[NewMusic] Partched

[George Cremaschi]

>In a sense, one could argue that it never was really experimental music

A few years ago, while unpacking my record collection,
I decided to rearrange them a bit. When I got to the Partch
records, I hesitated before putting them where they usually
went, after Ives, Varese, Tudor, et al. I ended up putting them
at the end of the world music section, next to the Pansori record,
and before the early folk/blues section, next to Roscoe Holcomb and
Son House. It seemed just as appropriate.


>If we're talking the '50s, I'm guessing Partch (and California) were  so 
>obscure as to not be on NYC radar at all

A bit of Googling brings this:

"And yet it was these very pieces—the collection of four works he would 
later
collectively entitle The Wayward—that brought him to the attention of the 
New York
musical world. His concert of these pieces for the League of Composers 
(April 22, 1944)
established for him a small but permanent reputation..."


And I'm still obssessing the thus far completely-fabricated-in-my-mind
Partch - Sun Ra connection: another parallel is that Sun Ra, if not quite an
instrument builder, was involved in the development and/or modification
of some early electronic keyboards, and created his own language on them.

Idea for a one-act play:
One spring weekend in 1957, during a break in the rehearsals for
his new piece at the Univ of Illinois, Partch hops a freight train up
to Chicago and heads for a gay bar where Sun Ra's band happens
to be playing. Iconoclast titans meet. Cosmic hijinks ensue. The
musical interludes are a la 'The Connection', with, of course, mash-ups
of Sun Ra and Partch music.

-George

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