece are almost entirely about space, approaches for navigating through the events. With sounds completely open and the diverse setups of the ensemble which was in a circle around the audience it really was a sea of sounds that came out of the resonant space of the Chapel. The score indicates that at least in one interpretation the thicker line indicate dynamics, so it wasn’t just a uniform wash of tiny sounds. No there were passages of loud and dense events that due to the nature of the score and the fact that you can play it at any orientation, not to mention the differing pace of each performer, meant they could come at any time throughout the performance of the piece. Overlapping events, loud or quiet would occasionally reach a level of actual density, but more often then not they would provide that joyous collision of sound that combined exceed the glory of the original sounds. We played this piece for a half an hour, which really is a good duration for the piece, allowing for a nice separation of the sounds but again thanks to the size of the ensemble and the differences in the performers there were never extended periods of absolute silence. Enough I think to allow the very positive addition of the other sounds audible from the performance space but not to a degree that that becomes the piece.
All in a all a good evening of music and one I was proud to participate in. The other pieces were great as well and everything was done well. The audience was very respectful and seemed to be enjoying themselves. Thanks to all for a good evening.
The second general Eye Music concert coming up in a couple of weeks once again at the Chapel Performance Space in Seattle WA . The concert takes place Thursday December 17th 2009 and will feature performances of graphic and textual scores by Mieko Shiomi, William Hellerman, Cornelius Cardew, Boguslaw Schaffer, Greg Bright, Malcolm Goldstein and Earle Brown. Poster and text by Eric Lanzillotta.
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Full program details:
December 17th 2009 Chapel Performance Space at the Good Shepherd Center
4649 Sunnyside Ave. N (corner of 50th, in Wallingford)
Performing the following graphical and textual pieces:
Mieko Shiomi Boundary Music (a Fluxus piece from the 1960’s)
William HellermanCircle Music 1 (a graphic quartet presented in two versions)
Cornelius CardewSextet: The Tiger’s Mind (a poetic textual score that Cardew wrote initially for AMM)
Boguslaw Schaffer Free Form I ( a Polish exploration of symbols, lines, letters, & words)
Greg Bright Labyrinth II ( Scratch piece; an aural game of concentration)
Earle BrownDecember 1952 (From Folio;one of the most well known graphic scores from this contemporary of John Cage, Morton Feldman and Christian Wolff
Malcolm Goldstein Yoshi’s Morning Song (A Graphic representation of children’s song)
as performed by:
Eric Lanzillotta, Dean Moore, David Stanford, Jonathan Way, Esther Sugai, Amy Denio, Stuart Dempster, Robert j Kirkpatrick, Carl Lierman, Susie Kozawa, Mike Shannon and Dave Knott (more details and bios on the Eye Music site).
As promised, my report on the closing party and performances of the Scoresexhibition 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 MusicTreatise, 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 Scorespage on the Lawrimore Project website and at Volume.
Video’s from this event on Vimeo.
“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 EdgesIII, with it’s lack of instrumentation, reduced musical notation and textual instructions. But for his Prose CollectionV, 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.
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.
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, EdgesIV. 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.
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)
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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)
Eye Music Ensemble holding Sapporo
A Spiral Cage 
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