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Musicworks Issue 104 - Summer 2009

Issue 104 summer 2009

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FEATURE ARTICLES

The Valerie Project
By Alex Molotkow

Article Summary:
Greg Weeks is a composer and performer best known for his psychedelic folk band Espers. After viewing the 1970 Czech New Wave film, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, he was struck with a sense of purpose: he would compose an alternate soundtrack for the forgotten film, both to recontextualize the original work and introduce it to new audiences. The result was the Valerie Project, a touring audiovisual production complete with accompanying double album and artistic mandate. Tracing the development of that venture, this article includes Weeks’ remarks about the film and his account of why it speaks to his musical community. He also explains his project, and the relationship between the grandiose score he’s composed and the striking film that inspired it.

Martin Tétreault
By Mike Chamberlain

Article Summary:
Along with Christian Marclay and Otomo Yoshihide, Montreal turntablist Martin Tétreault is one of the pioneers of turntable experimentalism. Tétreault began his career as a visual artist but found his way into the musical world through experiments with cutting vinyl records. He received his training as an improviser among the musicians around Montreal’s Ambiances Magnétiques orbit. Since the early 1990s, Tétreault has recorded with a variety of artists. Among his most frequent collaborators has been Otomo Yoshihide, and the two have had a profound effect on each other’s artistic development. Tétreault discusses his training as a musical artist, his work with Otomo and others, and his approaches to improvisation and composition.

Philip Jeck
By Julian Cowley

Article Summary:
English turntablist Philip Jeck has a singular approach to turntablism, using discarded vintage record players and old vinyl to create a dust-laden yet richly evocative and unexpectedly affecting music built from clicks and crackles, rumbles and looped snippets of elusive melodies. His development as a musician is traced from early attempts to emulate club DJs, through work with choreographers, his landmark Vinyl Requiem installation for 180 record players, more recent collaborations with rock musicians, church organists, and experimental ensembles, his provision of accompaniment for classic cinema, and his involvement in site-specific projects.

Hélène Prévost
By Richard Simas

Article Summary:
Hélène Prévost is a singular force in the sound-art milieu, with a career spanning nearly four decades of work in radio, audio research, critical writing, recording, and, most recently, on her own creations. The act of listening is an all-encompassing experience for her and is integral to her lexicon of defining and participating in the world around her. After years of acting principally as a conduit for the work of a multitude of adventurous musicians and soundmakers, she is currently in the midst of exploring sound creation for a variety of formats, including installations, performances, radio, and recording. While she juggles with various concepts that attempt to define sound and noise, she emphasizes, “Silence is the key. The centre.” In creating, she sees her role in shaping sound material as one characterized by concentrated attention in search of exactly the right gesture.

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

Vinyl Interventions
By Tricia Hulshof

Coming together from three very different backgrounds in art and sound, three Canadian artists—Esther Bourdages, Carrie Gates, and Marinko Jareb—form the group Vinyl Interventions. Based on a shared interest in experimental turntablism, the trio focuses on the integration of sound and art in performances that challenge the traditional concept of the vinyl record. Working mainly in the context of workshops, Vinyl Interventions presents the record’s malleability in terms of sound and art. Exposing the raw character of the turntable, the group’s use of vinyl pushes it into a contemporary media form. Vinyl Interventions’ sound is best described as experiential noise, free of musical constraints and gaining relevance through everyday experience and culture. The sound is contextualized by visuals that utilize vinyl as a new artistic landscape. Essentially, Vinyl Interventions’ work allows them to physically and socially intervene with the vinyl record as culture has characterized it.

COMMENTARY

getting on with it—three visions of music’s future
part two: the electronic post-disco producer
By John Keillor

In 1995, Karlheinz Stockhausen was asked by BBC Radio 3’s Steven Witt to evaluate several electronic post-disco tracks, including one by Aphex Twin. John Keillor further discusses Stockhausen’s missteps on the road to connecting with listeners, and the realized potentials of the Electronic Post-Disco Producers who rose to prominence in the 1990s.

SONIC GEOGRAPHIES

Ken Waxman in Antwerp
Mike Chamberlain in Istanbul

CD CONTENTS

RECORDINGS

Pierre Bastien on Western Vinyl
Michel Blanc on d’autres cordes recordes
Anthony Braxton in Canada
Roy Campbell Ensemble on AUM Fidelity
Tim Catlin on 23five
The Creative Sources label
Tomasz Krakowiak on Etude Records
Louis DuFort on Empreintes DIGITALes
Evan Parker Transatlantic Art Ensemble on ECM 1873.
David Liebman / Ellery Eskelin Quartet on hatOLOGY
Mirio Cosottani and Tonino Miano on Impressus Records
Musica Elettronica Viva on New World
Tammen / Nies / de Vega on Acheulian Handaxe
Treuheit / Irmer / Wissel on KTMP
Xabier Iriondo / Gianni Mimmi on Amirani
Zilverhill on Adeptsound

WORDS

John Brackett. John Zorn Tradition and Transgression. (Indiana University Press) iupress.indiana.edu
Ian Carr. Music Outside: Contemporary Jazz in Britain. (Northway Publications) northwaybooks.com
Nicole Gingras, ed. S:ON: Le son de l’art contemporain canadien / Sound in Contemporary Canadian Art. (Éditions Artexte) artexte.ca
Danny McCarthy. LISTEN hEAR. (Farpoint Recordings) farpointrecordings.com

VISIONS OF SOUND
Édouard-Léon Scott’s phonautograms