It sounds like a late-night parlor game:  pick two artistic geniuses of the 20th century that you’d like to hear share a conversation in the great beyond.

Michael Century had no trouble coming up with a dynamic combination:  experimental composer John Cage and classical pianist Glenn Gould.  He’s paired them up in an unusual concert happening Saturday night at EMPAC and presented by the iEar series.

Actually “happening” is an operative word to describe the event.  The term dates from the 60s and is attributed to Cage, who infused music with theatricality and all manner of other media using elements of randomness or “chance.”

Century, who’s a professor in the arts department at RPI, has been working with Cage’s ideas of layering and chance in creating the first half of Saturday night’s event.  Some of the elements he’s combined include:  the recorded voices of Cage and Gould, a pianist performing portions of Gould’s final concert, musicians performing works by Cage, and video of an actor portraying Gould (taken from 1993’s “32 Short Films About Glenn Gould”).

The extravagant result of all of this might just be a Cage-Gould dialogue.

“There’s a multitude of concerts around the world right now for Cage’s centennial year,” says Century.  “We’re joining in the celebration but with our own original twist, giving the audience a chance to hear these two remarkable musical artists and thinkers converse with each other in a virtual dialogue.”

Century himself once talked with Cage and he recalls the experience as a pivotal moment in his development as an artist.

Michael Century

“It was 1983.  I was 25 and in awe of this figure,” recalls Century.  “He had a marvelous laugh and great smile.”

Century and some of his peers had been working for weeks preparing Cage’s “Song Books” in advance of a performance at the Banff Center in Alberta, Canada.

“Cage said at the very end this is marvelous but it’s not my piece.  We were crestfallen and didn’t understand,” says Century.  “We had not really put it together with a true understanding of chance operations.  He sat us down and gave this little lesson.”

Century hasn’t made the same mistake this time around.  While much planning has gone into Saturday’s event, which includes 13 musicians plus lots of technology, the final outcome will be unique to the moment.  “There’s chance in the way we’re lining up certain elements and in the virtual dialogue,” says Century.

While a sense of whimsy and fun may come through, the concert will be preceded by a lecture on the intersecting philosophies and respective legacies of Cage and Gould.  The talk will be given by Elie During, who is a professor at the University of Paris and has written articles on both Cage and Gould.

For his part, Century thinks Gould was prophetic but also missed the mark in his views on the future of music.  “He was wrong about the concert experience being a dead art form,” says Century.  “But he was right about music becoming much more of an everyday activity that people play with.”

As an example of how music can be “played with,” Century points to the Goldberg App, something he recently created with multi-media artist Sean Lawson, who is also an RPI professor.   By using an iPhone or iPad, anyone can alter J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations in a variety of ways, simply by touching or tilting the device.  The Goldbergs, of course, was Glenn Gould’s signature work, but the newly released app is based on a performance by Century, not Gould.  The Goldberg App is available for downloading at the iTunes store.

Making music accessible and allowing anybody to alter, change and just mess around with it also speaks to Cage’s legacy.  But Century thinks the whole Cage legacy has gotten a little out of hand.

“There’s an irony in the grandness of his centenary,” says Century, referring to the numerous tributes at major venues like Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, to name just two.  “To me there’s an over the top ideology, a hagiography.  He was a contradictory guy not a god.”

Originally appeared in the Times Union.

Composer Mohammed Fairouz, 26, refuses to name a favorite poem but admits to being obsessed with texts.  He’s written 13 song cycles and his first opera, Sumeida’s Song, is due out on Bridge Records soon.  He’s also collaborated with poets Mahmoud Darwish, Wayne Koestenbaum, and Nobel Prize-winner Seamus Heaney.  

October will be a landmark month for Fairouz. Besides the CD release, he’ll have a portait concert at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn that includes a new string quartet played by the Boromeo (October 11). Then the Metropolis Ensemble with mezzo Kate Lindsey will premiere his song cycle Audenesque at Le Poisson Rouge (October 21).  Finally the Cantus vocal ensemble is premiering A Source of Lightat the Cowles Center in Minneapolis, followed by tour performances throughout Minnesota. And that’s just October. Later in the season there will be performances and premieres with New York Festival of Song, Lucy Shelton and the Da Capo Chamber Players, the New Juilliard Ensemble.

What do you like to talk about, say over drinks or dinner, if not music and the arts?

The work of the great animators of the golden age of animation, retro video games, Japanese art-films, the latest Arabic poetry… lots of geeky stuff.

How much do you keep up with news and current affairs? 

I’m very keen on current affairs and the political climate of the day informs my work quite a lot. When the 2011 Egyptian revolution broke out, for example, I wrote my piece for clarinet and orchestra called Tahrir with the news on (and the sound off).

Is there a relationship between your sexuality and your creativity? 

There’s a long history of homoerotic poetry from Arab Andalucia. I’ve set a lot of that poetry to music.

Do you like to collaborate or be the boss?

I’m a total collaborator. I’ve written opera and work for dance and you have to be able to collaborate when you do that. In fact, you have to be able to collaborate to write any music even if the collaboration is to be with a conductor and orchestra for an orchestral work or a singer for a song.

Are most of your friends from the music world or not? 

Most of my friends are actually poets or writers. I’ve written a lot of vocal music and I’ve been lucky to work with many of the world’s finest poets. I’m totally obsessed with text. Even my purely instrumental works tend to be inspired by words. Small wonder that most of my best friends are writers.

With what historical figure (living or dead) would you like to have a date or an affair?

Oscar Wilde or Benjamin Britten or Abu Nawas… too many cool people to make up my mind!

Letters Inspire an Intertwining of Boulez and Cage:
John Cage and Pierre Boulez Juxtaposed at Miller Theater

]]> http://www.mybiggayears.com/archives/cage-oversaturation/feed/ 0 http://www.mybiggayears.com/archives/einstein-on-the-beach-at-bam/ http://www.mybiggayears.com/archives/einstein-on-the-beach-at-bam/#comments Mon, 17 Sep 2012 02:43:37 +0000 jody http://www.mybiggayears.com/?p=3950 Maybe it’s because of the legacy of “Rite of Spring,” but when encountering a legendary work that’s said to have changed the course of a genre, one tends to expect an explosive tumult.  Listening to Philip Glass’ “Einstein on the Beach” on disc, there’s certainly a rigid austerity to the chunks of minimalist repetitions.  Yet the opera had an unexpected elegance in the long awaited staged revival that’s playing for eight performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and was seen on September 15.  The opening refrain of counting (“1-2-3-4”), sung by the chorus, was disarmingly gentle, even seductive.

Though there are actually two recordings of “Einstein” (from the 1976 debut and the second and most recent revival in 1992) neither encompasses the full four and half hours of a live performance. But it’s not the length that’s missing. Glass’ music is easily compressed, after all.  It’s the staging by Robert Wilson, the work’s co-creator, that’s an equally important component.  Others have tried to give the piece – devoid of plot or distinct characters – a visual embodiment but reportedly failed miserably.  Wilson’s language for the piece consists of visual motives – a train, a bed, a courtroom, a space ship – and his slow, liquid pacing plays perfectly off the music’s constant undulation.

Four actors deliver spoken texts that are mostly nonsensical and repetitive. The performers also included violin soloist Jennifer Koh and a chorus of twelve with accompaniment from the Philip Glass Ensemble, made up of seven amplified keyboard and woodwind players. There’s also the Lucinda Childs Dance Company whose eleven members are sometimes integrated into the larger acting ensemble.

In the two dance numbers, each about 20 minutes long, Child’s choreography is deceptively simple, just steps and skips, hops and turns.  But the grander floor patterns of diagonals and circles mimic elements of Wilson’s stage design.  The whole opera plays that way, with lots of interconnected themes and ideas.  The creators have confessed to not quiet knowing how it all worked out.  Yet it does indeed work.  Just don’t ask what it means.

“Einstein” has nine scenes, divided into four acts, with nary an intermission.  Like the choreography, Glass’ music is elementary on the surface. It spreads out like a supportive fabric during the longer acts. Through the course of the night, though, it shows a cumulative power and sophistication.  His writing is at its most condensed and complex in the “Knee Plays,” Wilson’s term for the entr’actes.  In the third and fourth “Knees,” the chorus stands in the pit and sings flurries of counting patterns in fast staccato that alternate with legato chorales of solfège (“do-re-me”).  The performances led by conductor Michael Riesman were staggering.

Observing Wilson’s stage pictures, the detailed lighting and the radiant music brought to mind the experience of visiting a museum, sitting down in front of some important painting, and taking the time to let it fully speak.  Despite its repetitions and slowness, “Einstein” was full of genuine events and moments to savor.  Like a dream, it was a fascinating world unto itself that slipped by too fast and may never return.

“I’m not dismissive of classical music and the Western canon,” Ms. Oliveros said during a wide-ranging interview at the office of her foundation in Kingston, N.Y., where she lives with her longtime partner, Ione, a writer and performance artist. “It’s simply that I can’t be bound by it. I’ve been jumping out of categories all my life.” She laughed, a hearty sound that liberally punctuated a generous, easygoing conversation.

From “Strange Sounds Led a Composer to a Long Career,” a fine piece by Steve Smith in the Sunday New York Times.

The vaunted acoustics of the EMPAC concert hall were even spiffed up for the occasion. A computer-aided loudspeaker system, designed by Jonas Braasch and a team of students, recreated the sound of a two million gallon cistern in Washington State where Oliveros made a landmark recording almost 25 years ago. The lush reverb, lasting about 45 seconds according to the program, makes an ideal compliment to Oliveros’ musical aesthetic.

Not everything on the program was actually written by Oliveros though. For that matter none of the pieces really functioned from a traditional score. But Oliveros’ system of “Deep Listening” was apparent throughout the night. All of the pieces were meditative and organic, which isn’t to say that they were always hushed or fragile. Rather they were thoughtful and collaborative, attuned in the space and the moment.

The opening, “Land of Snows,” did have a particularly reverent feel. Oliveros and Stuart Dempster launched it with a few finger cymbals, then blew various sized conch shells. Brian Perti played the dung chen, a brass horn at least 10 feet in length that’s common to Tibetan Buddhist ceremony. Three additional wind players sounded on didjeridus quietly in the back of the house.

In the next selection Oliveros, Dempster and Perti became an improvisational vocal trio. Their pacing was based in breath, their pitches seemingly random. It seemed to illustrate that all sense of dissonance fades away given enough time.

Amidst such soulfulness, the speeches paying honor to Oliveros felt rather intrusive and high minded. But Michael Century struck pay dirt in contrasting how a century of iconoclast composers – Ives, Cowell, Cage, and others (mostly men) – shattered traditions, while Oliveros’ work has been one of integration. He even went so far as to coin a term to describe her: “sona-accordionist.”

Besides being a composer, Oliveros is also an accordionist and she played an electrified version of the instrument at one point. More than a dozen percussionists from RPI, SUNY Albany and the Empire State Youth Orchestra took to the balconies around the hall for another piece. The evening ended with a trio of trombonists who moved about the hall before leading the way to the festive reception in the cafe.

Originally appeared in the Times Union.

Previously on MyBigGayEars:

Oliveros wins Columbia U’s Schuman Prize

Pauline Oliveros: Making Conscious Connections

Pauline Oliveros: A Musical adventurer begins by listening

Then, on Thursday March 8 begins the latest and greatest installment yet of Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony’s American Mavericks program.  Concerts and sundry special events large and small continue through the end of the month at Symphony Hall in San Francisco, in Ann Arbor, Chicago and in New York at Carnegie Hall.

The programs are an astounding mix of audacious music from the 20th and 21st centuries.  And of the 17 composers listed on the program’s website, 7 are gay or lesbian. So wouldn’t it be great if the conductor and visionary mastermind behind all of this was also out?!  Talk about an irony that someone who champions the daring and experimental is so timid and reserved.  (Honestly, if anyone can find documentation of MTT ever speaking to the gay press or otherwise being publicly out, please post it in the comments section for all to see.)

Anyway, for those of us not lucky enough to be in one of the chosen Maverick cities, there’s lots of cool stuff on the American Mavericks site.  And WQXR is dedicating most of the month of March to related programs on its contemporary music web station Q2 Music.

Here’s a teaser video from one of the most intriguing programs, bringing together vocalists Jesse Norman, Meredith Monk and Joan LaBarbara performing John Cage’s “Songbook.”  (Is anyone placing bets on whether Norman actually shows up for the performances?)

She told me that she would soon be leaving their Arkansas home and was planning to begin archiving Hovda’s studio in New York City and that a series of CD releases was planned.

Having spent several years calling on and attempting to assist the heirs of composers who died of AIDS, I knew that Wager’s intentions were good, but the task ahead of her was enormous.  The emotional burden of losing a loved one prematurely can make the work of addressing their artistic legacy feel insurmountable.  My more recent career direction as a real estate agent also continues to regularly bring me face to face with how difficult it can be to deal with years and years of belongings, whether your own or someone else’s. We all have so much stuff!

Well, cheers to Wager and Philip Blackburn of Innova Recordings who have produced a definitive and seemingly complete tribute to Hovda and her music.   “The Eleanor Hovda Collection” is an elegant four-CD set that brings together:

• 26 pieces of music, including many archival recordings but also recordings that were previously released on multi-composer collections from a variety of other labels;
• various short essays by the composer on the music at hand plus remembrances by her closest colleagues, including Wager, oboist Libby Van Cleve, guitarist Jack Vees, choreographer Nancy Meehan, and flutist and conductor David Gilbert;
• some fun archival photos;
• and, most amazingly, pdf versions of most of the scores.

The collection seems like a definite summation of Hovda’s career, but in her biographical essay Wager says that Hovda was very prolific and that the CDs represent only a fraction of her compositions.  Nevertheless, there’s more than enough here to savor and assure that Hovda’s legacy endures.

Previously on My Big Gay Ears:

The Death of Eleanor Hovda

It’s only the latest chapter in the on-going revival of Eastman’s music.  Mary Jane Leach pulled together three CDs of his music from archive recordings and released it all on New World Records about five years ago and she’s at work on a book about him in collaboration with Renee Levine Packer and various other contributors.

Nice articles appeared in advance of Friday’s concert from Jason Victor Serinus in the Bay Area Reporter and Joshua Kosman in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Previously on My Big Gay Ears:

Julius Eastman’s nearly lost legacy

Check out Julius Eastman’s “Gay Guerrilla”