[NewMusic] Fat New Explosion

[Matthew Goodheart]

Very cool. In trade, here's one from Pauline Oliveros' Software for  
People. She says Yes, it was a real dream:


Brahms’ Y’all
I dreamed:  A Brahms’ symphony was to be played. Someone has  
interpolated a jazz section.  The orchestra plays.  The jazz section is  
quite smooth.  As I suspected, the orchestra starts to break down at  
the transition back to Brahms. The horn player completely muffs his  
entrance.  Only miserable puffs of air come out.  The conductor keeps  
flailing away but the string players become increasingly confused and  
ragged.  The conductor finally agrees to stop and begin the transition  
again.  I see the horn player putting his horn away.  I tell him to go  
back and try again. He rejoins the orchestra.  This time the solo comes  
through clearly.  Then the horn player breaks briefly into speech about  
his Southern United States background.  He continues playing and the  
solo has a decided southern inflection.



On Mar 16, 2007, at 7:44 PM, Chris Broderick wrote:

> I stand well corrected.  Thanks for that info.
>
> In recompense, here's a short story by the late great
> Donald Barthelme that seems somehow apropos.
>
> http://sarahdeming.typepad.com/spiralstaircase/2007/03/ 
> the_king_of_jaz.html
>
> -Chris
>
>
> --- Matthew Goodheart <matthew at matthewgoodheart.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On Mar 15, 2007, at 5:49 PM, Chris Broderick wrote:
>>
>>> I'd say that Cecil is an iconoclast, in that his
>> music was (and is)
>>> percieved by some as an attack on jazz traditions.
>> But I imagine he'd
>>> be irritated to be thought of as such, and hardly
>> thinks of his music
>>> as attacking the settled beliefs of other
>> musicians, institutions,
>>> etc.  He's less interested in tearing down
>> institutions than he is in
>>> approaching music-making in his own way.  I doubt
>> he's much interested
>>> in shocking the prudes or raising the ire of
>> critics.
>>
>> I doubt this very much. Sorry for the length here,
>> but. . .
>>
>> During a panel discussion in 1966 Cecil asked for:
>>
>>   “a boycott  by Negro musicians of all jazz clubs
>> in the United States.
>>   I also propose that there should be a boycott by
>> Negro jazz musicians
>> of all record companies . . . all trade papers
>> dealing with music . . .
>> and that all Negro musicians resign from every
>> federated union in this
>> county. Let’s take away the music from the people
>> who control it.”
>>
>> In the Unit Structure's liner notes he wrote:
>>
>> "Time seen not as beats to be measured after
>> academy’s podium angle.
>> The classic order, stone churches with pillars
>> poised, daggers ripping
>> skies, castrati robed in fever pitch, stuff the
>> stale sacrament,
>> bloodless meat, for the fastidious eye; ‘offering’
>> sought the
>> righteous; only found sterility in squares/never to
>> curl limbs in
>> reaction to soundless bottoms."
>>
>> In article in the Village Voice in 1963 he wrote:
>>
>> "Crtitics are sustained by our vitality. From afar,
>> the uninformed egos
>> ever growing arbitrarily attempt to give absolutes."
>>
>> The comments I heard from him during rehearsals in
>> the mid-90's were
>> right in line with these notions.
>>
>>  From the way I understand it, Taylor sees
>> institutions as the ones who
>> are attacking jazz tradition by destroying the
>> creative forces that
>> jazz represents: he is the one salvaging
>> it/embracing it. He has said
>> that “The greatness of jazz occurs because it
>> includes all the mores
>> and folkways of Negroes during the last fifty
>> years.” The way I
>> understand it, Cecil's "music" carries within it a
>> rather radical (for
>> the time) unification of history, individuality,
>> spirituality, racial
>> awareness, and cultural revolution. He is, in fact,
>> extremely
>> interested in tearing down traditional conceptions
>> of music, technical
>> practices, institutional authority,
>> political-economic systems, even
>> overturning the very language with which one talks
>> about these things.
>> It is deeply embedded in a philosophy that
>> institutions and the "status
>> quo" are corrupted things, and his practices
>> represent a return to the
>> deepest foundations of music; as Archie Shepp called
>> his work, a
>> "natural music." Here's a final quote from an
>> interview with Len Lyons
>> in the early 80's:
>>
>> "I'm interested in the cultural importance of the
>> life of the music.
>> The instrument a man uses is only a tool with which
>> he makes his
>> comment on the structure of the music. That's why
>> the evaluation of
>> what a cat says about how he plays music is not too
>> far from the
>> noninteresting things he does when he is playing.
>> That person wouldn't
>> have too profound an understanding of what has
>> happened in the music
>> and the culture. We have to define the procedures
>> and examine the
>> aesthetics that have shaped the history of the
>> music."
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Bay Area New Music Discussion Group
>> NewMusic at music.mills.edu
>> http://music.mills.edu/mailman/listinfo/newmusic
>>
>
>
>
>
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