Nel vedere questo estratto del Concert for Toy Piano and Orchestra (2005) di Matthew McConnell, brillantemente eseguito da Keith Kirchoff, sembra che un incantesimo abbia colpito pianista e pianoforte.
Il piano giocattolo, invece, è uno strumento con un repertorio specifico (fra gli altri, Cage, che peraltro non è l’unico).
New England Conservatory Symphony Orchestra. Sergio Monterisi, conductor. Recorded in NEC Jordan Hall
Gordon Mumma è una figura storica della musica elettroacustica negli USA, Fondatore dell’Ann Arbor’s Cooperative Studio for Electronic Music con Robert Ashley, ha lavorato per la Merce Cunningham Dance Company (con John Cage e David Tudor) ed è stato membro della Sonic Arts Union con Ashley, Alvin Lucier e David Behrman.
Qui vi propongo due brani: Epifont (1984), un breve studio dalle sonorità sostenute scritto in memoria del compositore George Gacioppo e il monumentale Megaton for William Burroughs del 1963, che meriterebbe di essere visto più che ascoltato, dato che gli esecutori (Robert Ashley, Harold Borkin, Milton Cohen, George Manupelli, Joseph Wehrer, Tony Dey e Gordon Mumma) sono alle prese con varie sculture sonore.
Gordon Mumma – Epifont (1984)
Megaton for Wm. Burroughs is a theatrical live-performance electronic-music composition with ten channels of sound. An ensemble of electro-acoustical sculpture,performed by five players, is heard from four of the channels. Six channels of composed tape are heard from the remaining loudspeakers. The performance takes place in the center of the space, with the audience surrounding the sculpture ensemble. All ten channels are heard from loudspeakers surrounding the audience.
“The thunderous four-minute introduction begins abruptly with a blackout. As the introduction fades, the sculpture gradually becomes visible, illuminated so that the performers are isolated from each other in the space. The performers communicate with each other by means of aircraft headsets. This communication coordinates the performance and is not heard by the audience.
“The live-performance section with the sculpture, which grows out of the fading introduction, occupies nearly half of the piece. The performers, isolated in space but communicating by their headsets, develop an increasingly complex sound montage with the electro-acoustical sculpture. Invisible taut-steel wires above the audience carry speeding, projectile-like flashing objects. The movement of these objects sets the overhead wires into vibrating resonances which, when amplified, become part of the sonic montage.
“As the illumination fades near the end of this live-performance section, a drone emerges and becomes recognizable as that of an aircraft squadron. The isolated images of the performed sculpture evolve through the drone into the sounds of World War II bomber crews communicating with each other from isolated parts of their aircraft during the course of a raid.
“The piece has evolved gradually but directly from its thunderous, abstract beginning through the electro-acoustical montage and into a cinema-real air raid. A brief burst of heroic movie music introduces the closing sequence: in an entirely different part of the space, in an isolated pool of light a lone drummer quietly rides his traps.”
Keith Rowe, forse il prototipo dei chitarristi improvvisatori di scuola anglosassone, esegue un brano di Cornelius Cardew tratto dall’album “A Dimension of Perfectly Ordinary Reality” del 1990.
Solo prepared guitar recording from the AMM member who pioneered the table-top guitar technique in his free improvisations back in the ’60s and thus influenced everyone from Syd Barrett through to Fred Frith and Jim O’Rourke. A Dimension of Perfectly Ordinary Reality is a live recording of Rowe solo outside of the AMM context he shares with percussionist Eddie Prevost and pianist John Tilbury. The array of sounds that the Englishman coaxes from the mere six string instrument is phenomenal, and his art is to extend upon the prepared piano techniques pioneered by John Cage and apply them to the electric guitar. As ecstatic as Derek Bailey, the comparison stops there as Rowe scarcely even puts his fingers on the string, instead opting for radio feedback, arco, and any number of kitchen implements to attack the guitar. To the uninitiated this may sound like clattering mess of noise. A Dimension of Perfectly Ordinary Reality is certainly far from it, as the dexterity with which he approache…s abstraction is prodigal. It is no doubt then that everyone from Sonic Youth, Henry Kaiser, and even Frank Zappa could accredit Rowe as inspirational. His activities on recordings increased dramatically in the year 2000, with the proto-noise artist directing MIMEO and collaborating with improv mainstay Evan Parker on numerous recordings. This CD is a great document of one of his scarce solo performances.
[Martin Walters, All Music Guide]
Cornelius Cardew (Arr. K. Rowe) – Ode Machine No. 2
K. Rowe prepared guitar, voice
Recorded at the Holywell Music Room, Oxford on 5 July 1989
Via bravo Juju
Audiogrammes è un brano di Benoit Moreau il cui titolo si rifà ai Calligrammi (poesie in forma grafica datate 1913) di Guillaume Apollinaire. Si tratta di musica in parte scritta e in parte improvvisata che esiste in due versioni:
AUDIOGRAMMES I : versione per quattro solisti
AUDIOGRAMMES II: versione per quattro solisti e quattro ensembles
Qui ascoltiamo Audiogrammes II, eseguita il 7 Giugno 2008 al Conservatorio di Ginevra.
Benoit Moreau – Audiogrammes II
Anne Gillot: flûtes à bec
Laurent Estoppey: saxophones
Alexandre Babel: percussion
Benoit Moreau: composition, électronique
Il brano è scaricabile dall’Internet Archive
Brian Eno’s Music for Airports (1978) played a very important part in the concept and development of ambient music. One could say that ambient music is not a music to be listened to, but a music to be heard, as a subliminal background creating a soundscape for various places or buildings. Supermarkets and elevators are usually places where a poor music is played, one calls it muzak. Brian Eno’s idea was to conceive a sophisticated musical soundscape instead of this anonymous FM music, and he chose airports as the best places where such a music could be heard and understood, creating an unusual and quiet sonic background among all the noises and announcements of a airport terminal.
Music for Airports is a masterpiece, with its subtle piano tracks, its complex electronic treatments, its choral parts, and its slow and organic development.
In 1998, Point Music, a label directed by Philip Glass, released this amazing interpretation of Music for Airports by Bang on a Can: Robert Black (bass), Lisa Moore (piano, keyboards), Evan Ziporyn (clarinet, bass clarinet), Maya Beiser (cello), Steven Schick (percussion), a choir of female voices and additional musicians playing pipa, flute, horn, trumpet, trombone, violin, cello, mandolin and mandocello.
This chamber music ensemble plays Eno’s compositions with fidelity and creativity at the same times. The acoustic instruments create a rich harmonic soundscape and add a very original touch to the original recording.
This peaceful, quiet and slow music is very evocative and poetic: the cover version is as beautiful as the original…
Excerpt from Brian Eno – Music for Airports 1.1 – played by Bang on a Can
Il poeta e cantautore canadese Leonard Cohen è di nuovo in tournée negli States dopo 15 anni.
In questo link di npr-music potete ascoltare buona parte del concerto al Beacon Theatre in Manhattan. 12 pezzi per 1 ora e 14. Cohen rivisita famosissimi brani come “Dance Me to the End of Love,” “Bird on a Wire,” “Chelsea Hotel,” “Sisters of Mercy,” “Suzanne,” “Hallelujah,” “I’m Your Man,” “Famous Blue Raincoat.” Non occorre essere dei nostalgici per apprezzarlo.
Cliccate “Hear the music“, sopra l’articolo. Si apre una pagina con il player, vi beccate la pubblicità dell’ultimo disco di Van Morrison e poi inizia lo show (solo audio).
Be quick; non so quanto dura (invece dura ancora dopo 15 anni)
UPDATE
Mi sono reso conto solo adesso che nella pagina del podcast c’è, per forza di cose, l’mp3 (a volte non sono sveglissimo). Potete ascoltarlo o scaricarlo (tasto destro e salva) a questo link.
Kaija Saariaho – Fall – for harp and live electronics
Consuelo Giulianelli on harp – Live in Basle, 16.05.2008 – Live electronics by Thomas Pete
This is one of those releases that floods me with metaphorical insights.
In the beauty of breakage we find some of the answers for our deepest questions.
When something breaks, we are able to perceive it as what truly is, a collection of pieces of different shapes and sizes. Ian D Hawgood gives us four pieces of these ruined goods. Beginning with incessant timing of a vertical sound along a sea of soothing horizontality.If frailty is the source of all things, then we ought to go back to it. All the abundant arrogance and destructive strength present in human beings has brought us to irreversible situation, into a mood that swings like the weather, each time faster and more bipolar. I believe “Her name was frailty” implies The Earth. Whenever we observe The Earth from a distance, in this case from an astronaut’s point of view, we can understand how far from reality we have strayed. The construction and sounds of this album allows me to, not only returning to a point of frailness, but also to activate a particular type of mental stimulation that empowers my psyche conceding me thoughts about restoration. Now, restoration implies an active participation in bringing the past back to life, in this case from broken to whole. This release definitely modifies my tiny rat heart.
Thanks Ian… or should I say ‘Ion’, an atom that has acquired a net electric charge by gaining or losing one or more electrons.» – Sebastian Alvarez
Excerpts:
Listen to/download the whole album
Nato nel 1929 a Malmédy, in Belgio, e divenuto un affermato esponente della scuola di Darmstadt insieme a Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Bruno Maderna e Luciano Berio, è stato uno dei primi a contaminare il serialismo e lo strutturalismo tipici dell’epoca con altri stilemi, seguito a breve da altri colleghi.
Da sempre interessato alla musica elettronica, ha lavorato negli studi di Colonia e di Milano, in cui ha realizzato lo storico Scambi del 1957, per poi fondare, nel 1958, lo studio di Bruxelles.
Ci siamo incontrati qualche volta, l’ultima nel 2002 a Verona. Eravamo nello stesso concerto. Pousseur presentava uno dei suoi Seize Paysages planétaires (musica elettroacustica). In quell’occasione parlammo a lungo, più di tutte le altre volte. Gli confessai che i suoi Trois Visages de Liège erano tra i brani che più mi avevano colpito quando ero ragazzino. Lui sorrideva.
Nuova, nostalgica release da test tube.
«Warm, woozy childhood memories, and crisp blue winter skies… friends, beaches, summer… the creative joys of making otherworldly sounds on battered old synths and a Casio keyboard stuck through cheap guitar pedals… a hefty dose of unadulterated, euphoric pop melody….
Colours Seep Out is the first full mini-opus from Nottingham’s Moscow Youth Cult, an electro-ambient-pop sidearm of UK underground indie noisemakers, “Love Ends Disaster!” (currently in hiding, putting together their next album). Part a recollection of the fuzzy and optimistic late 1990’s electronica of Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin, Susumu Yokota and DJ Shadow, part the urgent electro-pop of Beck, Ladytron and Fourtet, the 9 tracks here twist and melt from evocative synthscapes (Antenna I, Sandpits) to concise spurts of noise pop (Philosophique, Sakura Sakura)… and back again, without pausing for breath. What becomes clear is Jon Dix (Guitar, Synths, Vocals, Programming & Production), Robert Sadler (Keyboards, Programming) and Leah Donovan’s (Vocals) clear enjoyment of the sensibilities of pop music, topped with a healthy does of unabashed, exciting experimentalism.» – Jon Dix
Estratti:
Listen to/download the whole album