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Re: Cage on Jazz
by Herb Levy 24 Apr '03

24 Apr '03

>on 4/23/03 12:07 PM, Patrice L. Roussel at proussel(a)ichips.intel.com wrote: > >> Even after 50 years, you might >> still be considered as taking risk by playing Cage (that should alarm >> the creative audiences, but does not seem to), and where would be >> "high-brow" music without a little bit of sponsored risk taking :-). > >It should alarm anybody that anything 50 years old and taught by the academe >is considered daring. Esecpially in the US, where it serves to prove we're >a bunch of third-rate chickenshit consumers who have none of the pioneer >spirit upon which this country was founded. Whether or not the audience is >considered "creative" (and no audience has the right to point themselves up >as being more creative than any other) should have no bearing. The fact >that we have to look on the pioneering acts of a half century ago for a >confirmation of our collective brevity is truly sickening. Skip's certainly right that it's absurd to think of Cage's early music as experimental & that's why I don't think Patrice's measure of a fading rabid fandom for Cage is appropriate. But you can't argue both sides of this against Cage. If these works are no longer experimental, and they're now being performed by musicians who aren't avant garde specialists for audiences that aren't avant garde fans, well, that's exactly how things enter the classical repertoire. Those audiences are accepting some of the works, just like they accept some of Ives, and some of Copland, Crawford, etc, for that matter. Yes these audiences think they're hearing something different from, say, Mozart or Brahms, but they know what they're hearing isn't brand new experimental stuff. They know it's fifty years old. Nobody's fooling them into thinking that it was improvised yesterday by some kid with a bunch of tattoos & a laptop using MAX/MSP; it's just some of the music from the 20th century that's working its way into the always conservative classical music culture. These audiences (and most of the performers) don't care about music theory for the most part, they just care about whether they like the sound of what they're hearing. That's why I discount all of Patrice's arguments about how shallow Cage's theories may have been. The audience for these works doesn't give a shit how the notes were selected if they like the sound of the notes. &, for better or worse, some of these pieces are quite appealing for those kinds of listeners. There won't be a lot of performances of, say Atlas Eclipticalis or Cartridge Music for this audience, but as more pianists start playing selections from the Sonatas and Interludes, and some of the earlier works, and more quartets start playing Cage's first quartet, the less those pieces have any need for the kind of fans that Patrice is saying aren't there for Cage in general. That's what happens with the avant garde: some of it enters the mainstream, some of it stays within the realm of avant garde fandom and much of it virtually disappears. But, as much as we may wish it were otherwise, it's never the avant garde fans who get to decide what enters the mainstream. There are early Cage pieces being played for straight classical audiences and they're not walking out in droves when they hear it. That's a sign that, no matter what Cage's standing within the avant garde may be, some of his music may have a life in the classical concert repertoire. I think too, that as there are more performances and recordings of a wider range of Cage's work that some other later works will get heard more as well. A lot of it may not get far (I'd certainly be surprised if much from say the mid-fifties into the early seventies ever gets over for non-specialists) but some pieces from Cage's last 15 years or so may have more audience appeal than y'all might expect, given the right kind of players. (&, Ellery, I'm on digest too, & I'm not sure why some of my responses haven't been marking quotes properly. While I've been home sick much of this last week I've made a couple of changes to my computer, I'll look around a little and try to fix it.) -- Herb Levy P O Box 9369 Fort Worth, TX 76147 herb(a)eskimo.com

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nyc/ may 1-4 /improvised & otherwise festival lineup
by Acousticlv＠aol.com 24 Apr '03

24 Apr '03

hi gang passing on info. this and the vision festival look to make a fun may ! love to all steve koenig n.p.: billy bang- vietnam: the aftermath ------------------------------------- hello friends -- i know not many of you on this list are in NYC, but any and all help spreading the word would be much appreciated. This is a young, scrappy, entirely artist-run festival that I'm really looking forward to and proud to be a part of. Those who can make it, it would kick ass to see you again. thanks, and take care kyle Improvised and Otherwise: A Festival of Sound and Form Thursday to Sunday, May 1 - 4, 2003 Presented at Williamsburg Art neXus (WAX) 205 North 7th Street (at Driggs), Brooklyn, NY Tickets: $15 adults/$10 students & seniors, Weekend Passes: $40 four-day/$25 two-day THURSDAY - MAY 1 8:00 Isle of Pines - Boaz Barkan, Robert Scott, Sherwood Chen - movement, Arnie Saiki - music, text & puppets 8:30 Reuben Radding - contrabass 9:00 Debra Bluth - dance 9:30 Materiality of Sound in Image - A screening of videos by Maria Dumlao, Kyra Garrigue, Geu Jin Han, Gregory King 10:00 psi - Jaime Fennelly - electonics, Chris Forsyth - electric guitar, Fritz Welch - drums & amplified percussion FRIDAY - MAY 2 8:00 Luis Lara Malvacias/Not Festival - dance, David Watson & Sean Meehan - music, 8:30 Lafayette Gilchrist Trio - Lafayette Gilchrist - piano, John Dierker - reeds, percussionist TBA 9:30 Loophole - Corrina Kalisz, Alison Robinson, Estelle Woodward - dance, Jeff Arnal - percussion, Gordon Beeferman - piano 10:00 Transcontinental 01 - Ernesto Diaz-Infante - guitar, Jesse Quattro - voice, Rent Romus - alto/soprano saxophone Kyle Bruckmann - oboe, Chris Heenan - bass clarinet, Adam Lane - double bass, Helena Espvall-Santoleri - cello, Lance Grabmiller - laptop, Mike Pride - percussion SATURDAY - MAY 3 4:00 Radical Low - Kurt Ralske - video, Chantal Yzermans - dance, Nicholas Marantz - electronics 4:30 Scientifically Speaking with Irene Moon - multi-media (Athens) 5:00 Adam James Wilson Quintet - Arto Artinian - flute, Brad Kemp - double bass, Aaron Trant - percussion, Jonathan Vincent - piano & accordian, Adam Wilson - guitar 6:00 Hans Tammen - endangered guitar, Dafna Naphtali - voice, electronics 6:30 Ras Moshe and The Music Now Unit - Jackson Krall - percussion, Matt Heyner - bass, Ras Moshe - reeds 7:30 Susan Sgorbati & Cori Olinghouse - dance 8:00 Gordon Beeferman - piano, Jeff Arnal - percussion, John Hughes - double bass (NYC, Germany) 8:30 Shakin Ray Levis - Dennis J. Palmer - synthesizers, Bob Stagner - percussion (Chattanooga) 9:30 K.J. Holmes & Karinne Keithley - dance, with Michael Wall and The Whoring Horn Ensemble (NYC) 10:00 Alberto Braida - piano, Giancarlo Locatelli - clarinets (Italy) SUNDAY - MAY 4 4:00 Lisa Gonzales & Carol Kyles Finley - dance 4:15 Lionel Popkin & Carolyn Hall - dance 4:30 Kathy Supove - piano, electronics 5:00 John Berndt - reeds, electronics, percussion, Dan Breen - bass, electronics, percussion, Andy Hayleck - amplified gong, Jack Wright - reeds (Balitmore, Boulder) 6:00 Aaron Petrovitch - "A Cosmic Mishap in an Accidental Universe" - spoken word (NYC) 6:30 Dynasty - Seth Misterka - saxophones, Jennifer Deveau - bass, Nate Smith - percussion (NYC) 7:30 Chainworks - Dan DeChellis - piano, Matt Hannafin - percussion, Brian Moran - electronics (NYC) 8:00 PIMA Group - Melissa Putz, Thomas Clark, Michael Barker, Emily Fifer, Ryan Grove, Helena Epsvall- Santoleri - dance, music & video (Philadelphia) 8:30 Miya Masaoka - koto, electronics (NYC) 9:00 Ben Hall - percussion, Katt Hernandez - violin, John Voigt - electronic upright bass (Boston, Detroit) In the WAX Gallery, April 11th - May 5th FROM THE GROUND UP featuring paintings by: Mark Bouthilette, Catherine Hamilton, Paul Douglas Olmer Closing Reception Friday May 2nd, 6 to 8pm Improvised and Otherwise: A Festival of Sound and Form is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Development Fund of the New York Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by the Brooklyn Arts Council, Inc. (BAC) Additional funding is provided by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura.

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Fwd: [chi-improv] Northwestern U. Music Marathon
by Ben Axelrad 24 Apr '03

24 Apr '03

For any Chicago list members: Zorn will be in attendance at the Northwestern Music Marathon > >http://aquavite.northwestern.edu/cal/pp/eventd.cgi?e=13941 : > >Event Title: NU Music Marathon: From A to Z! >Event Date: May 11, 2003 >Event Time: 3:30 PM - 10:00 PM >Event Location: Lutkin Hall >Event Description: Multiple venues and times. >Opening program: 3:30 p.m., plaza outside Pick-Staiger Concert Hall >Closing program: 8 p.m., Pick-Staiger Concert Hall lobby >Amy Williams and Jay Alan Yim, codirectors >The annual NU Music Marathon features composers Louis Andriessen and John >Zorn, two of the most revolutionary artists working today. Both will be in >attendance for this daylong series of concerts and art installations >focusing on the fascinating intersections between contemporary music and >improvisation, visual arts, and technology. Additional highlights include >performances in memory of Earle Brown, double-bowed and six-string MIDI >cello works played by Frances-Marie Uitti, and a presentation by Virgil >Moorefield's Lucid Dream Ensemble. The program also features several >composer-performers, including renowned bassist Mark Dresser, French >composer-improvisers Etienne Rolin and François Rossé, and sound-sculpture >improviser-pianist Mark Applebaum. Spotlighting rising stars in the >contemporary music world, the marathon also features eighth blackbird, >soprano Tony Arnold, Northwestern's Contemporary Music Ensemble, and >pianists Winston Choi, James Giles, and Jacob Greenberg. >Contact Info: Pick-Staiger Concert Hall, Pick-Staiger(a)northwestern.edu, >phone 847/491-544 >Group: School of Music/Pick-Staiger Concert Hall . > ><< >> << >> << >> << >> << >> > >If that's not detailed enough, you could always Email or >call the hall, or you could Email or call either or both of >the event co~directors: > >http://music.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/comp/comp.html#yim . > _________________________________________________________________ Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail

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maria beatty dvds
by Lang Thompson 23 Apr '03

23 Apr '03

http://www.cultepics.com/ce_preview.html Don't remember this being mentioned but two Beatty films with Zorn scores will be released May 30. They look quite uninteresting but guess you never know.

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Re: Jazz Guggenheims
by Ellery Eskelin 23 Apr '03

23 Apr '03

skip Heller <velaires(a)earthlink.net> wrote: > In an ideal world, there would be be no subsidy to speak of. A musician > would have to go up in front of an audience, collect his fee from the > promotor, and sell his own records at the end of the night, and, whatever he > makes, that's the money. > (Before Ellery Eskelin objects to this, I've seen him sell enough to CDs at > one gig to cover a bandmember's plane ticket and motel room, so shut up and > prove my point, Ellery.) Hey Skip, No disagreement from me...in an "ideal world" that is. But we ain't got one 'a them. But hell, lot's of shit gets subsidized, all the way up to big business and their tax breaks...oh, and don't forget that those CDs we sell cost something up front, so it's not all gravy. Even if I made and pressed them myself it would still take awhile to recoup the investment, particularly if I want to pay my musicans what I think they're worth. Tour CD sales help but it may not be as much as it looks. But it's more and more becoming the norm to sell on the gigs since the shops are not at all consistent in stocking these things. And besides, Gerry Hemingway is the king of on stage sales, one night in Ann Arbor I witnessed 75 CDs fly off the stage during a 15 minute break. Now that's a decent chunk of change... > I remember seeing Ellery's trio in '95 in one of the little rooms at the Knit playing for less > people than I have fingers I remember that gig! > And I'm reasonably sure > this wasn't the only night that trio faced that unhappiness. No, but thankfully things are a little better these days... Oh and Herb, I get the digest version of the Z-list which is pretty mush straight text. And in your responses to my messages there is no visual distinction between your text and mine, so it's a little hard to read...but thanks for your comments. EE ================================= ELLeRY ESKELiN/MiCHELLE VAn NaTTA RaMiChElLeRy/PrImE SoUrCe PrOdUcTiOnS http://home.earthlink.net/~eskelin/ =================================

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Current Line-up of Fushitsusha
by David Keffer 23 Apr '03

23 Apr '03

>1) Anybody know what the current lineup of Fushitsusha is? I understand they >left behind the powertrio noise stuff and put Haino on drums. Is this still >going on? <bold> </bold>In January, 2000, Ikuro Takahashi stopped playing as the drummer of Fushitsusha. Since that time, Fushitsusha has been a duo consisting of Haino & Yasushi Ozawa. The most recent Fushitsusha studio release, "Origin's Hesitation", (PSF, PSFD 8010, 2001) features Haino on drums and vocals and Yasushi Ozawa on bass. Concerts during the latter half of 2000 as well as in 2001 featured this line-up. However, more recent concerts, which still feature the duo of Haino and Ozawa (such as the November 2002 at Tonic) featured Haino on guitar and vocals, i.e. there was no drummer in the band. I have not heard a confirmed line-up for the Fushitsusha show in Scotland on May 23, 2003, but my best guess is Haino (guitar, voice) & Ozawa (bass). More info at: http://www.planetc.com/users/keffer/haino/index.html David

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Re:brotzmann/crowds
by William York 23 Apr '03

23 Apr '03

<<you are probably right. i just remember thinking that there should have been many more people there than there were. it was brotzmann after all.>> he did play to about 30 people last year in oakland w/ marco eneidi and jackson krall ... and that show was awesome. better than the tentet if you ask me.. probably a smaller crowd b/c of the venue that night.

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Cage-i-ness
by Robert Pleshar 23 Apr '03

23 Apr '03

-- "Bones heal. Chicks dig scars. And the United States of America has the best doctor-to-daredevil ratio in the world." -Capt. Lance Murdoch I've been doing more thinking about Cage and his aesthetic for the past several months than I ever expected to, but I will try to keep this short and hopefully coherent. Cage has never been my favorite "modern" composer, but a friend and I have been working on a realization of his composition "A Dip in the Lake" which started mostly as a whimsical excuse to travel all over the Chicago area exploring. The piece is 427 chance-determined locations or addresses arranged into groups of 2,3 and 4. After spending parts of 2 years making the source recordings and the last 2 months mixing them, I think that the process is the whole thing with these sorts of pieces. The end result will be different everytime it is done and how it turns out really is simply not that important. "Quality" can't even be an issue at all. There might be some interesting sounds that come out and there might not. I have great respect for Cage's ideas and processes. I think that his ideas to take the individual out of the music as much as possible are interesting and that his ideas opened up music in a lot of ways (that might or might not have come about anyway) that later composers and musicians have used to other, often more effective, ends. I see him in a similar vein as an instrumentalist who I think is great, but doesn't play a type of music that I am particularly interested in. I am always happy to listen to these folks and learn from them and respect and admire them, but I don't go back to their records that often. There are a ton of bop guys who fall into this category for me, classical players, singers of all sorts, pop music producers who do interesting things, etc. I don't mean to give any disrespect to or put down anyone (especially people who are way better musicians than I am), but listening to their music is as much an academic exercise for me as Cage's music. A lot of the time I love academic exercises, but the music just doesn't reach me on that emotional level that certain music does. Cage was a great door-buster-downer, but he's no Johnny Cash. All that being said, I am glad that I embarked on the project and doing the field recordings especially opened my ears up to some sounds and ideas that were new to me or old sounds seen in a new light. So, I guess like just about everyone else, I'm ambivalent. Rob

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Re: Cage on Jazz
by Herb Levy 23 Apr '03

23 Apr '03

Skip wrote: Cage's comments were often designed to either cause some sort of debate or establish his place in a polemic. The remarks he made in the aforementioned article seem largely ill-founded, overly general, and smack of a feeling of superiority. All true. Equally true is the fact that in different interviews and discussions from various periods Cage said wildly contradictory things. In some later interviews Cage spoke highly of at least some kinds of improvisations &, for what it's worth, much of his argument against the work of Glenn Branca (well-known in some circles, not least, because Branca likes to position himself as the new music guy that Cage didn't like) seems to be rooted at least in part on Cage not liking fairly standard rock band gestures. So I'd take this quote with a lot of grains of salt. In general, for all the reasons that Skip states, I'm not sure it's worth a lot of time to defend or counter statements of Cage's opinions such as these. I am a bit more concerned with Patrice's closing paragraph: Anyway, what makes people feel that Cage has something relevant to say about music at large (as opposed to lab homeworks) since practically nobody seems to care listening to his music after more than fifty years. In many domains, this would be acknowledged as a total failure since the wrapping (the glose) ended up more important than the content (the music). Will Cage end up as another symptom of intellectual infatuation in the 20th century? I can understand Patrice not liking Cage's music. Based on your comments from the past eight years or so, I'd be surprised if there were many pieces by Cage that ever interested you. But, for better or for worse, since Cage's death, there's actually been a tremendous growth in the number of performances and recordings of Cage's music. I get press releases and flyers from new music presenters and ensembles from all over the States and a smattering of such from other countries & his music is being performed a LOT right now. It's even true here in Fort Worth, which is entirely NOT a hotbed of new music activity. If there were more than 2 concerts of music entirely composed after 1945 in any given year, it'd be a miracle. (& there's virtually no improvised music here at all.) But among the scattered 20th century works that have been performed by the Symphony and various resident and touring ensembles in the 3-4 years I've lived here, Cage is the second most performed composer (after Copland) with 7 performances that I know of. There are very few prolific composers who were primarily active after WWII who have as high a percentage of works for which there are more than one recording in print. Even labels dedicated to producing new music have to be concerned about sales, so someone's buying these things. -- Herb Levy P O Box 9369 Fort Worth, TX 76147 herb(a)eskimo.com

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Re: Jazz Guggenheims
by Herb Levy 23 Apr '03

23 Apr '03

Ellery Eskelin <eskelin(a)earthlink.net> wrote: Herb Levy <herb(a)eskimo.com> wrote: > I'm not sure the grant process is much more brutal than getting club > gigs or record contracts Perhaps, but I see that as no great virtue. Understood. > I certainly don't think of it as any kind > of remedy to those situations. It's just another option that's > somewhat more clearly public I don't know...I've always thought that grants were supposed to be a way to recognize artists in a way that the free market does not, at least with any consistency. Maybe I'm wrong on this? Grantmaking certainly works in a way that's distinct from the commercial market, but it has it's own built-in strengths and weaknesses. Like every selection process, some things won't get through. & some of those things that aren't well served by the grant process are also not well served by more standard commercial processes. > and, because in most instances, the > panel makeup changes periodically, more open to some kinds of > vagaries that I guess you're referring to when you use the word > "lottery." I used the word lottery because once you remove the handful of submissions that clearly don't meet the prerequisite guidelines the rest might as well be chosen out of a hat, regardless of who's on the panel and how often that panel changes. Ultimately, the idea of panels and of changing the panels is to make the process almost exactly NOT random as such, any particular panel having reasons for making the grants that they do, but, especially when looked at over time, the process IS largely random. Not that a panel is incapable of rewarding deserving artists, but due more to the fact that there are numerous deserving submissions that will never be funded due to financial limitations. True again, but rightly or wrongly I think the grant situation is seen as being more altruistic and fair in some way, in counterpoint to the purely free market system. And there are the post grant press releases that come from these organizations taking great pride in having determined who is deserving and the accompanying inference that these are necessarily the best folks to fund. Is this really any different than winning a critics poll? And then there's the cache of prestige associated with them. Of course I don't blame the grant presenters, they're doing the best they can and they should continue to do so. I just wanted to point out that the system of giving out grants is really just as f****ed up from a musician's standpoint as trying to get a gig or record deal, maybe more. Of course, some folks are better at it than others, for reasons usually having little to do with music, as has been covered. Exactly. However, it's probably good to point out that in jazz and improvised music there are usually some kinds of subsidies supporting whatever the endeavor once you scratch the surface. Festivals often receive corporate support, smaller presenting organizations often receive support from local businesses or regional arts councils, recording labels are frequently supported by more popular divisions of the company in the case of majors or run by someone who can afford to lose money year after year in the case of many independents. Even these grassroots tours throughout the US are often supported by a couple/few enthusiastic and industrious music fans in each town who devote their time, energy and money to producing concerts that would otherwise not happen. If the whole thing were to have to depend completely on the number of butts on the seats...well...you get the picture... Actually, virtually all art of any kind is subsidized to a great extent. Limiting my examples to music, in addition to the "alternative" economy that you describe which supports the music we usually discuss around here, look at the corporate underwriting for tours by hugely successful bands like the Rolling Stones (as if they somehow wouldn't make money otherwise, eh?), or the fact that the surplus income generated by pop mega-hits enables the major record companies to release a lot of other recordings (& yeah, I realize that this process mainly puts a lot of musicians in debt unless they invest the greater portion of their advance), etc. Or hey, look at how Tzadik is structured so that a few comparatively good sellers support the production of a lot of discs with more limited sales potential. -- Herb Levy P O Box 9369 Fort Worth, TX 76147 herb(a)eskimo.com

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