Experimental Music

Click Picks, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music

Steve’s click picks #37

Our regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, with so much good listening online.

Time to leave our standard classical composers and performers behind for a second, to hear what the writers can do:

Liesl Ujvary – Ann Cotten – Hanno Millesi (Austria): “Ghostengine – Speech without Language” (2005)

Ujvary-Cotten-MillesiLiesl Ujvary (1939-, Pressburg/Slovakia) moved to Austria in 1945 and spent her childhood in Lower Austria and Tyrol. She studied Slavonic, old-Hebrew literature and art history in Vienna and Zurich. After some visits in Moscow she finished her dissertation on Ilja Ehrenburg’s ‘Julio Jurenito’ at the University in Zurich in 1968. She held a university teaching position for Russian language and literature at the Sophia University in Tokyo, and lives as a writer in Vienna since 1971.

Ann Cotten (1982-) was born in Iowa, but her family moved to Austria when she was five. After growing up in Vienna, she just moved to Berlin last year, having stirred up a raft of critical attention with her first book of poetry, Fremdwörterbuchsonette (“Foreign Dictionary Sonnets”). The Frankfurter Rundschau interviewed her recently, and an English version of that article can be read at Sign and Sight.

Hanno Millesi (1966-, Vienna) studied art history in Vienna and Graz. From 1986-1992 he worked with Galerie Krinzinger in Vienna; from 1992 to 1999 assisted Hermann Nitsch’s “Orgien Mysterien Theaters”; 1999-2001 hung out at the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien; all the while working at his own writing (as well as his guitar, in the band ALBERS).

— OK, preliminaries out of the way, why tell you about these three Austrian writers on our trusty new-music site? Because among Ujvary’s kalideoscopic interests and activities is music and sound art, which for the last ten-plus years she’s been broadcasting on radio and issuing on CD. The link on her name above will take you to her main website; from there the “musik” button will send you to a whole compendium of these, most available as free MP3 downloads as well as standard CDs. But clicking the other link above this post will take you directly to the 2005 CD Ghostengine – Sprechen ohne Sprach (“speech without language”). In this essay Ujvary, Cotten and Millesi all interact with an Etherwave theremin, trying to create a a kind of intuitive, wordless “speech”. Ujvary also processes this using a Kaoss pad — a wonderfully fun device from Korg, that lets you control all kinds of processing in realtime, with a few movements of your fingers. Interleaved between the solo “speeches” are four mixes by Ujvary, where she combines, varies and elaborates the three solos.

Mahler it most certainly is NOT; but it is a wonderful soundscape, that somehow captures a bit of each of its collaborators.

by Steve Layton
Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music

Forget It, Jake. It’s Chinatown.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Fallto: New Release from Drifting In Silence
Chicago,IL – August 7, 2007 – Labile Records announces its latest release from recording artist Drifting In Silence.

The latest release, Fallto, is a continuation and further development of themes introduced in Truth, and Ladderdown, from 2005 and 2006, respectively, completing the cycle of this trilogy work.

Fallto has been described as shoegaze meets dancing shoes. Listeners familiar with previous work from Drifting In Silence will recognize the trademark prismatic tonalities and looping rhythms suspended in an ambient mix. Fallto brings these previous threads together, and makes its own statement with edgy timbres and hard driving beats that punch through their atmospheric setting in unexpected ways. If Truth and Ladderdown were explorations in clouds and shadows, Fallto is clouds and shadows moving at the speed of an express train.

Fallto further explores the use of voices and lyrics, rendered faithful to the mix by judicious but delightfully risky application of filters and vocoders. True to the established Drifting In Silence aesthetic, the voices in Fallto are part of the instrumentation. Standout tracks include “Texture” and “Unknowndivide,” which features Jess Hewitt of Drev. Also two separate remixes from Drev and 3l3tronic of the vocal-laced “Chameleon,” injecting industrial-quality breaks and a sick vocal filter, to make for a dance floor smash.

Debuting at #5 on the CMJ RPM most added report for issue 1019. Fallto is available now on

and wherever fine alternative music can be found. 

Watch the new video chameleon.
by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Music Events, New York

The Issue is Money

Over the past couple of years, ISSUE Project Room has become one of the hot spots for contemporary music in the city and earned a well-deserved reputation for presenting new and artistically challenging work. It has outgrown its funky silo on the Gowanus Canal and has just launched a $350,000 capital campaign with the goal of expanding its programs and moving to a larger, more centrally-located home.

As often happens, though, a great opportunity has come along and the group needs to raise a bundle of cash by July 24 to take advantage of it.  ISSUE is one of two finalists for the right to move into a new, rent free space in one of the most beautiful buildings in downtown Brooklyn.  But, says founder and artistic director Suzanne Fiol, it must demonstrate the financial capability to develop the space if it is to secure the lease.

An anonymous donor has made a $25,000, one -for- two matching grant to be met by August 10, which means that for every dollar the group raises between now and then, it will get an an additional 50 cents.  It has already raised $10,000 and Fiol says her goal is to raise another $25,000 this week.

“The reason of the urgency is that we’re meeting with the property’s developers on July 24,” Fiol says. ‘It is crucial to our success that we have this money in hand in time for this meeting. Nothing could better help ISSUE in making its case to the property’s developers than to be able to walk into the meeting saying we have met the match.  Successfully closing this first phase of the campaign before the deadline will inspire large  donors, corporations and foundations.”

Here’s how to give:

To make a donation on line, go to http://www.nyfa.org and click “For Donors.” Be  sure to earmark your donation for the Issue Project Room.  To make a donation by check, make your check payable to the New York Foundation for the Arts . Write ISSUE Project Room in the memo line, and mail your check to: ISSUE Project Room 232 Third Street, Brooklyn N.Y. 11215.  ISSUE Project Room is under the fiscal sponsorship of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), and all donations are tax deductible.

If you want to know more about ISSUE or have ideas about how to help, you can contact Fiol at 718-812-1129, or write to
suzanne@issueprojectroom.org.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, Other Minds, San Francisco

All We Hear is Radio Ga-Ga

Our West Coast colleagues at Other Minds marked what would have been Lou Harrison’s 90th birthday on Monday by relaunching radiOM.org, their amazing, free treasure trove of streaming audio and video programs that span the history of new music. 

The still expanding Other Minds Archive contains 4,500 hours of recorded materials, which includes 3,500 hours of audiotape recordings from the KPFA Radio Music Department collection; highlights from past Other Minds Music Festivals; materials from the private archive of composer George Antheil; selected programs from the Cabrillo Music Festival, and other rare and unusual recordings of classical music, jazz, and experimental forms.  This unparalleled collection of on-air performances, interviews, concerts, rehearsals, conversations and more, is now available completely free of charge at www.radiOM.org.

Artists represented in the collection include John Adams, Laurie Anderson, Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, John Cage, Lou Harrison, Henry Kaiser, Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, Igor Stravinsky, Virgil Thomson, and Frank Zappa, among hundreds of others.

Elsewhere, here’s some film of a fist fight at the Boston Pops.

And this is pretty amazing.

by Jerry Bowles
Click Picks, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music

Steve’s Click Picks #27, take two

Houston, we have a problem… We’re sweating like pigs in your fair city! …OK, OK, it’s not nearly so bad (yet), though the humidity definitely hangs in the air most of the time. But the sky’s blue, the city’s BIG, the food’s good. Things are a’building everywhere; other things are falling apart everywhere, and usually right next to each other. In places it’s hard to tell whether what I’m looking at is renaissance or apocalypse. But if apocalypse, it’s a pretty friendly one.

Just a quick link to honor our new home:

Susan Alcorn (b.1953 — US)

Susan Alcorn Susan plays a quintessential Texas instrument, the pedal steel guitar. She spent a lot of years paying her dues and perfecting her technique in Country bands, but some part of her always hankered after things more adventurous. I’ll let her pick up the story:

I was expected to know the entire song book of American country music from the mid-1940s onward, and I was expected to know the kick-offs and rides for all these songs by heart – from the old Bob Wills songs to Ernest Tubb, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Ray Price, and countless others. Learning this music note for note was a discipline that I am grateful for. However, at the same time I was attracted to other music which appealed to my deeper sensibilities — John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and 20th Century classical composers such as Olivier Messiaen, Kzyrztof Penderecki, and Astor Piazzolla, and I sought out other musicians who shared similar sensibilities. By the late 1980s, after performing straight-ahead jazz for ten years, I took the advice of Paul Bley, with whom I had been corresponding. He told me to throw away the Real Book and play out of tune. I began to develop my own approach to the instrument and to music in general – one that would incorporate the music and the sounds – all music and whatever sound – that affected me. I began incorporating jazz, minimalism, Gamelan Music, Indian Classical music, the folk music of Latin America, birds, wind, clouds, colors, emotions – whatever struck me on a visceral level.

Susan’s pretty sneaky about secreting her MP3s away on her site. I’ll give you this hint: In the pages “biography”, “performance notes” and “links”, in the text of each you’ll find a single highlighted letter, that will lead you to one of three different recordings. Each of the recordings are radically different stylistically, but made kissin’ cousins by way of the glorious sound of the steel, and Susan’s own sensibilities.

And if that seems too hard, or you just want to hear even more tracks, you can take the easy way out and visit her Myspace page.

by Steve Layton
Click Picks, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music

Steve’s click picks #26

Our regular listen to and look at living, breathing composers and performers that you may not know yet, but I know you should… And can, right here and now, since they’re nice enough to offer so much good listening online:

Gilbert Artman and Urban Sax (France)

Urban SaxUrban Sax is a long-running ensemble / musical extravaganza founded by the French musician Gilbert Artman. It was was formed in 1973, when Artman organized a concert by a group of eight saxophonists at a classical music festival in the south of France. In subsequent years, the number of players grew to 12, 20, 30, and by now consists of 52 musicians (with saxophones ranging from the soprano to bass registers). Artman frequently integrates local musicians and dancers into his performances, and thus the ensemble can encompass as many as 200 performers.

Urban Sax has performed throughout Europe and Asia. The group’s performances are art happenings; players wear metallic space suit-like costumes together with masks, and each performance is a unique event that is planned for the particular architectural or natural space where it takes place. The music is strongly minimal and ritualistic, as much about space and spectacle as anything else. Later, larger incarnations have the look of some mad cross between Sun Ra, Blue Man Group, and Cirque du Soleil. Another way of thinking about it is as a kind of sax analog to what Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham were doing with guitars around the same time. It also seems to me to be a strong progenitor to all things “Bang-On-A-Can”.

The link at the top of this post will take you to the official Urban Sax website. It’s mostly in French, but for non-speakers there’s still plenty of photos, a discography, four short Quicktime movies of performances (in Lebanon, Tokyo, Versailles, and Dubai), and even a score to peruse.

BUT: What I really want you to do is take a listen to an MP3 file kindly parked on the web by NY/NJ’s greatest radio asset, WFMU. It’s the complete side one of Urban Sax 2, released in Europe in 1978. (Urban Sax 1 came out in 1977, with sides one and two called “part 1” and “part 2” respectively; Urban Sax 2‘s two sides were labeled “part 3” and “part 4”.)

The ensemble used in this recording: 27 saxophones (11 altos, 13 tenors, 2 baritones and 1 bass sax), a chorus of eight voices, and one tam-tam (played by Artman himself).

In 1979 I was a poor Air Force newbie, stationed in Wichita Falls, Texas. Bereft of my collection of records, scores and books, with no musical instrument at hand, my only connection to art-music was a few cassettes and a small, single-speaker player. But fate smiled in the form of the manager of a local mall record store, who beyond any hope or expectation happened to be a fellow progressive-music geek. He dubbed cassettes for me, of all kinds of obscure and wonderful things — and one of them was this very piece. Those tapes were musical life-savers for me, and will always remain full of charged memory. Eternal thanks, Larry (who I’m happy to report reconnected with me via the web! More than twenty years on now, he’s currently driving a bus in Austin.)

by Steve Layton
Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Experimental Music, New York

All We Are Saying is Give Peace a Chance

Kevin Gallagher, guitarist and founder of Electric Kompany, writes: 

I noticed in your Jacob TV piece that there was hardly any mention of the fact that Electric Kompany is doing a world premiere of White Flag (for rock quartet and tape) based on sounds from the Iraq war starring the voices of Bill O’Reilly and George W Bush at the Whitney Museum at Altria on Friday, May 4 at 8pm.
Needless to say, I was pretty upset that they aren’t stressing this piece to the press. It’s rare enough to have a world premiere for rock quartet at the Whitney, never mind to have it tied to the biggest news story for the past 5 years.
I don’t know if the Whitney is scared of it (possible), but I want people to know what we’re about to do. It’s a good piece and we’re going to play the hell out of it. If you could please make sure people know about the premier, I would be very appreciative. Thank you for your help.

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical, Downtown, Experimental Music, Music Events, New York

Montani semper liberi (with a Capital M)

Next to the Mountaineers winning the NIT (okay, so it’s the tournament of losers…we won), the most exciting news in the world today is that our lil’ buddy Ian Moss is having his second annual Capital M world premiere extravaganza at Tonic next Wednesday.  The concert will feature new works by Ian Dicke, Mike Gamble, Caroline Mallonée, Ian Moss, Edward RosenBerg III,  Jonathan Russell, and Kyle Sanna. Noted provocateurs and ne’er-do-wells Anti-Social Music will follow with their particular brand of “punk classical” madness.

by Jerry Bowles