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Musicworks Issue 103 - Spring 2009 musicworks

Issue 103 spring 2009

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 FEATURE ARTICLES

Fond of Tigers
By Alex Molotkow

Article Summary:
Vancouver septet Fond of Tigers is famously difficult to categorize: to rock fans they sound like free jazz, and to experimental listeners they sound like rock ‘n’ roll. But genre is the least of the band’s concerns. The band members are connected by chemistry, a dynamic approach to playing music, and not by taste—their songs come together intuitively, without prior planning or the mediation of musical conventions. Despite their disavowal of genre, Fond of Tigers are very enthusiastic about experimental music as an approach rather than a label. All are active members of Vancouver’s “creative music” scene, with Lyons and Zubot acting as organizers for a community which often finds itself encroached upon by authorities, according to some reports. Their musical activity has allowed them to make connections with a wide variety of bands playing in multiple styles, and cross-pollination has resulted, much to the band’s delight—call them B.C.’s ambassadors of “creative” music.

Text of Light
By Glen Hall

Article Summary:
Formed in 2001 by guitarists Alan Licht and Lee Ranaldo, the group Text of Light takes its name from one of the nearly 400 films by the revered genius of experimental cinema, Stan Brakhage. The band performs using films by the auteur and others, but they aver that they don’t create soundtracks to the works, most of which are silent and intended by Brakhage himself to be viewed in silence. In fact, the musicians rarely look at the projected films during performances. Instead, they create sonically shifting, multidimensional sound masses whose connections with the films are made in the mind of the audience. Text of Light makes non-sequential, non-semantic, non-narrative music to work with films of the same structural architecture and aesthetic leanings. Their hope is that their audiences will seek out Brakhage’s films and view them as they were intended by their maker.

Ana Sokolović
By Tamara Bernstein

Article Summary:
Enchanted by the vocal music of Serbian-born Canadian composer Ana Sokolović, Tamara Bernstein visited the composer at her home in Montreal. Sokolović’s music draws on several sources, including the theatrical world and the Serbian culture of the Balkans. The extended vocal techniques in Sokolović’s music are rooted not in the avant-garde music of the twentieth century, but in the oral traditions and poetic voice of Serbia. It seems that the more the composer returns to her cultural roots, the more she embraces the universality of the human soul.

Rainer Wiens
By Andra McCartney and Samuel Thulin

Article Summary:
Rainer Wiens’ approach to musical composition is one in which openness and experimentation are key, and in which his works change dynamically to work with performer strengths and interests. Interactions with musicians and artists from other fields have been a constant source of inspiration for Wiens throughout his career. Wiens was co-founder of Sound Image Theatre, has written and performed the music for an opera as well as several dance pieces, has scored numerous films, and since the late 1970s has led avant-garde music groups. A theme running through all of Wiens’ projects is the idea of achieving complexity through simplicity and freedom through limitation. This approach feeds into Wiens creation of uncategorizable music exploring timbral diversity and rhythmic instability. Wiens work with his current group, Dream Algebra, pushes his rhythmic explorations further than ever before.

Frances-Marie Uitti
By Anne Bourne

Article Summary:
In this interview, cellist Frances Marie Uitti says “I like to work in the dark.” In the context of this metaphor, and her strong classical origin, we discover how the experience of being as a creator, and a fearless letting go of maps, allows Uitti to originate extended techniques, two-bow repertoire, and a catalogue of significant contemporary cello pieces. Uitti recalls her experience in a creative process with composer Giacinto Scelsi, creating the unique cello solos of the Trilogia. She describes her own experience as a creator of contemporary music, as interpreter and composer; the limitations of notation in describing timbre, and possible enhancements to notation; and the balance between improvisation and interpretation of a composer’s notation. There is a wild tale about rediscovering her aluminum cello, and Uitti lets us in on her latest research as an instrument and bow maker with the soundless cello, recently presented at IRCAM.

PROFILE

Misha Glouberman
By David McCallum

Misha Glouberman is a man hard to avoid in Toronto. He is the de facto host of events of many kinds, but his series of mass sound-improv experiments have become legendary. He somehow manages to guide large groups of non-musicians and musicians alike in exercises in interaction through vocal soundmaking. For him, sound is a medium for exploring modes of human interaction that he didn’t find in theatrical improv. David McCallum chats with Glouberman about whether what Glouberman is doing can be considered music, and what he’s discovered along the way.

COMMENTARY

getting on with it—three visions of music’s future
part one: the composer
By John Keillor

Karlheinz Stockhausen was asked by BBC Radio 3’s Steven Witt to evaluate several electronic post-disco tracks, including one by Aphex Twin. The German composer’s comments appeared in the November issue of The Wire. Throughout the interview, Stockhausen listed several of his own electronic pieces (from half a century ago) saying that they would help electronic post-disco producers find a way toward real composition. But, contends music critic John Keillor, there’s something silly about that, an apples-and-oranges comparison of pop and classical traditions.

Stockhausen’s music is “modern,” but he mistrusted our inextricable relationship with technology, considering it to be unnatural, a consideration that made his stewardship of the Western classical canon a wrong road of cultural representation. Stockhausen’s persona is not just moot but actually harmful. It lowers composers’ expectations before they even try to reach out to the world. Their lack of worldly ambition is hindering classical music’s prestige and cultural momentum.
This is the first of three articles by John Keillor about the future of music.

SONIC GEOGRAPHIES

Ken Waxman in Munich
Stuart Broomer in Lisbon

CD CONTENTS

ANA SOKOLOVIĆ
From/de Six voix pour sirènes/Six Voices for Sirens

1 | Six voix
Download MP3:    Ana Sokolović - Six voix excerpt  (2.9MB)
2 | Voix, nos voix and Vertige
From/de Pesma
3 | First movement, in Serbian
4 | Third movement, in French
5 | Doves I
6 | Catulle


FOND OF TIGERS
7 | Pemberdunn Maple Wolfs
Download MP3:    Fond of Tigers - Pemberdunn Maple Wolfs excerpt  (4.7MB)


FRANCES-MARIE UITTI
8 | Britsum Chorale
Download MP3:    Frances-Marie Uitti - Britsum Chorale excerpt  (4.1MB)
9 | 13AL
10 | Two Bow Chorale


TEXT OF LIGHT
11 | 020103 RAW 1
12 | 020103 RAW 2
Download MP3:    Text of Light - 020103 RAW 2 excerpt  (3.1MB)
Download MP3:
13 | 020103 RAW 3


MISHA GLOUBERMAN
14 | Terrible Noises for Beautiful People (excerpts/extraits)
Download MP3:    Misha Glouberman - Terible Noises for Beautiful People excerpt  (4.1MB)


RAINER WIENS
15 | Kalimba Duo with Thom Gossage
16 | Duo with Malcolm Goldstein from a Performance at Usine C
17 | Excerpt from / extrait tiré de A Complicated Sadness


MICHAEL DUFFEY
18 | junkgar
Download MP3:    Michael Duffey - junkgar excerpt  (1.8MB)
19 | lov5

REVIEWS


Events

Ken Waxman on Jazz Brugge in Brugge, Belgium
Ken Waxman on HumaNoise Congress #20 in Wiesbaden, Germany
Mike Chamberlain on the Guelph Jazz Festival in Guelph, Ontario
David McCallum on Sound Symposium XIV in St. John’s, Newfoundland


Recordings

The Amor Fati label
Robert Ashley on Lovely Music
Eivind Buene on SOFA
Dr. Ox on C74
Farren Fages on Etude Records
Goska Ipshording on PWM Edition
Matthew Shipp Trio on HatHut
Mendi and Keith Obadike on Bridge Records
Blood, Muscle & Air: The Intimate Voice on Sonic Arts Network
Ursula Oppens (Elliott Carter) on Cedille Records
John Snijders on HatHut
Simon Wickham-Smith on Pogus.
Paul Bley on HatHut
Robin Hayward and Annette Krebs independent release
Earl Howard on New World
David Liebman and Ellery Eskelin on HatHut
Steve Lantner Trio on HatHut
Manuel Mengis Gruppe 6 on HatHut



Words

David W. Bernstein, ed. The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-Garde. (University of California Press)


VISIONS OF SOUND
A memnonium by Michael Duffey