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Issue 99 winter 2007Musicworks Issue 99 - WINTER 2007

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 FEATURE ARTICLES

Barnyard Drama’s Chansons de Métissage
By Ellen Waterman

Article Summary: Barnyard Drama is a Canadian improvising group that draws on an exceptionally wide range of influences to create chansons de métissage (songs of hybridity). Waterman interviewed Christine Duncan (voice), Jean Martin (drums/turntables), Bernard Falaise (guitar), and Justin Haynes (guitar) for her research project on experimental music performance in Canada. Here she provides an introduction to Barnyard Drama—a weaving together of four narratives under the themes of métissage, nostalgia, and creative improvisation—illustrated by a discussion of songs from their CDs I’m a Navvy and Memories and a List of Things to Do. Waterman’s research Web site is < www.experimentalperformance.ca >.
 

Natasha Barrett: The Duality of the Dramatic and the Abstract
By Julian Cowley

Article Summary: The music of Natasha Barrett is both abstract and suggestive, sonic and visual. Her acousmatic compositions explore the theatrical potential of this frequently narrative-free music. Barrett’s initial exposure to the Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre profoundly influenced her understanding of the vocabulary and intentions of acousmatic music. Her technique is playful, exploring the potential of sounds as isolated and valuable sonic elements, and equally as extremely suggestive tools for guiding the narrative of a piece. Her process is disciplined, frequently training herself in new tools and technologies, and not adopting any method or technique until her research has exhausted all possibilities. Barrett’s experiments in combining electroacoustic music with theatre have led to a focus on the spatialization of sound as an extremely effective narrative and dramatic tool.

Paul Dutton: Towards the Ineffable
By Jay Somerset

Article Summary: I first heard Paul Dutton’s work while dogsitting for the widow of the late Canadian poet bpNichol. Browsing bp’s library, I came across Brian Nash’s documentary bp: Pushing the Boundaries. I put the tape in the VCR and was thrown into the world of bpNichol, which included a few minutes of performance by the Four Horsemen, the poetry performance and sound-poetry group Nichol formed in the ’70s and ’80s with Rafael Barreto-Rivera, Dutton, and Steve McCaffery. I’d never heard such strange and wonderful sounds, and to have my introduction while sitting in bp’s living room was, well, surreal. Four years later, I jumped at the chance to interview former Horseman Paul Dutton. I had read his articles in Musicworks and a few of his books of poetry, but I was relatively new to his sound recordings. After immersing myself in all things Dutton for a few months, I met with him in his living room to discuss sound, poetry, literature, music, and improvisation. With humour and authority, Paul enlightened me about the creative process and what it means to be an artist.

Anthony Braxton: Chasing the Ghost Trance
By Stuart Broomer

Article Summary: In conversation with Stuart Broomer, American composer and multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton discusses the evolution of his series of numbered compositions that he calls ghost trance music. Beginning with his original inspiration for the series in his studies of the native American ghost dance ceremonies, Braxton discusses the differences in usage and aims between that music and his own, talks about the influences on him of Xenakis and Wagner, and emphasizes the importance of sung melody in his current compositional practice. Braxton also discusses the importance of choice in his music and the ways in which different performers develop and contribute materials in a performance.

Andrés Posada: Eminent Colombian composer
By alcides lanza

Article Summary:  Andrés Posada is a composer based in Medellín, Colombia. He studies composition in the United States, and now teaches at the Music Department of the Universidad EAFIT in Medellín. In this interview with Montreal composer alcides lanza, Posada discusses his intuitive musical process and the influence of visual arts on his music. His composition Figuras Líticas [“lithic figures”], for five percussionists, was commissioned by Hugo Zapata, a sculptor from Medellín, and is based on the profile of a stone wall built by Zapata. Posada and Lanza also discuss cultural conditions for composers in Colombia, and the role of youth orchestras in improving social conditions.

COMMENTARY

The Ceilidh and the Ecology of Avant-garde Music
By Donal McGraith

Article Summary: In his third Commentary column, a companion to his first two, which appeared in Musicworks 95 and 96, Donal McGraith contrasts the expansion of the media spectacle with the older, more intimate and participatory performance event, the ceilidh (kay-lee). In earlier times, meagre means forced artists and citizens to create for each other, fostering a sense of inclusion and community. The creation of recordings, as well as cheap travel, has potentially been divisive in the forming of supportive musical scenes, as well as being environmentally damaging. This works in contrast to the perceived benefits of these advancements: expanding a music’s audience beyond its physical borders. McGraith muses on a return to the ceilidh and community-focused music-making as a means of doing our part to help the environment and reorient a fractured musical community.

James Tenney and the Theory of Everything
By Gary Barwin

Article Summary:  Throughout history, music has embodied contemporary ideas about the universe. Both science and religion have looked to music to represent their ideas. James Tenney’s essay, “John Cage and the Theory of Harmony,” can be seen to continue this tradition of considering music as a metaphor for current ideas about the nature of space-time. Tenney’s model of a multidimensional harmonic sound-space challenges us to imagine the multidimensional universe of modern science.

SONIC GEOGRAPHY

Ken Waxman in Genoa
 

CD CONTENTS

Missing CD Track
Barnyard Drama’s Buttr’y Burning (2006) 5:21 (SOCAN)

Download MP3:

  Barnyard Drama - Buttry Burning.mp3

Paul Dutton
1 | Buzz (2007) 2:55
2 | Antilyric M2 (2007) 0:46 (SOCAN)

Missing liner note:
About three or four years ago I took to incorporating into my literary readings brief sound improvisations derived from some of the aesthetic and prosodic sensibilities governing conventional lyric poetry. The nonverbal character of these soundworks is antithetical to lyric poetry, and hence the series title, Antilyrics. The number in the title is an immaterial, subjective identifier.
• Il y a trois ou quatre ans, j’ai commencé à insérer dans mes lectures littéraires de brèves improvisations sonores dérivées de certains aspects esthétiques et prosodiques régissant la poésie lyrique traditionnelle. Le caractère non verbal de ces pièces sonores est en quelque sorte l’antithèse de la poésie lyrique, d’où le titre Antilyrics. Le numéro qui figure dans le titre n’a d’autre signification que celle d’identifier la pièce.

- Paul Dutton

3 | Snare, Kick, Rack, and Floor (ca. 1997, 2007) 3:10
4 | Antilyric M3 (2007) 1:30
5 | Imp’s Rove 93 (2007) 5:45
6 | Antilyric M6 (2007) 2:11

Anthony Braxton
7 | Composition 352 – Part 1 (2007) 17:21

Barnyard Drama
8 | It’s Raining to Drink Standing (2006) 10:13

Andrés Posada
9 | Figuras Líticas (2001) 7:40

Natasha Barrett
10 | Trade Winds (excerpt / extrait) (2006) 13:02
11 | Microclimate III: Glacial Loop (2007) 4:37

Missing liner note:
Microclimate III: Glacial Loop is one of four small compositions designed to evoke the total-senses experience of various locations in Western Norway during April, 2007. On my first attempt to record sound at the foot of the glacier I arrived when the wind was so strong that for brief milliseconds I could open my eyes just enough to see a blue ice monolith through the turmoil. On my second attempt some days later, the scene was completely different. Although grey and drizzling, there was not a breath of wind. This time the forms in the ice were revealed: an enormous wall of blue twists and gashes suspended vertically an unknown distance away across a lake. Instinctively I jumped into the small rowboat and, with ceremony, gently descended two hydrophones into the water.
• Microclimate III: Glacial Loop fait partie d’une série de quatre petites pièces conçues pour évoquer l’expérience sensorielle que j’ai pu vivre en divers endroits de l’ouest de la Norvège, en avril 2007. Lors de mon premier essai pour réaliser des enregistrements au pied du glacier, le vent soufflait avec une telle puissance que j’arrivais à peine à ouvrir mes yeux quelques millisecondes à la fois pour entrevoir un monolithe de glace bleu. Lors de ma deuxième tentative quelques jours plus tard, la scène était complètement différente. Le temps était gris et pluvieux, mais il n’y avait pas un souffle de vent. Cette fois, les formes se révélaient dans la glace : une énorme paroi de vrilles et de crevasses bleues, suspendue à la verticale à une distance indéterminée à l’autre extrémité d’un lac. Je suis montée à bord d’une chaloupe et j’ai ensuite descendu doucement deux hydrophones sous l’eau  

Ken Gregory
12 | Kite Song 1 (2007) 4:08  

REVIEWS

Events
Stuart Broomer on Listening Awry in Hamilton
Taylor Moran on Mutek in Montreal
Tilman Lewis on the Cool Drummings International Percussion Festival in Toronto
Stuart Broomer on the Festival International Musique Actuelle Victoriaville in Victoriaville, QC
Christopher Reiche on the Voice++ Festival in Victoria, BC
Megan-Fay Rothschild on The Open Ears Festival in Kitchener, ON

Recordings
Battles on Warp
Carlos Bechegas & Barry Guy on Forward
Alessandro Bosetti on Rossbin
Jérome Bourdellon and Thomas Buckner on Mutable
Expanded Botancis on Ninth World Music
Clint Hutzulak on Mutasis
Lionel Marchetti on Cesar
The David Murray Trio on Hatology
Torden Kvartetten on Ninth World Music
Marcus Schmickler on A-Musik

Words
Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter. Spaces Speak—Are You Listening? (MIT Press)
Andy Hamilton. Lee Konitz, Conversations on the Improviser's Art (University of Michigan Press)
Eunmi Shim. Lennie Tristano: His Life in Music (University of Michigan Press)


VISIONS OF SOUND
Aeolian Kite Instrument by Ken Gregory