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. 

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. 

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. 

Composer websites:

Ake Parmerud

Keeril Makan

Elena Kats-Chernin 

Wadada Leo Smith

Dan Becker 

Mort Subotnick

Michael Bach

Frances-Marie Uitti

Dieter Schnebel

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.  

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.  

That really made my day!

It pays to comment on blogs, which I routinely do, perhaps to the annoyance of some bloggers.

But, as I descend into curmudgeonhood, it seems to be a necessity. 

Here's is an excerpt from Maureen Dowd's column in the NY Times a few days ago:

Voters try to figure out who they trust to have life-and-death power over them, but there’s so much theatricality and artifice in campaigns you can get a false impression of who someone is.

And you never know who they will become once they move into the insular, heady womb of the White House — or how they will be buffeted by the caprice of history, and the randomness of crises.

At the very moment when politicians should be on top of the world, embraced by the voters, enhanced by the toys and levers of power, their gremlins surface. They inevitably get hit with trouble that they never could have imagined or prepared for, and that can trigger self-doubt and self-destruction and self-pity.

Why didn’t J. F. K. simply toss out the C.I.A. plan developed under Eisenhower to send 1,200 exiles to overthrow a popular Cuban leader with a force of 200,000? He felt the need to prove himself.

Why did L. B. J. ignore his own solid political instincts to listen to Robert McNamara and Dean Rusk about Vietnam — falling under their stupid sway because they had been J. F. K.’s advisers?

Nixon, driven by the same pathology of envy about Kennedy and other golden boys, conspired in a political crime while coasting to re-election.

Why did W. let Cheney and Rummy lead him into hubristic disaster? He, too, needed to prove himself — and outdo Daddy. How could the “compassionate conservative” bike through Katrina?

The self-destructive impulses that consumed Bill Clinton detracted from his policy achievements and distracted him from achieving all he could have.

The press tends to swallow campaign narratives of sin and redemption, hard lessons learned.

After giving up drinking and becoming Texas governor, W. had supposedly changed from an arrogant, obdurate, Daddy-competing loser to a genial, bipartisan, mature winner. As it turned out, a total makeover is not possible after 40.

Hillary’s narrative echoes W.’s: After the scalding partisanship of the ’90s, she became a senator and turned the other cheek, working on legislation with Republicans who had pursued the impeachment case against her husband. She has supposedly learned from her White House mistakes on health care, Travelgate and legal issues, from her battles with the right and the press. She knows now that being obstructionist and secretive don’t work.

An appealing arc, but is it true? Her campaign shake-up showed that she continues to rank loyalty and secrecy above competence and ingenuity. She is still so guarded that she began answering questions from the press and voters only after she lost Iowa.

All of us have known big shots who keep a check on their real feelings and dark tendencies until they get the top job. Then they throw off the restraints and revert to their worst instincts, bullying others and insulating themselves with sycophants.

Hillary could be ready on Day 1 — to make up her Enemies List and banish Overkill Bill to a cubbyhole in the Old Executive Office Building. But it’s Day 2 that I’m really worried about.

I can't agree with her more. I too am worried about Day 2. And Day 3.... Time may be running out.

The entire article is here.

Those with the power to elect our presidents and congressmen -- and many who themselves get elected -- believe that dinosaurs lived two by two upon Noah's ark, that light from distant galaxies was created en route to the earth, and that the first members of our species were fashioned out of dirt and divine breath, in a garden with a talking snake, by the hand of an invisible God. 

Among developed nations, America stands alone in these convictions. Our country now appears, as at no other time in her history, like a lumbering, bellicose, dim-witted giant. Anyone who cares about the fate of civilization would do well to recognize that the combination of great power and great stupidity is simply terrifying, even to one's friends.

       -- Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation 

WE’RE sliding into recession, or worse, and Washington is turning to the normal remedies for economic downturns. But the normal remedies are not likely to work this time, because this isn’t a normal downturn.

The problem lies deeper. It is the culmination of three decades during which American consumers have spent beyond their means. That era is now coming to an end. Consumers have run out of ways to keep the spending binge going.

The only lasting remedy, other than for Americans to accept a lower standard of living and for businesses to adjust to a smaller economy, is to give middle- and lower-income Americans more buying power — and not just temporarily.

Much of the current debate is irrelevant. Even with more tax breaks for business like accelerated depreciation, companies won’t invest in more factories or equipment when demand is dropping for products and services across the board, as it is now. And temporary fixes like a stimulus package that would give households a one-time cash infusion won’t get consumers back to the malls, because consumers know the assistance is temporary. The problems most consumers face are permanent, so they are likely to pocket the extra money instead of spending it.

... 

Read the whole article at the NY Times website. 

I have to say that last night's appearance at the Yerba Buena Theater in San Francisco of the Bang on a Can All-Stars from New York City was a bit of a disappointment.

That's not to say that it wasn't a joy to see such really accomplished musicians, led by clarinetist and composer Evan Ziporyn, playing at their best. But the choice of what to play was the real disappointment of the evening..

Why is it that groups coming to the Bay Area from points East or Europe think they need to dumb-down their programs for the local audience?

In New York and other places the All-Stars champion really challenging works and music they commission themselves. And while last night they did play at least one piece by each of their founding members, David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe, they weren't anything we hadn't heard before (Cheating, Lying, Stealing; I Buried Paul; Big Beautiful Dark & Scary, resp.), the rest of the program, with Don Byron and Iva Bittova, would have been more fitting at a jazz nightclub like Yoshi's.

Why not play selections from Michael Gordon's new Van Gogh, or The Carbon-Copy Building by the composers collective?  Or some of the many works that they've commissioned from other composers over the years.

Instead, I think they tried to play it safe. Which is disappointing.

I've heard better from Don Byron, and the Bittova pieces all appear on her album Elida (Cantaloupe Music, 2005). 

Ok. It's expensive to go on tour. All that equipment, hotels, transportation. So better make sure to fill the hall. 

In fact, the hall was not full .. maybe 3/4. At $45/ticket, that's not surprising. (I thought the Yerba Buena Center was supposed to be affordable.) 

I couldn't attend the Marathon event held earlier that day in the Forum. It was free. But one friend, whose opinions I tend to align with mostly, was equally disappointed.

Bottom line: "So Mr Grumpy Pants, how was the concert?" -- It COULD have been better.

PS: I saw both Joshua Kosman of the Chronicle and Jason Serinus of the SF Classical Voice in the audience. It will be interesting to read their reviews.

PPS: Here is Jason's review. And here is Kosman's.  Compare and contrast. 

 

Other Minds Festival 13
Kanbar Hall, Jewish Community Center of San Francisco
3200 California St., at Presidio
March 6-7-8, 2008
Full Schedule of Concerts  • Order tickets here.

The composers:

Michael Bach Dan Becker Elena Kats-Chernin Keeril Makan Åke Parmerud Dieter Schnebel Wadada Leo Smith Morton Subotnick Frances-Marie Uitti

and performers
Anthony Brown (percussion), Del Sol String Quartet, Lisa Moore (piano), David Shively (percussion), Kathy Supové (piano), and the Adorno Ensemble.

Presented in association with the Djerassi Resident Artists Program and the Eugene and Elinor Friend Center for the Arts at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco.

Thursday, March 6, 2008 7:00 pm Panel Discussion, 8:00 pm Concert, Kanbar Hall, JCCSF Dieter Schnebel: Mit Diesen Händen (excerpts - 1992)                            Michael Bach, voice and cello with BACH.bow Åke Parmerud: La Vie Mécanique (2004) pre-recorded media Elena Kats-Chernin: Purple Prelude (1996)   Tast-En (1991)     Lisa Moore, piano INTERMISSION Frances-Marie Uitti: Rap't (2007)                            Uitti, cello with two bows and electronics U.S. premiere Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith: Taif: Prayer in the Garden of The Hijaz (2007) Smith, trumpet; Anthony Brown, percussion; Del Sol String Quartet World Premiere, commissioned by Other Minds
Friday, March 7, 2008 7:00 pm Panel Discussion, 8:00 pm Concert, Kanbar Hall, JCCSF Åke Parmerud: Dreaming in Darkness (2005) pre-recorded media                     Michael Bach Bachtischa:                                          18-7-92 (1992) Michael Bach, cello with BACH.bow & pre-recorded media U.S. premiere John Cage & Michael Bach Bachtischa: One13 (1992) Michael Bach, cello with BACH.bow & pre-recorded media U.S. premiere INTERMISSION Dieter Schnebel:                                         Quintessenz (1993) Poem für 4 Köpfe from Zeichen-Sprache (1987–89) Other Minds Ensemble Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith: Moths, Flames, and the Giant Sequoia Redwood Trees (1996) Adorno Ensemble Dan Becker: Keeping Time (2008) Adorno Ensemble World Premiere, commissioned by Other Minds
Saturday, March 8, 2008 7:00 pm Panel Discussion, 8:00 pm Concert, Kanbar Hall, JCCSF Keeril Makan: Resonance Alloy (2007)                    David Shively, percussion World Premiere, commissioned by Other Minds Static Rising (2004) David Shively, percussion; Del Sol String Quartet Elena Kats-Chernin: Russian Rag (1996/2007)   Fast Blue Village (2007)     Kats-Chernin, piano; Del Sol String Quartet Eliza Aria (2002) Kats-Chernin, piano INTERMISSION Dan Becker: Revolution (2004) Kathleen Supové, prepared disklavier with pre-recorded media Morton Subotnick: The Other Piano (2007) Kathleen Supové, piano; Subotnick, live electronics

First, the scheduled baritone in David Sheinfeld's Dear Theo came down with the flu, as did his replacement. So at the last minute two solo pieces were substituted.

And then the composer of the world premiere on the program commits suicide (apparently) on his way to a rehearsal the day before. (See previous postings.)

Still, the concert went on, and we were glad.

It sold out.

The SFCMP music director, David Milnes, began by talking from the stage about the difficulties they faced with a rampant flu, and the last minute decision to substitute two solo works from their performer's repertory . 

But then he also expressed the shock they all felt when they got the word Sunday, while waiting for Jorge Liderman to arrive at the final rehearsal, that he wouldn't be coming. They had all be working very closely with him for weeks, with no indication that this would end so tragically. Milnes added that even his piece, Furthermore..., is lively and optimistic, with no hint of melancholy. It all left everyone wondering how this could have happened.

But, the concert would go on:

• Indigenous Instruments (1989) by Steven Mackey
  flute/piccolo/alto flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano
  
• Intermedio all Ciaconna (1986) by Brian Ferneyhough
  Graeme Jennings, violin
• from Le Livre des claviers (1987) by Philippe Manoury
  Christopher Froh, vibraphone
• Bass Clarinet and Percussion (1981) by Morton Feldman
  Carey Bell, bass clarinet; William Winant and Christoper Froh, percussion.
• Furthermore... (2006) by Jorge Liderman
  World Premiere with Carla Kihlstedt violin; flute, clarinet, harp, percussion, piano, cello, double bass

And it was one of the most engaging and exciting SFCMP concerts I've been to in years!

Mackey's piece was lively and fun. He intended it as "vernacular music from a culture that doesn't actually exist", a thought-experiment gone wild. 

And altho I don't really like a lot of Ferneyhough's music, this Ciaconna, played impressively by Graeme Jennings (ex Arditti Quartet, now living in San Francisco), was a real tour de force. Quite spectacular.

As was Manoury's vibraphone solo. (What is it about French composers and vibraphones and xylophones?) The prominent technique here was to sound many notes in a chord or run across the bars and then dampen them one by one. Vibrant it was.

I hadn't heard the Feldman piece before, altho it has been recorded a few times, most recently on Mode 119. It was beautifully played, even tho the stillness was betrayed by coughs from the audience and the occasional ambulance siren outside. 

But it was the Liderman piece that I think everyone was waiting for. And it was spectacular. Sort of a chamber violin concerto, it reminded me alot of Milhaud's jazzy Pan-American chamber pieces. Sunny, lyrical, and full of surprises. Carla Kihlstedt nailed it with a full and sensuous tone. And it even had a cadenza! It was great and I hope they record it! The ensemble began with a moment of silence.

But of course the tragedy was that now Liderman's work is closed, done. There won't be any new pieces.  How can this be? 

Still, congratulations to the SFCMP!  

Here's Kosman's review in the SF Chron. 

Today's lunchtime concert by Jerry Kuderna, part of this month's Berkeley Arts Festival being held at an abandoned storefront in downtown Berkeley, was deeply saddened by the news of the death of local composer Jorge Liderman (see item below).

Jerry Kuderna had been planning a program of American music, but scrapped it all and played Schubert, Schoenberg, and Debussy instead.

Some in the audience knew Jorge and had even spoken to him very recently about the world premiere happening tonight in San Francisco.

Schubert seemed just the right choice. 

And here's another photo. 

It was a big shock to open the paper this morning and read that Berkeley composer Jorge Liderman apparently jumped in front of a BART train Sunday.

I was hoping to see him tonight at the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players concert with the world premier of his Furthermore... for violinist Carla Kihlstedt. 

I'd met Jorge a number of times, and had him on my KPFA radio program many years ago when he first arrived at the UC Berkeley music department. And I've featured his music on Music From Other Minds on KALW. 

This is a terrible shock.  He was 50 years old.

Last night, in an abandoned storefront on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley (previously a Gateway Computer store and pictured above via Google, the second floor was also home to radio station KPFA for three decades), pianist Sarah Cahill initiated the latest installment of the peripatetic Berkeley Arts Festival with a concert that featured the music of Peter Garland, Stephen Blumberg, Mamoru Fujieda, Colin McPhee, Kyle Gann, and Terry Riley.

Starting around 1990 as part of the Berkeley Store Gallery, the Berkeley Arts Festival has been turning empty store fronts on Shattuck Avenue into performance spaces and exhibition halls for a month or two each year, largely due to the support of local commercial property owners, the City of Berkeley, and many art patrons, volunteers, and artists, and all under the direction of the indefatigable Bonnie Hughes.

The nice thing about these concerts is the informality of it all. Like being in someone's home, the performers and audience feel comfortable enough to talk about the music and sit close. The wonderful Grotrian grand piano looked beautiful in the center of the room, and the audience of about 50 of us sat in three rows in a semicircle around it, facing the windows onto the street. It was wonderful to hear, for example, Colin McPhee's Balinese transcriptions while watching the lights from the Shattuck Avenue Cinema across the street and people with umbrellas walking along the sidewalk.

And since Sarah knows all the composers on the program, she was able to speak about the music first-hand. Which added even more to the intimacy in the room. 

By the way, I highly recommend Sarah's new CD on New Albion of Kyle Gann's Private Dances, which includes On Reading Emerson, performed last night.