From: owner-zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (Zorn List Digest) To: zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: Zorn List Digest V2 #510 Reply-To: zorn-list Sender: owner-zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk Zorn List Digest Thursday, October 22 1998 Volume 02 : Number 510 In this issue: - Hooker William Zorn at Merkin Re: jazz/fusion (was d n' b...was hip-hop) Re: jazz/fusion (was d n' b...was hip-hop) Massacre- Funny Valentine Music for Children Frith/Massacre Re: Frith/Massacre Re: Re[2]: LOLO was Re[2]: Locus Solus Re: D&B (was: Re: interesting hip-hop ???) Re: London help Fuck Thanksgiving, (was Re: London help) Re: Rhys Chatham was Re[4]: LOLO was Re[2]: Locus Solus Re: Rhys Chatham was Re[4]: LOLO was Re[2]: Locus Solus no Tzadik link on the KF web site... Samuel Delany and music ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 15:49:43 +0000 (GMT) From: Subject: Hooker William Anyone knows who is the Rudolf Steiner that William Hooker (quotes ? and) \r\nthanks in his album Mindfulness with DJ Olive and Glenn Spearman ? \r\nI have an uncle who left to America and his name was Rudolf Steiner, we lost \r\ntouch. Anyone ? \r\n \r\nThanks. Benjamin \r\n - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Oct 98 09:42:34 -0500 From: brian_olewnick@smtplink.mssm.edu Subject: Zorn at Merkin JZ's annual Radical Jewish Culture concert at Merkin Hall last night featured five of his compositions: RUGBY (the program gave a date of 1993 for this; unless there's been a change to the rules, I assume this was a misprint)--The band was Zorn, Friedlander, Jim Pugliese, Winant and Coleman, with Steve Drury conducting (negotiating?). Great fun, though I always wonder how pieces like this (and the 69 paroxysms below) work on a purely aural basis. Much of the enjoyment, I find, comes from watching the mini-coalitions form and dissolve and observing the obvious enthusiasm of the players. Whatever the case, it worked, with a natural flow I sometimes find missing in Zorn's written work like... MEMENTO MORI A string quartet (EF, with Feldman, violinist Joyce Hammann and violist Lois Martin). To me, it sounded too much like a collection of "all the effects I couldn't get into 'Forbidden Fruit'". While it didn't genre-jump, it seemed to wallow uncomfortably between a striving for cohesion and a slide-show of avant-garde string techniques. He does utilize, here and elsewhere, the persnickety habit of ending an otherwise so-so piece with 30-60 seconds of absolute gorgeousity, kinda like Ali saving all his boxing for the last 15 seconds of the round in an effort to sway the judges. MUSIC FOR CHILDREN PatRice's review of the recorded version sounds about right to me (here performed by Winant, Feldman and Drury). Winant was pretty much the featured player but, again, it was a bit of a grab bag of percussion effects (as fascinating and enjoyable as those might be) and less of a cohesive composition. ETANT DONNEES Well, if you're familiar with the recorded version, this performance was all that plus big dollops of humor. Why this piece works far more successfully for me than the previous two is hard to say. Perhaps the simple allusion to Duchamp in the subtitle allows one into a more accepting frame of mind, especially with regard to the slapstick elements: Winant and Pugliese noisily slurping bowls of water, hammering nails into a two by four, sawing apart a stool, etc. Fine, noisy fun, attested to by the grins on the performer's mugs throughout. KOL NIDRE After four works of controlled anarchy (!), Zorn once again pulls an Ali by ending with a sublime string quartet. I'm not quite sure to what extent the melodic line is the same as that used in the pre-Yom Kippur ritual (I understand there are differences between versions used by Ashkenaz and Sephardics), but it was moving, mournful, plaintive, elegiac--choose your adjective. A stunning piece. Brian Olewnick - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 09:04:04 -0500 (CDT) From: "Joseph S. Zitt" Subject: Re: jazz/fusion (was d n' b...was hip-hop) On Thu, 22 Oct 1998, Brent Burton wrote: > weather report? return to forever? fuck that crap! hancock's > _sextant_, miles davis' _on the corner_ and tony williams' lifetime > _emergency_ are the *raw* fusion. three amazing records that valued > genre-busting over proficiency. Also don't forget Ornette Coleman's harmolodic fusion on the earlier Prime Time albums, such as Body Meta and Of Human Feelings (I'd love to find a CD of that...). And, of course, the Mahavishnu Orchestra's "The Inner Mounting Flame". I've been binge-listening to Miles's live 70s stuff this week. Lots of layers in there that I hadn't noticed before, plus the cues, compositional aspects, and organization of what's going on is more evident, now that I'm listening for them... - - ---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------- |||/ Joseph Zitt ===== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \||| ||/ Maryland? = <*> SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List <*> = ecto \|| |/ http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt ====== Comma: Voices of New Music \| - - ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 00:14:10 +1000 From: "Julian" Subject: Re: jazz/fusion (was d n' b...was hip-hop) > Also don't forget Ornette Coleman's harmolodic fusion on the earlier Prime > Time albums, such as Body Meta and Of Human Feelings (I'd love to find a > CD of that...). And, of course, the Mahavishnu Orchestra's "The Inner > Mounting Flame". And Birds Of Fire! - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 10:55:20 -0400 From: Perfect Sound Forever Subject: Massacre- Funny Valentine Let me add to the chorus praising this disc. It's one of the best CD's I've heard this year- fell in love with it on first hearing it. Some of Frith's best work. Was a little skeptical not seeing Maher on board but Charles Hayward ain't a slouch by a longshot- very powerful and inventive, IMHO. Mr. Laswell does himself proud here too. An amazing power trio- reminds me of early Mahavishnu in places. I just hope that we don't have to wait as long for a follow-up. If anyone knows if this group is planning to tour, please let us all know! It should be amazing. Jason - -- Perfect Sound Forever online music magazine perfect-sound@furious.com http://www.furious.com/perfect - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 10:58:16 -0400 (EDT) From: William York Subject: Music for Children This review that patRice posted is perfectly accurate. I really really all 6 of the short songs (which sadly only total abt. 15 minutes), I kind of like the Winant/Steinberg/Abel piece, and I found the wind machine piece to be an endurance test. Considering, like he said, a lot of this does not seem to be "music for children", it is an odd combination of music, somewhat annoying in my opinion. I'll put up some comments about the Coleman, Gisburg, + Krakauer CDs when I get a chance. First impressions = all good. Also, Avant put out an album of Marie McCauliffe's sextet doing all Bacharach in the style of the song on the Great Jewish Music CD. (No I didn't buy any of these, just reviewing them). WY > > i'd recommend this cd to anyone who appreciates zorn's classical > compositions; and to those who are into "torture garden" because of > tracks 2, 4 and 5. after having listened to the entire cd only once i > can't say if i'll play this very often, but it's definitely one of those > cds you have to sit down and listen to. can't really imagine it as > background music (except for tracks 1, 6 and 8). > - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 10:59:17 -0400 From: Perfect Sound Forever Subject: Frith/Massacre Already found an answer about live dates: http://www.fredfrith.com/fredfrith/schedule.htm It'll be Frith/Hayward/Laswell with Percy Howard on vocals, billed as Meridiem. J - -- Perfect Sound Forever online music magazine perfect-sound@furious.com http://www.furious.com/perfect - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 08:14:28 -0700 From: Jeff Spirer Subject: Re: Frith/Massacre At 10:59 AM 10/22/98 -0400, Perfect Sound Forever wrote: >Already found an answer about live dates: >http://www.fredfrith.com/fredfrith/schedule.htm > >It'll be Frith/Hayward/Laswell with Percy Howard on vocals, billed as >Meridiem. > This is going to be Percy's music, not Massacre. It's really Percy's gig. See the Meridiem disc (which came out a few months ago and was recorded at the same time, along with some tracks with Shawn Lane) for what it will be like. Here's the schedule I posted earlier, although someone told me that the Seattle venue (which Frith doesn't list on his site) is spelled wrong. MERIDIEM: Percy Howard, Bill Laswell, Fred Frith, Charles Hayward San Francisco: The Great American Music Hall Wednesday, Jan 13 Seattle: Arospace Thursday, Jan 14, New York: The Bottom Line Saturday, Jan 16. Jeff Spirer B&W Photos: http://www.pomegranates.com/frame/spirer/ Color and B&W Photos: http://www.hyperreal.org/~jeffs/gallery.html Axiom/Material: http://www.hyperreal.org/axiom/ - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 09:26:32 -0700 From: "Patrice L. Roussel" Subject: Re: Re[2]: LOLO was Re[2]: Locus Solus On Thu, 22 Oct 98 08:39:30 -0500 brian_olewnick@smtplink.mssm.edu wrote: > > >Concerning David Van Tieghem, I also disagree with Brian (when he says: > >no good records after LOLO). > > > >*** - FACTOR X: Rhys Chatham (1985 - Moers Music) > >*** - ENVY: Arto Lindsay/Ambitious Lovers (1984 - Editions EG Records) > > Both fine records, but more for the principal's contributions (any fans of > Chatham's incredible 'Die Donnergotter' here? Any recs on his recent work?). I ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ You bet! I cannot forgive myself for having missed the CD pressing of that one... Nobody has a copy collecting dust? Recently? Rhys has moved to France few years ago and now he is doing some techno music. He has two recents records: *** NEON: Rhys Chatham, Martin Wheeler 1996 - NTone/Ninja Tune, ??? (??) *** - SEPTILE: Rhys Chatham, Jonathan Kane, DJ Elated System 1998 - NTone/Ninja Tune (Canada), NTONE CDS28 (CD) Also, he has been in talks with Table of the Elements to put out some of his old stuff!!! Knowing how little by him is available, needless to say how excited I am at this news. But I have no clue if a deal went through... > >*** - THESE THINGS HAPPEN: David Van Tieghem (1984 - Warner Bros. Records) > > I remember hearing this and not being impressed, but the one I have from > around then is 'Safety in Numbers' which gets way too far over towards a ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ SAFETY IN NUMBERS is a fine record, but not, IMHO, to the level of THESE THINGS HAPPEN. Patrice. - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 14:20:25 +0200 (MET DST) From: FJG_Lamerikx Subject: Re: D&B (was: Re: interesting hip-hop ???) Tim Schelfhout: > I can only second the recommendation for the Dom & roland album. Great > soundz !! Can someone reflect on them a little. Like What other releases > do they have ... How very nice to still see people being tricked by the name Dom & Roland. It's a *he*, not a *they*. Dom Angas chose the name Dom & Roland to reflect his partnership with his Roland synthesizer/drum computer. He's been active for quite a while now, and has been known to be one of the key figures in the development of tech step - together with the people at No-U-Turn. He released tracks on Moving Shadow, 31 Records, Reinforced (I believe) and probably a lot of other labels. His best, in my opinion, is the classic "Quadrant Six/Concrete Shoes" 12" he did with Optical under the monicker Dom & Optical (Moving Shadow). His album proves the be that what No-U-Turn's "Torque" promised to be but never really was. Frankco. - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 09:47:12 -0700 (PDT) From: "m. rizzi" Subject: Re: London help JonAbbey2@aol.com, demi-God and Icon sez: > >so, I'm making my first trip ever to London the first week in November, and >I'm looking for record store suggestions and concert info, if anyone out there >has any. I'll be there from the 1st through the 8th. thanks, Jon. Me too. I'm making my first trip later the same month Nov. 22-28th (fuck Thanksgiving :) Please email me any store/gig info also. much obliged, mike rizzi rizzi@netcom.com -------------------------------------- www.browbeat.com "Another nerd with a soulpatch" - -------- browbeat magazine, po box 11124, oakland, ca 94611-1124 ------- - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 09:57:24 -0700 From: Jeff Spirer Subject: Fuck Thanksgiving, (was Re: London help) At 09:47 AM 10/22/98 -0700, m. rizzi wrote: > Nov. 22-28th (fuck Thanksgiving :) I agree. We're going to Mexico (again) so that we don't have to eat turkey or see relatives. (Zero list content.) Jeff Spirer B&W Photos: http://www.pomegranates.com/frame/spirer/ Color and B&W Photos: http://www.hyperreal.org/~jeffs/gallery.html Axiom/Material: http://www.hyperreal.org/axiom/ - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Oct 98 12:38:53 -0500 From: brian_olewnick@smtplink.mssm.edu Subject: Re: Rhys Chatham was Re[4]: LOLO was Re[2]: Locus Solus Patrice wrote: >Recently? Rhys has moved to France few years ago and now he is doing some >techno music. He has two recents records: He also has a web page (don't have the URL handy, but do an Alta Vista search on his name and you'll find it) which includes some thoughtful essays. >*** NEON: Rhys Chatham, Martin Wheeler 1996 - NTone/Ninja Tune, ??? (??) >*** - SEPTILE: Rhys Chatham, Jonathan Kane, DJ Elated System 1998 - NTone/Ninja Tune (Canada), NTONE CDS28 (CD) How are these? I admit that, having read some reviews, I was a little cautious; always wary about new music types mixing it up with dance hall folk, a la Ben Neill--generally seems to end up in watered down versions of both. >Also, he has been in talks with Table of the Elements to put out some of >his old stuff!!! Knowing how little by him is available, needless to say >how excited I am at this news. But I have no clue if a deal went >through... Good news! Isn't there a piece by him involving massed guitars with "Angel" and/or "Speed of Light" in the title? This hasn't been released anywhere, has it? Brian Olewnick - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 10:23:45 -0700 From: "Patrice L. Roussel" Subject: Re: Rhys Chatham was Re[4]: LOLO was Re[2]: Locus Solus On Thu, 22 Oct 98 12:38:53 -0500 brian_olewnick@smtplink.mssm.edu wrote: > > He also has a web page (don't have the URL handy, but do an Alta Vista > search on his name and you'll find it) which includes some thoughtful > essays. http://pages.pratique.fr/~chatham/ > >*** NEON: Rhys Chatham, Martin Wheeler > 1996 - NTone/Ninja Tune, ??? (??) > >*** - SEPTILE: Rhys Chatham, Jonathan Kane, DJ Elated System > 1998 - NTone/Ninja Tune (Canada), NTONE CDS28 (CD) > > How are these? I admit that, having read some reviews, I was a little > cautious; always wary about new music types mixing it up with dance > hall folk, a la Ben Neill--generally seems to end up in watered down > versions of both. I only know SEPTILE and I am not too crazy about it... You can recognize Rhys' style but the net result, like you said, is not very convincing, landing in a kind of no-man's land (neither exciting from what angle you look at it). Not a bad record (and some might love it), but I still feel like an orphan with Rhys, and with barely only two records under his name (of his older stuff), I still feel hungry for more FACTOR X, DRASTIC CLASSICISM, etc. I have never seen NEON which seems to have disappeared very fast. And also, yes, NEW MUSIC FROM ANTARCTICA - VOLUME 1 is a fantastic record! Which also features Rhys Chatham (the piece he wrote for Karol Armitage). > >Also, he has been in talks with Table of the Elements to put out some of > >his old stuff!!! Knowing how little by him is available, needless to say > >how excited I am at this news. But I have no clue if a deal went > >through... > > Good news! Isn't there a piece by him involving massed guitars with > "Angel" and/or "Speed of Light" in the title? This hasn't been > released anywhere, has it? Sure, but like you, I forgot the exact title (something like "100 Angels go faster than speed of Light", for 100 electric guitars). An excerpt from it is on the New Tone compilation on American Music. Don't have the detailed description and will check it. Patrice. - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 12:43:06 -0700 From: "Patrice L. Roussel" Subject: no Tzadik link on the KF web site... It looks like the KF has removed its link to the Tzadik site... Patrice. - - ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 02:56:52 GMT From: al.t@mtnhdw.com (Al T) Subject: Samuel Delany and music I've been reading _Silent Interviews_ by Samuel Delaney for the last few months off and on. It's a very interesting critical perspective on critical perspectives, btw. Threads on SF/Delaney, the point of 'experimental' music, and the beginnings of the last pomo thread hit exactly as I was reading the following. The syncronicity was too much to pass up so I marked it and finally had time to type it in. Pardon the length. I've no idea, btw, what he's talking about. Begin quotation: "...here might be a good place to begin a rather sweeping conclusion to all this... In high school, I had a friend who was a composer. For a time we were also part of a folk-signing quartet together. Somewhere during the autumn of 1961, when he was in his second year of college and I had dropped out, gotten married, and was writing my first SF novel, he copleted an interesting musical composition that was to be performed at a concert of new music at Hunter College. It was complex, atonal, and at some of the rehersals I helped out as a page-turner. At any point in the piece, the dozen-odd instruments would be playing all 12 notes of the scale--save one. Through the course of the composition, the missing note moved up and down through the cacophonous sonorites, so theat the "melodic line," if you call it that, was a silence that progressed, as a sort of absent melody, through it all. During rehersals, while I sat by the metal music stand, waiting to turn over the page for the clarinetist, something became clear. When the piece, or more usually, a stretch of it, was performed very, very well by all the players, with the dynamics and intonations truly under control and great attention fixed to its overall cohesion, then the travelling silence became clearly audible and its effect, striking, disturbing, even moving. If, however, one or two of the players lost their concentration, of there was the least little dynamic wandering, or there was any noise at all in the rehersal room, or indeed, if the attention of the listener strayed a moment, then the whole thing dissolved into acoustic mush. I couldn't be at the concert, but some time later my friend told me that, no, he didn't feel it had gone very well. As far as he could tell, simply the change in the sonority of the auditorium that occurred when it was filled with people had been enough to muddy the subtle musical experience he contrived. Possibly because I wasn't at the performance, I had an interesting absence to think about, and my friend's piece became a kind of model for me of the situation of the serious writer--if not the artist in general. I thought about it alot then, and I've thought about it alot since. It doesn't seem to matter whether the writer is a "hard-hitting journalist" of the farthest out constructor of experimental poems. All the writer's noise is finally an attempt to shape a silence in which something can go on. Call it the silence of interpretation, if you will; but even that's too restrictive. The silence of response is probably better--if not just silence itself. The writer tries to shape it carefully, conscientiously; but both forming and hearing it today can be equally hard. end quotation. Bonus questions: Was his friend's experimental piece successful music or not? Would it have been successful if it had been performed impeccably, in the right performance space, but everyone's attention wandered? Could it be considered a success even though hall "broke" the piece, simply because it gave one guy a focus for decades of productive thought and, most likely, altered what he would attempt to do with his own not insignificant work. - - ------------------------------ End of Zorn List Digest V2 #510 ******************************* To unsubscribe from zorn-list-digest, send an email to "majordomo@lists.xmission.com" with "unsubscribe zorn-list-digest" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message. 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