[NewMusic] Marco Eneidi's Animal Farm

[Matthew Goodheart]

> George said:

> I go back, along with Spirit, Alex Weiss, Goodheart etc,
> to the beginning - the Marco Eneidi / Glenn Spearman Creative
> Music Orchestra, which, with no disrespect meant to anyone
> who came later, blew away every subsequent orchestra, stars
> or no stars. Two big reasons: rehearsal and Glenn Spearman.
> . . .We all knew the music, and we all knew what to do.
> Marco's music has nothing to do with efficiency, and
> everything to do with understanding the system.
> Which takes time.

I would agree there was something exceptional about that time.  Not 
only did the big band rehearse, but that music was the center of what 
many of us were reaching toward. I had been working closely with Glenn 
and his system for a few years, and most hours of my practice and 
composing time was spent working in that form, and trying to understand 
it, push myself deeper into it. There was a personal investment that 
ran much deeper than just wanting to make "good music": I actually 
BELIEVED in the music, that it was doing something important in the 
world. There was a single-mindedness to it: that music was about THAT 
music, and nothing else. Not that we hadn't heard Cage or Xenakis or 
etc. etc, but that music was only consumed by what we were doing, and 
Glenn at least didn't have any pretensions about referencing anything 
else. It wasn't about "expanding the form" or even "digging new 
ground:" it wasn't about "newness," it was about Itself; chaotic, 
passionate, ferociously sincere,  consuming all that had led to it, 
cannibalistic; it was transcendent because we knew it to be 
transcendent; It was the end of music.

Man, there's nothing so great as drinking the kool-aid.