Saturday, July 08, 2017

All contributors to SOURCE: Music of the Avant Garde Magazine by gender



Eleven issues of SOURCE: Music of the Avant Garde magazine were published from 1967 - 1973 at the University of California Davis. This is a list of all contributors by gender. As far as I have been able to discern, only one person of color was featured: Anthony Braxton. I would be grateful to any readers willing to offer comments/corrections!


WOMEN (12)

Kira Gale
Allison Knowles (not featured or mentioned in table of contents, but included in an article)
Annea Lockwood
Mary Lucier (photography)
Eva Lurati
Dora Maurer
Maria Michalowska
Charlotte Moorman (not featured or mentioned in table of contents, but included in an article)
Pauline Oliveros
Jocy de Oliviera
Marilyn Wood
Zorka Saglova



MEN (107)

Dietrich Albrecht
Charles Amirkhanian
Eric Anderson
Robert Ashley
Larry Austin
David Behrman
Mario Bertoncini
Joseph Beuys
Boudewijn Buckinx
Anthony Braxton
Eugen Brikcius
Jacques Brodier
Earle Brown
Allan Bryant
Harold Budd
John Cage
Cornelius Cardew
Barney Childs
Giuseppe Chiari
Christo
Phillip Corner
Lowell Cross
Alvin Curran
John Dinwiddie
Peter Donath
Manford Eaton
Robert Erickson
Morton Feldman
Robert Filliou
FLUXUS (women were involved in the movement, including Allison Knowles, mentioned above)
Ken Friedman
Lukas Foss
Peter Garland
Gentle Fire
Tony Gnazzo
Victor Grauer
Gyula Gulyas
Joel Gutsche
Olaf Hanel
Jon Hassell
Sven Hansell
Lejaren Hiller
Dick Higgins
Lejaren Hiller
Stu Horn
Nelson Howe
Jerry Hunt
Toshi Ichiyanagi
Image Bank
Carson Jeffries
Ben Johnston
Bengt Emil Johnson
Zdzislaw Jurkiewicz
Allan Kaprow
Udo Kasemets
Per Kierkeby
Paul Klerr
Milan Knizak
Ed Kobrin
Jaroslaw Kozlowski
Alcides Lanza
Daniel Lentz
Arrigo Lora-Totino
Alvin Lucier
Stanley Lunetta
Janos Major
Tom Marioni
Ken Maue
Stanley March 3
Stuart Marshall
Richard Martin
Harvey Matusow
John Mizelle
Robert Moran
Gordon Mumma
Keith Muscutt
Naked Software
Max Newhaus
The New Percussion Quartet
Nam June Paik
Harry Partch
Portsmouth Sinfonia (in photograph 2 women depicted out of 13 members)
Scratch Orchestra
David Reck
Steve Reich
Jock Reynolds
Roger Reynolds
John Paul Rhinehart
Mark Riener
David Rosenboom
Frederic Rzewski
R. Murray Schafer
Gerald Shapiro
Nicholas Slonimsky
Barry Spinello
Andrew Stiller
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Allen Strange
Alvin Sumsion
Endre Tot
David Tudor
Bertran Turetzky
Jiri Valoch
Don Walker
Christian Wolff
Arthur Woodbury
Wolff Vostell


Saturday, June 17, 2017

"Possibility of Action: The Life of the Score" nine years hence

By chance I recently unearthed materials from Possibility of Action: The Life of the Score, a wonderful exhibition curated by Barbara Held that opened 9 years ago today at MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona.

A dress made of the striped edition of Sonic Fabric (woven from cassette tape recorded with a collage of looped and layered sounds) was included. Each of the colors in the pattern represents one of the 12 tones in the Western scale, with two additional colors representing rests (silence). 
Ensemble created for Experimental Musical Instrument Day at Lincoln Center, 2005

The pattern in the fabric was composed visually; I didn't know what it would sound like until it was notated, which happened later. I didn't think of using this method of composition again until recently...and even then, I didn't initially connect it to the sonic fabric stripe pattern...

In 2015 the Tonal Relativity project began to take shape...this ongoing series of works started out as a way of illustrating modes and intervals in a 12-tone musical system using a language of shape and color. The first set of sketches – scrawled in pencil on a 3x5 card – were created for my own use, as a reference tool that could be drawn upon in improvisational settings. A logical next step was to experiment with composition using the set of 12 colors. Any color can be used to represent any tone, with all other colors/tones in the spectrum being relative.

Thursday, May 18, 2017

Performance of Wayne National Forest by Brian Harnetty




Early this year I downloaded Notes from Sub-Underground, a collection of music, sound, and assorted aural ephemera contributed by 50+ artists and compiled by Object Collection, with all proceeds to benefit ACLU Nationwide.

One of the tracks on the album – Wayne National Forest by Brian Harnetty – particularly struck me. In doing a bit of research on the composer, I came upon a series of articles at NewMusicBox about Brian's engagement with the coal mining and fracking industries in Ohio.

I learned that Wayne National Forest is under threat, and that this piece had been inspired by the struggle to preserve it.

I hoped there might be a way that this spare, sublime work could be included in a concert program I was developing to augment Imagining Sound, an exhibition of my 2- and 3D illustrations of tonal relationships at Central Features Contemporary Art. I wrote to Brian to inquire about the performance possibilities – he very generously provided us with the score and encouraged us to arrange it according to the instrumentation we would have available.


Wayne National Forest was truly a joy to play. Thanks so much to musicians Julian Mock, Elizabeth McNutt, and the Death Convention Singers, and thanks to Brian Harnetty for composing this moving work, and for the opportunity to perform it.

Complete concert program here.

Friday, April 14, 2017

Tonal Relativity Games & Experiments at UNM ARTS Lab on April 29




Tonoscore 1: Season, a work for 3 or more players by Alyce Santoro



On April 29, 2017 at 7pm at UNM ARTS Lab, conceptual/sound artist Alyce Santoro, guitarist/composer Julian Mock, flutist Elizabeth McNutt, and members of the Albuquerque-based Death Convention Singers collective will present the auditory component of Imagining Sound, Santoro's current exhibition of painting and sculpture at Central Features Contemporary Art

The 2- and 3D pieces in the exhibition are part of the Tonal Relativity project, an approach to the visualization of intervals and modes in a 12-tone musical system. The concert program sonifies these concepts,  featuring works of sound and music that leave open space for listening, improvisation, and chance operations.

Aleators, colorized dice to illustrate musical intervals and facilitate chance operations. Alyce Santoro, 2017.


PROGRAM: 

Worldwide Tuning Meditation by Pauline Oliveros1960 #7 by LaMonte Young
Wayne National Forest by Brian Harnetty
Game by Mario Lavista
The premier of Tonoscore 1: Season, a visual score by Alyce Santoro
Squaring the Circle of Fifths by Julian Mock
& several new frameworks for improvisation by Prepared Ear.


PERFORMERS:

Alyce Santoro & Elizabeth McNutt – flute
Julian Mock – guitar

Death Convention Singers:
Marisa Demarco – voice, electronics
Clifford Grindstaff – bass guitar, bass clarinet
Drake Hardin – clarinet
Rosie Hutchinson – violin
Ariel Muniz – cello
Alan Zimmerman – pitched percussion
 
The concert is free and open to the public.

Sunday, March 05, 2017

Imagining Sound at Central Features in Albuquerque, NM

Modes of the Major Scale, acrylic on canvas, 24" x 28", 2017

Edgard Varèse suggested that "music is organized sound". Physics suggests that matter is also organized sound.

The Tonal Relativity Series offers a way of organizing sound visually...wavelengths of light evoke wavelengths of sound in the mind's ear. 

The TRS is an "open work" (see Umberto Eco) – musicians and non-musicians alike are invited to experiment with the concept. The immaterial part of the project is freely available here.

Material and quasi-material parts of the project (in the form of works on canvas, objects, and sound) will be presented at the end of this month through the end of April in Albuquerque, NM. 

"Imagining Sound" opens at Central Features Contemporary Art on March 24 from 6 - 8pm. 

I'll be giving an talk on the project at ARTS Lab New Mexico at 5:30pm on on March 22

Then, on the evening of April 29 (the exhibition's closing day), Prepared Ear (composer/guitarist Julian Mock and I) will present a concert at UNM ARTS Lab in collaboration with members of the Albuquerque-based Death Convention Singers and University of North Texas flute professor-pioneer/Sounds Modern co-founder Elizabeth McNutt. The program will feature works by Pauline Oliveros, LaMonte Young, Mario Lavista, and Brian Harnetty, as well as several frameworks for improvisation developed by us especially for the Tonal Relativity project. We are honored to have the opportunity to present this particular combination of works with this phenomenal group of practitioners at this particular moment.