This is the blog archive for March 2008 arranged in ascending date order.
Richard Friedman, Oakland, CA, works at
Sun
Microsystems, is a Director of
Other
Minds, wrote his first computer program
in 1962 for the IBM
650. It played dice.
He also takes a lot of photographs, composes music, and does a weekly
radio program on KALW called Music
From Other Minds.
The real-time view
from the left edge of the continent.
Last night, Berkeley pianist Sarah Cahill nearly concluded the month-long Berkeley Arts Festival series of concerts at the abandoned Gateway Computer store on Shattuck Avenue with a solo recital of fourteen pieces by Leo Ornstein (1893-2002). (I say "nearly" because there is one more concert tonight with another Berkeley pianist, Jerry Kuderna, and Argenta Walther, mezzo.)
Nearly all the performances were, essentially, world premieres, even though these works were written sometime between 1959 and 1980.
Ornstein, one of the mythic maverick composer/performers you've probably never heard of, arrived in New York City in 1907 and immediately enrolled in piano classes. He made his debut in 1910, demonstrating a fiery technique and onstage charisma that immediately branded him as an "ultra-futurist". By 1919 he was drawing crowds at his concerts like a rock star.
Wait a minute. 1919?
Right. Ornstein died in 2002 at the age of 109 !
Part of his mythic stature, besides his advanced age, is that he gave up performing altogether in the 1930's and opened a music school in Philadelphia with his wife. He continued composing, producing some 1800 pages of piano music in total, but most if it he stashed away in a drawer, apparently not interested in public performance.
Sometime around the 1970's, various composers and musicologists started wondering what ever happened to Ornstein? There was quite a lot of interest then in a number of elder maverick composers who seemed to have faded out after the second world war: Cowell, Nancarrow, McPhee, Antheil,...
Charles Amirkhanian found the Ornsteins living in a trailer park in Texas, having retired there from Philadelphia. And since the 90's, their son Severo has been organizing, editing, and printing Leo's scores. Many are now available as free PDF downloads from www.LeoOrnstein.net.
Since then a number of his pieces have seen performance and recording. But still just a small number.
Last night Sarah Cahill played the three Fantasy Pieces from 1961, A Morning in the Woods (1971), and two of the Three Tales, (Rendezvous at the Lake, and A Fantasy) from 1977, as well as six of Ornstein's Sixteen Metaphores (#1, 3, 8, 9, 11, 16) composed between 1959 and the mid 60's, and ending with Solitude (1978) and To a Grecian Urn (undated).
These pieces and others will appear on a CD Sarah is preparing of Ornstein's piano music.
Unfortunately, only a handful of avid Berkeley Arts Festival followers managed to attend the concert. If you weren't there you really missed something.
Much of the music references the period of Ravel, Scriabin, and Debussy, but in a more advanced way. I even heard touches of Koechlin and, as Sarah pointed out in her introductions, Gershwin. A kind of perfumed elegance and expressiveness bordering on the atonal but never quite there.
I would really like to hear these pieces again. Especially the Metaphores. They seem improvisatory, and may have, in fact, been transcribed improvisations.
This was a great way to (almost) end the Berkeley Arts Festival. Sarah has a wonderful way of pulling some wonderful pieces out of the shadows of obscurity. One hopes that more pianists will discover Ornstein's music just for the thrill of it.
Last night's performances were wonderfully intimate and beautifully performed on the exquisite Grotrian 9 1/2 foot grand piano lent for the occasion by the J-B Piano Company of San Rafael.
I'm at the Djerassi Artists Residency Ranch (djerassi.org) with all the composers who will be participating in Other Minds 13 next weekend.
In the picture above, taken yesterday, Wadada Leo Smith explains one of his compositions to everyone. Mort Subotnick is standing on the left. Keeril Makan, seated. Jim Newman, Michael Bach, Ake Parmerud, Catie and Dennis O'Leary, Leo, and Dan Becker, going left to right.
More presentations today and tomorrow.
For the past three days we've been at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program (DRAP) ranch in the San Mateo hills just south of San Francisco and due west from Silicon Valley. Unlike most music festivals where the composers and performers just arrive to play the gig and leave, the Other Minds festival encorporates a weekend retreat at the ranch where they can meet each other and discuss their work.
One of the composers, Dieter Schnebel, was unable to make the trip from Germany (he's 78), so we had him give his presentation via iChat video conferencing from Berlin. It worked great! This was the first time we attempted to do this. It opens all sorts of international possibilities.
German cellist Michael Bach will be performing works by Dieter Schnebel and John Cage using his unique curved bow. He gave a brief demonstration of its possibilities.
Swedish electronic music/video composer Åke Parmerud talked about one of his interactive installation pieces, "Lost Angel". His "La vie mécanique" from 2004 will be shown on Thursday night (March 6).
Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin's piano pieces will be performed by Lisa Moore in the festival.
San Francisco composer Dan Becker's new work, Keeping Time, will be given its world premiere at the Friday night concert.
(Almost) all together, posing for their formal portait. Top row: Keeril Makan, Michael Bach, Elena Kats-Chernin, Dan Becker. Bottom: Jim Newman, founder of Other Minds, Charles Amirkhanian, Morton Subotnick, Wadada Leo Smith, Åke Parmerud.
(Missing were Dieter Schnebel in Berlin, and Frances-Marie Uitti who was nursing a bad back in Berkeley.)
This time the weather was exceptionally beautiful, and everyone had an exceptionally good time. We all learned a lot about each other's music and vision, and we had a chance to hear a lot of interesting pieces.
Concerts are next Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in San Francisco. Information is at OtherMinds.org.
Ake Parmerud
Keeril Makan
Elena Kats-Chernin
Wadada Leo Smith
Dan Becker
Mort Subotnick
Michael Bach
Frances-Marie Uitti
Dieter Schnebel
One of the really fascinating things we got to hear at the OM13 retreat (see entry below) was Elena Kats-Chernin's description of a group of music robots designed by Roland Olbeter. Elena composed a four minute riff for the instruments, Fast Blue Air. These are single-string devices with electronic pickups and speakers at the ends. The string is stretched across a finger board with frets and the mechanism applies pneumatically controlled "fingers", all under computer control.
Robot electric guitars!
Click on the photo to go to You Tube and see the video. It's amazing.
The Del Sol Quartet will play a version of this, Fast Blue Village, at Saturday night's OM 13.
Art Forum magazine has an excellent spread on Stockhausen, an homage on his leaving this planet in December. Some of the articles are available online, the rest in the March print edition.
The online article contains a lengthy discussion by Robin Maconie, author of a catalog of KS's works. Brief remembrances by Mort Subotnick and Bjork also appear.
I was surprised to read that Bjork considers KS's STIMMUNG to be her favorite work. It's one of mine too. You can hear part of Stimmung this week on Music From Other Minds.
