Category: Articles

Greg Sandow

Not long ago I heard the Cleveland Orchestra play a Harrison Birtwistle piece in Carnegie Hall. This was a New York premiere, with an enticing title, The Shadow of Night, and I didn’t care for it, which maybe doesn’t matter—in searching for Birtwistle on the Web, I found some short pieces on the Boosey & Hawkes Web site, and found them much more involving. Maybe if I heard The Shadow of Night again, I’d like it more (and maybe, if I studied them more, I’d like whatever other Birtwistle works I’ve heard).

For the record, I found it melodically and harmonically undistinguished, and I suppose that by talking about melodic in a post-Boulez atonal work I’m treading on forbidden ground, because we’re not supposed to judge modernist composers by their melodies. Do I think Birtwistle is Irving Berlin or Offenbach? But even modernist music often has, at the very least, some kind of linear dimension—notes arranged in, God help us, the kind of single lines that, in simpler (or less intellectualized) music, we call melodies. And some modernist composers have wonderful melodies (or melodic lines, or linear passages, take your choice). Start with Schoenberg, whose linear stuff is very often memorable (think of the opening tune of the Piano Concerto), or almost any bar of the Fourth Quartet. Or, if you’re lucky to encounter a rare good performance, almost any bar of the Woodwind Quintet. (The best performance I’ve ever heard is by the Houston Symphony Chamber players, coached—I’m not sure this is credited on the CD, but he told me he did it—by Christoph Eschenbach. It’s on a Koch Classics CD called Music of Webern, Berg, and Schoenberg, which you can buy online, track by track, as downloadable MP3 files, from Emusic.com.)

Berg and Webern have written arresting melodies as well, and so have Boulez and Berio. Boulez and Berio, in fact, almost always grab me, far more than Birtwistle ever does—but let it go. Suppose I’m wrong about The Shadow of Night. Suppose that if I heard it seven times, as someone I know in the Cleveland Orchestra’s management told me he has, I’d like it a lot. Something else would still be true—many people would praise the piece even if it wasn’t very good. Complex atonal music still has enormous prestige, and composers like Carter and Birtwistle can, in some peoples’ eyes, do no wrong. One outspoken critic at the Carnegie performance (not someone from New York) said, with what sounded like a mix of amusement and frustration, that many of his (and my) colleagues wouldn’t dare to give a piece like this a bad review. I think that’s true. Faced with a complicated atonal piece, critics may police their personal reactions. “I’m not sure I like it,” a critic might think, “but do I have enough authority to say so? Everybody else says this piece is so important.”

This, I’ll say again, is a problem whether or not this Birtwistle piece is any good. (Or, to put it differently, whether or not I should trust my own reactions.) So let me suggest two down-home truths: a lot of sober nonsense gets written about complex atonal works, and critics often overpraise them. As evidence of my first point, I’d cite Carnegie Hall’s program notes for The Shadow of Night, which could easily intimidate people who weren’t sure they liked the piece. These notes, in fact, were a double-barreled threat: not only did we get the usual disquisition about the composer and the music, but inserted in the program book was a separate essay by a British cultural historian, tracing connections between Birtwistle and two artists the composer admires, Albrecht Dürer and John Dowland.

Another Birtwistle piece is named after a Dürer engraving, Melencolia I, and this British writer tells us—after much talk about Günter Grass, Jean-Paul Sartre, and German art historians—that “Dürer’s image is…reflected in the orchestration of [Birtwistle’s] composition: an engraving must evoke its world entirely in black and white, and Birtwistle suggests a comparably stark opposition with his use of clarinet and strings.” Which isn’t what I’d call a subtle point; almost any composer (Ned Rorem, John Williams, me) might do the same thing, without anyone bringing in big guns of culture to explain what a masterstroke it is.

Curiously, the notes misspell Günter Grass‘s name as “Günther.” But that’s nothing compared to what happens when poor old Dowland heaves into view. “Like Dowland’s melancholy songs,” our essayist writes, The Shadow of Night “is monodic: a nocturne in which variety is used primarily to sustain a progression that is itself not various.” But “monody” is not at all correct as a label for either Birtwistle or Dowland. Monodies are pieces with one predominant melodic line, especially 17th-century Italian songs for voice and very basic continuo accompaniment. Dowland’s songs, however, are contrapuntal, even if he wrote them for solo voice and lute accompaniment; the lute plays an elaborate (and fully written-out) tapestry of many voices.

Birtwistle’s music, of course, is even more complex. The Shadow of Night is full of solo woodwind melodies (some fetchingly scored for solo piccolo), but—to jump ahead and quote the main program note—these are “set against polyphonic orchestral textures of various kinds: intricate polyrhythms in the strings…an entire web of linear counter-melodies in the harps, celesta, vibraphone, and glockenspiel…”This isn’t monody. Our essayist, or so it seems, doesn’t know music we
ll enough to use the term correctly.

The main program note falls into what I’d call the analytic fallacy—the mistake of thinking (or implying) that analytic details somehow prove a work is serious, or even profound. In this case, we have those polyphonic orchestral textures, set forth at greater length than I’d care to quote, finishing with this gem: “Yet…it is less important to try to trace the linear unfolding of the events…than it is to realize that all these events, whether successive or simultaneous, are manifestations of potentialities inherent in the musical material.” Well, that’s also true of the great old Fifties doo-wop gem “Earth Angel,” by The Penguins, where the linear unfolding of stuff is routine—the song, like most doo-wop ballads, follows the old pop standard form: first eight, second eight, bridge, last eight—but the manifestations of potentialities are pretty fabulous. The brief instrumental introduction traces a descending fourth, moving down by thirds (from A flat to F to D flat, then back up to E flat). Then the backup voices outline an upward fourth, with a melodic line whose main surface detail is thirds. Thirds and fourths collaborate in everything that happens in the song, even the lead singer’s vocal ornaments. (If I wrote like the program annotator, I’d say, about the thirds and fourths, that their potentialities repeatedly are manifested.) Does this make the Penguins as great as Birtwistle? (God, I hope so.)

There’s more, but I’ll let it go, and move on to overpraising critics. A while ago, to test my suspicions, I looked up some of Andrew Porter‘s reviews of Elliott Carter. Here’s some of what I found, from Porter’s first collection of his New Yorker pieces, Music of Three Seasons: 1974-1977:

Carter’s new Brass Quintet…is sixteen minutes of lively incident ordered into a shapely form. The score appears to spring from fruitful interaction between what brass instruments naturally do best—soft, swelling harmonies in chords long sustained, and, on the other hand, incisive fanfare patterns—and the composer’s own more “abstract” concerns with multilayered music…The Quintet is a major addition to the brass chamber literature.

*

Elliott Carter’s latest composition, a Duo for Violin and Piano…lasts a little under twenty minutes and is written as a single, unbroken span of music…A note played on the violin is a living thing, and dependent for each moment of its life on the muscles of the player…[b]ut the note from a piano string, once struck, can only die away into silence or by cut short by the fall of the damper…One of the things that makes Carter’s music substantial and, even at its most intricate, accessible is its foundation on…simple musical “truths,” on obvious, fundamental taken-for-granted things that he has not taken for granted but considered anew with his alert, questioning musical intelligence.

*

The performers were superb, the listeners attentive and appreciative, and the compositions [three Carter works] among the most cogent of our time.

*

When an important composer who for years has worked only with “abstract” imagery of instrumental music returns to words, the result is likely to be arresting [the work reviewed here is Carter’s song cycle for voice and instruments, A Mirror in Which to Dwell]…”Sandpiper” is the most picturesque of the songs…Carter lets the lines pass, so to speak, and builds the song on the double imagery of the quick, finical bird, intent on the observation of what lies between his toes, and the motion of the huge slow sea…Carter’s favorite care for investigating the results of two kinds of musical gait, simultaneous but not synchronous, illumines the poem…”O Breath,” the final song, is marked tranquillo…The effect is as of intense, troubled contemplation, with observant eyes and a quivering heart, of a sleeping and beloved form…The work lasts about twenty minutes, and I am eager to hear it again.

*

We can praise A Symphony of Three Orchestras for its visionary aspiration. We can praise it for its refined, very delicate, and subtle workmanship…On the simplest, but not least important level, we can praise the expressive quality of the melodies and of the instrumental colors… The symphony is of all Carter’s scores the richest in sound. But not aspiration, or good construction, or vivid orchestration is in itself enough to produce a composition so moving and memorable as this. All three combine.

Now, I’m not saying that Andrew is a bad critic. He loves music with all his heart, and describes it vividly; there’s something touching in his evocations of these works, especially when you read more than the comparatively blank excerpts I’ve quoted here. He’s honest, full of feeling, and sincere.

Nor am I saying that the music isn’t good. But there’s something missing in Andrew’s praise, and that’s some sense of how the works stack up against each other. Very rarely, and only for the briefest moment, he’ll make evaluations based on standards external to the piece he’s talking about. Thus, A Symphony of Three Orchestras is “of all Carter’s scores the richest in sound,” and the ending of one of the songs in A Mirror in Which to Dwell might not “fully [reflect] what happens in the poem” (by Elizabeth Bishop) that it sets to music. But these are isolated instances. My short excerpts don’t convey the charm of Andrew’s writing, but they catch its tone and content. The Symphony may have the richest sound of any Carter work, but that doesn’t make it better; the song may briefly disappoint, but the cycle as a whole is unaffected. All Carter works come off as equal masterpieces, something that—even if Carter really is the great composer Andrew passionately thinks he is—simply isn’t possible. It’s not true of Beethoven, or Stravinsky, or even Webern, who wrote so very little, taking all the time he needed with each tiny wonder he composed. Human beings have peaks and valleys. Carter is a human being. Some of his pieces surely shine above the others, as Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony shines above his fourth (no matter how much we enjoy the fourth). But you’d never guess this from Andrew’s praise, a sure sign, I think, that he’s bedazzled—and that the great prestige of complex atonal scores gets in our way when we try to think about them.

Dean Suzuki Photo by Ryan Suzuki

From time to time, starting as early as the mid-1960s, perhaps earlier, there have been flurries of activity in the world of text-sound composition or sound poetry among composers, but it seems that new work has dropped off in recent years, or at least there seems to be a void in the latest generation of composers who are investigating the genre.

Text-sound composition exists at the nexus between experimental music and experimental poetry, a kind of lingual music, a type of poetry that is intended to be heard, not merely read. As you might surmise, the work is often non-narrative. Text may or may not be intelligible or even central. Vocalizations, including extended vocal techniques, are often treated as compositional rather than traditionally poetical elements. Text may simply be a means to an end: the sounding of the human voice. Of course, much sound poetry is text biased, even text based, with emphasis placed on meaning, semantic content. But in all cases, text-sound composition is experienced through hearing and not simply on the page. Indeed, numerous sound poems are meaningless in their written form.

For a time, some of our most important composers and artists practiced the art of sound-text composition. The Dadaists: Kurt Schwitters, Hugo Ball, Richard Huelsenbeck, and numerous others wrote pioneering Dada or bruitist poems with nonsensical texts, laying the ground work for subsequent generations of sound poets. At least two works have become well known, if not iconic. Schwitters’s magnum opus is the famous Ursonate, which uses typical Dadaist nonsense texts, but cast in a rather conventional sonata allegro formal scheme. Ball’s “Gadji beri bimba” became an underground pop hit as the textual basis for Talking Heads‘s “I Zimbra.”

Starting in the 1950s, a new generation of European sound poets came to the fore, including Henri Chopin, Bernard Heidsieck, Sten Hanson, Lars-Gunnar Bodin, Bob Cobbing, and a host of others. International sound poetry festivals were mounted, journals were published, recordings were issued, and serious scholarly research and theorizing was taking place. The genre, while still a tiny niche in the art world, was growing and thriving.

John Cage, of course, has written many mesostics which exist not only as poems, but as “scores” for performance pieces: text-sound compositions. Composers of the generation which followed Cage wrote important, if not crucial works which were often watershed pieces which helped define a style, aesthetic, or even movement. It is impossible to imagine Steve Reich‘s oeuvre without his early minimalist tape pieces It’s Gonna Rain and Come Out. While he may not have thought of them as text-sound compositions, that is exactly what they are. And while both have significant textual components—the former has powerful cultural and even spiritual connotations and the latter has an important political overtone—they are not so much about text as they are about process. Indeed, Come Out devolves into pure, abstract sound in which the text is completely obliterated. The import of his early text-sound work has been made manifest, as Reich has returned to sampling speech and working with its melodic and rhythmic contours, starting with Different Trains and continuing on with The Cave, City Life, and other recent work.

Alvin Lucier‘s I Am Sitting in a Room, like Reich’s early sound-text compositions, is based on a gradually unfolding, minimalist process, but also embraces the composer’s speech impediment—stuttering—transforming it into abstract, musical sound. Much of Robert Ashley‘s work falls neatly in the text-sound composition category, whether it is the intense and cathartic Wolfman, the soothing, yet enigmatic She Was a Visitor, or the utterly mysterious and disturbing Automatic Writing.

Two of the most important and visible American sound poets are Charles Amirkhanian and John Giorno. Both produced essential sound poetry record anthologies and both are important artists. Amirkhanian’s bias leans towards music, while Giorno clearly comes from the literary world. While their leanings or orientation seem to be in opposition, they have both used repetitive, minimalist, and multi-tracking recording techniques in the construction of their work, though the impact is quite different, if not at polar extremes. Amirkhanian weaves strands of speech using words as abstract entities. In “Mugic,” the words “rainbow,” “chug,” “bandit” and “bomb” are repeated and layered in a way that focuses on process, counterpoint, rhythm, texture, articulation, and color. The words are chosen for their sound, rhythmic potential, and texture rather than their meaning. Word choice may have an element of whimsy and even humor, but linguistic semantics are low on the totem pole. On the other hand, Giorno’s texts are laden with powerful content and meaning. “I Don’t Need It, I Don’t Want It and
You Cheated Me Out of It” is rife with angst, rage, and seething energy, not to mention a healthy dose of ironic humor. The repetition by way of close imitative counterpoint though multi-tracking and live performance adds to the potency of the work, much as the repeated imagery of an electric chair or deadly car crash intensify the Orange Disaster series by Andy Warhol.

In more recent years, the work of Paul Lansky, Anna Homler, and F’loom, a sound poetry ensemble, has emerged as significant American exploration into the possibilities of text-sound composition. Lansky often begins with the speaking voice which is recorded, processed, manipulated, and put into a music context of one sort or another. In some instances, the text is important, as in a song. Rather than using conventional singing, however, Lansky works with the inherent musicality of the spoken word, coaxing more conventionally musical elements from the speech through inventive electronic manipulation. In other instances, the text is obliterated, allowing the listener to focus on the transformed timbre and texture of the voice. In the most extreme cases, the sonority of the voice is so radically altered as to sound as if synthesized, or nearly so.

Anna Homler, on the other hand, uses much simpler means. Most frequently expressing her ideas in an invented language, both sung and spoken, her work invokes a kind of timeless, foreign, and primitive culture, suggesting traditions, rituals, and ceremonies that are at once recognizable and otherworldly. She might use sound processing, but of a much simpler, even cruder sort than that used by Lansky. Homler is more likely to use a voice changer from a toy store than some fancy, expensive gizmo found in the up-to-the-minute recording studio.

F’loom is a sound poetry performance trio which performs works created by its members. Their polypoetic work is dazzlingly virtuosic and compositionally spectacular. At times suggesting the Firesign Theatre, the Bobs, Lord Buckley, and Frank Zappa, they are not afraid to inject healthy doses of humor into their work along with extended vocal techniques, rhythmic workouts, lingual mayhem, and much more.

Still, these composer/sound poets are of the baby boomer generation and earlier. Younger American text-sound composers are conspicuous by their absence.

While there is still a significant amount of activity in the world of sound-text composition, the focus is squarely in Europe. There are still numerous sound poetry festivals, conferences, performances, recordings, and publications to be found in Europe. A sound poetry festival takes place every year in late summer in Barcelona. Every few years, sound poet, scholar, and champion Enzo Minarelli mounts a festival and conference, in addition to his work as a composer/writer/performer and record producer. He has been issuing one of the most important series of recordings of international sound poetry under the 3ViTre imprint since the 1980s. More recently, the Italian experimental record label Alga Marghen has issued records (yes, vinyl!) and CDs of mostly older sound poets (Chopin, Heidsieck, Hodell, Hanson, and many others). One of the most unlikely, but also most important publications in recent years has been Homo Sonorus: An International Anthology of Sound Poetry, an impressive tome of 437 pages, plus a 4-CD set featuring essays, histories, biographies, theoretical treatises edited and curated by Dmitry Bulatov in Russia! The books has parallel texts in Russian and English, with essays and contributions by many of the artists named above as well as a most impressive host of scholars from around the world.

As far as I know, there is nothing of a similar scale of work in the area of text-sound composition going on in the U.S. There is Voys, a scholarly audio journal on CD that often features sound poetry and is edited by the American sound poet Erik Belgum, but Voys includes all manner of contemporary and experimental literature. Belgum has been quite active in recent years, but he appears to be one of a few. As far as a new generation of American text-sound composers, it appears that none are making themselves known. It seems a shame that American composers are not engaged more in text-sound composition, or even aware of its existence. Don’t’ forget, as Hugo Ball once wrote, “E glassala tuffm i zimbra.”

Does anyone know of any compositions utilizing the grandmother chord???thanks

Dean Suzuki Photo by Ryan Suzuki

I would like to suggest that we may have a skewed notion of the criteria for what it good or great in the music and the arts. Guided by our Western philosophies, aesthetics, and sensibilities, many of us have decided (or someone has decided for us) that great music, great art must be complex if not convoluted, monumental, epic, or otherwise intricate and grandiose. Dazzling, even mannerist and Byzantine structures tout the composer’s ability to construct incredibly sophisticated monuments to human achievement in music, but might there be another and equally meaningful way? Might not virtuosic displays of compositional daring be considered merely bombastic, as least in some instances? The answer, of course, is “yes,” as there is always plenty of bad music, but the question is at least food for thought.

The well known, oft quoted adage “less is more” is tossed about freely, but in our heart of hearts, we really do not believe it. Instead, we tend to believe that more is more and less is less. We may concede that a Zen ink and brush rendering of a stalk of bamboo with a bird perched on a branch executed with a handful of brush strokes is masterful, but deep down inside we believe that Michaelangelo‘s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel must be better, if nothing more than by virtue of the technical skill, virtuosity and complexity of the work. Even closer to home, we may agree that Schubert‘s “Gretchen am Spinnrade” is a fine piece, but Wagner‘s Ring Cycle or Stravinsky‘s Le sacre du printemps must be the better works by dint of sheer size and intricacy. Of course, size and complexity alone is never the standard for excellence. I doubt that any of us would compare a Bruckner symphony to one of Beethoven‘s or a Sammartini symphony to one by Haydn. Still, cannot a haiku be as profound as an epic poem by Dante? Cannot a little character piece by Schumann be as significant as a sprawling tone poem by Strauss? If not, why not?

Of course there are also works that are relatively long, even very long, where not much happens, at least compositionally. Whether it is the Dies Irae from the Requiem (one of the longer chants in the repertoire) or La Monte Young‘s The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys, how are we to evaluate them?

Béla Bartók recognized that very simple, indigenous folk musics were the artistic equivalent of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Authentic Hungarian folk songs were often monophonic or heterophonic, or comprised of simple modal melodies accompanied by the simplest, even crudest of harmonic schemes. Indeed, in our own Western European heritage, medieval Gregorian chant and organum were often quite Spartan and simple, yet few would deny the profundity of these musics of the Middle Ages. That being said, few seem to place them on the same plane as Bach, Brahms, or Boulez.

Perhaps we too need to reassess. Consider Satie‘s Vexations, a simple 2-page piano piece comprised largely of augmented chords which is to be played very softly and slowly with the cryptic instruction that it is also to be repeated 840 times. Upon discovering the work in the late 1950s, John Cage came to the conclusion that Satie’s little musical trifle was unperformable, clocking in at over eighteen hours and unlistenable. While there is likely a humorous element intended by the composer in Vexations, it is not known if Satie actually expected the instructions to repeat 840 times to be taken seriously. However, very concrete, unexpected, and even profound effects can result when listening to this work when performed according to the instructions.

After embarking on the premiere performance of Vexations which he organized in 1963, Cage came to realize that something powerful was underway that dramatically eclipsed his wildest expectations. Cage recalls, “After about an hour and a half we all realized that something had been set in motion that went far beyond what any of us had anticipated.'” [Calvin Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors: Five Masters of the Avant-Garde, expanded ed. (London: Penguin Books, 1976), p. 104.] By the time the performance was completed, he came to the conclusion that “Vexations was of profound religious significance.” [Peter Dickinson, “Erik Satie (1866-1925),” Music Review, 28, No. 2 (1967), p. 146.]

Concerning extensive repetition in Satie’s music, Dick Higgins pointed out:

“In performance the satirical intent of this repetition comes through very clearly, but at the same time other very interesting results begin to appear. The music first becomes so familiar that it seems extremely offensive and objectionable. But after that the mind slowly becomes inc
apable of taking further offense, and a very strange, euphoric acceptance and enjoyment begin to set in… Is it boring? Only at first. After a while . . . [it] begins to intensify. By the time the piece is over, the silence is absolutely numbing, so much of an environment has the piece become.” [Dick Higgins, “Boredom and Danger,” Source, 3, No. 1 (Jan. 1969), 15, rpt. originally in The Something Else Newsletter, 1, No. 9 (Dec. 1968), pp. 1-4, 6, 15]

At least one early musicologist saw the value of long durations and extensive repetition in Satie’s work. In referring to examples of musique d’ameublement or “furniture music,” Rudhyar Chenneviere (a.k.a. Dane Rudhyar) proposed:

“There seems to be no reason why these chords might not continue for hours…One feels that for hours at a stretch he has caressed the ivory keys, sounding them softly, then, little by little, with greater force…One feels that the composer’s sense of hearing, his nerves, vibrate sensuously, lulled by these infinite undulations of sound.” [Rudhyar D. Chenneviere, “Erik Satie and the Music of Irony,” trans. Frederick H. Martens, Musical Quarterly, 5 (1919), p. 470.]

According to Roger Shattuck, “Satie seems to combine experiment with inertia… The simplest of Satie’s pieces…built out of a handful of notes and rhythms have no beginning, middle, and end. They exist simultaneously. Form ceases to be an ordering in time like ABA and reduces to a single brief image, an instantaneous whole both fixed and

moving. Satie’s form can be extended only by reiteration or ‘endurance.’. . . Satie frequently scrutinizes a very simple musical object . . . Out of this sameness comes subtle variety.” [Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France 1885 to World War I, rev. ed. (New York: Vintage, 1968), p. 142.]

The following can be found in Cage’s Silence:

“In Zen they say: If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, try it for eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on. Eventually one discovers that it’s not boring at all but very interesting.” [John Cage, Silence (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1961), p. 93.]

I in no way mean to suggest that complicated music and art is merely bombastic. Rather, simplicity in music and the arts, even radical simplicity can be as powerful, meaningful, and profound as complex work. Simplicity can communicate ideas in ways that complexity cannot and vice versa. Neither is inherently better than the other; they are simply different. Each has a role to play if only we will let them do their work. We would to well to judge the content of the music rather than the means by which it was constructed.

Thaddeus Squire

Where are the venues for new music in Philadelphia? Good question.

To discuss the lack of venues for the contemporary performing arts in Philadelphia at the moment is—literally—a monumental irony. December 15 marks the opening of the Regional Performing Arts Center (a.k.a. RPAC—no relation to NJPAC), Philadelphia’s newest, largest, most anticipated, celebrated, and problematic of public performance venues, or, more precisely, collection of performance venues.

Philadelphia’s continuing effort to maintain its position as one of this country’s premier cultural centers has been hindered perennially by the troubling lack of venues for the contemporary performing arts. Three aspects frame the discussion of the current problem of locale: the kind of venue, (determined by who controls it), its location and outfitting, and the venue’s broader aesthetic identity. The kinds of venue break down roughly into four categories: venues run by RPAC (its new presence places it into its own category), venues run by educational institutions, venues run by presenters, and “alternative” venues. The following is a tour of these venue categories, outlining the problems and potential promise for each and what these mean for new music in Philadelphia.

Following a long history fraught with controversy, politics, and the sensational application of $265 million, RPAC now stands nearly complete on Philadelphia’s Center City landscape. It will certainly bring something substantial and positive to the city’s cultural life, however, most of the local performing arts community is not yet sure exactly what that will be. We all hope that the hype will not prove to be hubris. To understand the current problems and challenges faced by RPAC, and why it may or may not become Philadelphia’s center for the new, a bit of background is needed.

The Philadelphia Orchestra has desired a new concert hall since 1908, owing to the famously poor acoustics of the Academy of Music, which was built in 1857 on an opera house model. While most have agreed through the years that the Fabulous Philadelphians deserve better than the dead and dusty sound of the old Academy, the city has maintained a long love affair with its new-world La Scala. Consequently, the argument of acoustic improvement alone has never inspired the local philanthropic community to back the plans for a new orchestra hall championed in past decades. The penultimate campaign by the Orchestra, which ultimately led to the creation of RPAC, was undertaken during the music directorship of Riccardo Muti (1980-1992). Famed local architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown designed a new hall to be placed just blocks from the Academy on Broad Street. An ambitious capital campaign commenced, but the Orchestra failed to raise sufficient funds, and the project foundered.

This is where the story gets complicated. The Orchestra ceded the campaign for a new concert hall over to City Hall and the charismatic leadership of Mayor Edward G. Rendell, whose administration brought about positive developments in urban renewal, cultural growth, as well as tourism and commerce for Philadelphia. The mayor was able to muster the support of the governor’s office of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania with the creation of bold new “branding” corporation, the Avenue of the Arts, Inc., led by his wife the Honorable Marjorie Rendell and charged with the mission to consolidate and revitalize South Broad Street as the de facto arts center for the region. The new performing arts center, along with the historic Academy of Music would be the centerpieces of this project. This new consortium, along with local developer Willard G. Rouse III, took on the project with renewed verve, and the enthusiasm and money began to flow once more. The only catch was that if the city and commonwealth were to make this new venue their project, the facility could no longer belong to the Orchestra alone. What had long lived as a private campaign of the Philadelphia Orchestra Association, was now a public works project, which introduced new cultural politics and massive identity challenges.

After the conversion, the project was quickly christened with the public works moniker Regional Performing Arts Center. RPAC, as a private corporation, was responsible for raising the money for the construction of the new performance venue and for the renovation of the old Academy of Music, which RPAC now administers. RPAC’s new facility, named the Kimmel Center for chief patron and clothier Sidney Kimmel, was designed by architect Rafael Viñoly and built in three years. RPAC now administers two separate buildings, one old and one new, encompassing four different venues, all with different names. The Kimmel Center includes Verizon Hall (2,543 seats), which is the Philadelphia Orchestra’s “new home,” the Perelman Theater (651 seats) and a black-box theater (née The Innovation Studio). The Academy of Music, located just down the street, contains the fourth venue. Add to this branding and identity nightmare eight official “resident” companies—The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Pennsylvania Ballet, the Philly Pops, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Philadanco, American Theater Arts for Youth and the Opera Company of Philadelphia—and you have a complicated logistic, artistic and institutional mess to clarify for a local general public that is historically resistant to change.

The identity problems that have arisen over the two geographically separate houses, their various spaces and the “big-brother” parent organization (RPAC) are enormous. Marketing and PR efforts have failed to clarify much. The public is still not certain of where their favorite companies are going to perform, and, as I have been asked a hundred times, “What is going to happen to the Academy?” At this late date, it is surprising that such questions still exist in the public mind. Even following the project’s final transformation, the Orchestra’s millennial venue quest has deeply colored the mission and identity of RPAC. In a dangerous and perhaps unwitting bow to the Philadelphia Orchestra’s failed quest, The Kimmel Center has been consistently portrayed as principally belonging to the Orchestra, yet it still must share the Center equally with the other resident companies. This marketing move continually threatens to suggest that the other resident companies are somehow second rate and not worthy of quite as much shrift, despite their premier artistic standings. In addition,
RPAC will be running its own programming, which this season features a motley assortment of recycled Carnegie Hall headline acts—all from out-of-town. There is no indication of who exactly has assembled this programming, but if RPAC is to operate also as a presenter and not just an administrative organization, the future will be tough without a respected (or simply identifiable) artistic director at the helm.

So, how does new music fit into this? RPAC has been aggressively marketed and sold under the heady rhetoric of the new as “state of the art,” “modern,” “innovative,” and the apotheosis of all things contemporary and good. Ironically, there is only one contemporary performing group (Philadanco) among its eight residents. The remaining resident groups are almost strictly classical companies, with each giving the customary occasional nod to the contemporary in their programming. To the question, “Where’s the new music?” the answer is, “Not at RPAC.” As custodians of contemporary music tend to be smaller organizations, such as the Relâche Ensemble, Network for New Music, and Orchestra 2001, the rental costs for RPAC leave self-presenting out of the question. Before being subsumed by RPAC, the Academy was already long-renowned as one of the most expensive venues in the country. Our new center has now beaten this record. Rental fees were set prohibitively high even for the Orchestra, owing to tremendous earned revenue needs in creating RPAC’s first general operating budget. To illustrate the magnitude of the issue, emergency aid was recently furnished to the resident companies by The Pew Charitable Trusts, local philanthropist H. F. (Gerry) Lenfest, and the Annenberg Foundation to ensure that the new rental fees would not bankrupt the tenants.

Though RPAC is an impressive-looking edifice containing state-of-the-art acoustic engineering, the venues themselves are still fairly conservative and subdued in appearance, flexibility, and function. Also, the center’s general image has already been colored heavily by its predominantly classical resident companies, making the facility not immediately brand-ready as a contemporary arts location. Most significantly, the average size of a contemporary music audience in Philadelphia is currently roughly 100-200, on a good evening. As much as Relâche and our colleagues are trying to build this audience, the large size of RPAC’s venues makes them at present undesirable as new music spaces. The promise of cross-over audience from the resident companies is also weak as most of the residents are themselves struggling with diminishing, older, and more conservative audiences. It is dubious that RPAC and the Kimmel Center could alone provide an impetus for sustainable contemporary music audience development.

In the end, despite all these issues, the jury is still out. Nobody is quite sure yet whether RPAC is about out-of-town headliner acts, local talent, its resident companies, smaller organizations, larger organizations, high culture, low culture, or what. What is certain is that it is attempting to be too many things in too many places for too many people. We will all have to wait and see first, how RPAC decides to define itself and second, whether new music will be part of that mission and identity.

Our second category of venue, those controlled by educational institutions, command some of the city’s most attractive medium to small size venues, which are appropriate for new music. Among these are the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Center, with its Harold Prince Theater, The University of the Arts’ ArtsBank and Drake Theater, Temple University’s Rock Hall, and Drexel University’s Mandel Theater. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Relâche presented and co-presented new music series at Mandel and the Annenberg Center. Today, these venues are under greater institutional control, and very few independent new music organizations present at these venues. Mostly, these spaces are heavily booked or overbooked by their respective institutions for their own use. Nobody can argue with this, as the venues are being put to good use, but it does mean that a large number of prime venues remain off limits to local self-presenting organizations.

Other more peripheral educational venues include the Iron Gate Theater at University of Pennsylvania. It is only available two months out of the year when it is not being used by Penn. Penn’s Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) contains a new black box space, Tuttleman Auditorium, in which Relâche currently presents its inter-arts series Eye Music. Tuttleman could be a prime venue, but the proximity of a loud machine room makes it a less attractive space for more regular concert programming. Seating is also limited to 100. Presser Hall at Settlement Music School is often the locus of new music concerts, however, the hall is heavily used by the School, making it hard to book for a series. Curtis Hall at the famed Curtis Institute of Music is not available to outside performers, even when it is dark. The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and the galleries at Moore College of Art also offer potential spaces. Since all are exhibition spaces, availability, accessibility, and performance adaptability are highly limited.

The third category, venues controlled by presenters, holds great potential to foster new music in Philadelphia, however, the city’s presenting community has not demonstrated in recent years any interest in presenting local talent, particularly when it comes to new music and the contemporary performing arts. Philadelphia suffers from an odd Janus effect. It is very proud of its large arts organizations, such as the Orchestra and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, yet deep down, it is also plagued by the belief that great artists could never call Philadelphia home. This provincial ethos has exerted a subtle yet powerful influence on the presenting community as most presented artists come from outside the city. It is certainly an essential part of the presenter’s mission to bring outside artists into a community, but presenters also have a responsibility to their own local arts community. The message in Philadelphia is that great art only comes from places like New York or Europe. This, of course, is far from true. We hope that Philadelphia’s artistic renaissance in recent years and the eventual sorting out of the Kimmel Center will aid in improving the artistic self-image of the city and its hometown groups.

The entrenchment of presenters’ programming has erected additional barriers to new music. Penn Presents has been largely uninterested in presenting new music, owing to the success of its jazz and contemporary dance series. The Philadelphia Chamb
er Music Society is a world-class presenter, but it is committed to the classical repertoire. The Painted Bride Art Center, supposedly Philadelphia’s premier contemporary arts venue, only presents jazz and world music, completely overlooking a vast and diverse new music repertoire. The Kimmel Center does not include contemporary music in its programming. Other presenters commanding their own venues include the city’s many prominent theaters, such as the Arden, Wilma and Prince Music Theater, whose own programming of course takes precedence over outside rentals, making it difficult to produce longer runs of a single program or a concert series. The only organization that does “present” a contemporary music series is Settlement Music School, whose Sylvia G. Wexler Contemporary Music Series has been a fixture on the Philadelphia scene for some time. Settlement is committed to local new music groups such as Relâche; yet, as Settlement is a school and not a presenter per se, the minimal funding support for the series does not permit artist honoraria and only limited advertisement, making the series a “door” gig for its participants and generally low in attendance. The city’s resistance to presenting local talent has led many contemporary performing arts groups, where possible, to own and run their own venues. This has yet to become an option among Philadelphia’s new music ensembles.

The final category of “alternative” venues includes the many atypical or non-arts venue spaces in the city. Many new music groups use the Philadelphia Ethical Society on Rittenhouse Square as it is inexpensive and centrally located. Ethical is the current home of Relâche’s main concert series Future Sounds. The Philadelphia Art Alliance, Van Pelt Auditorium in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as well as several of the art galleries in Old City such as Nexus and Highwire, have also served as occasional venues for new music. The Philadelphia Ambient Consortium of Music and Noise, a University of Pennsylvania student organization, runs a low-budget but excellent concert series of ambient music and performance art at the Rotunda, a decommissioned church on Penn’s campus. The Rotunda might have potential as an established new music venue, but its future ownership is uncertain. The new convention center in Center City also has rooms that have been used for chamber music, yet they have not been designed as concert venues and remain ill-equipped and have less desirable acoustics. Philadelphia’s many churches and synagogues serve as locales on occasion. A recently rebuilt church has even renamed itself the Trinity Center for Urban Life and has become a worship-space/venue hybrid, and the Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial (formerly a church) has been used for performances by the American Composers Forum, Philadelphia Chapter. The very live acoustic of such spaces makes them unsuited for much new music repertoire.

For many of the above venues, location, proximate public conveniences, and internal outfitting serve as potential barriers to cultivation as workable new music venues. Settlement is in a formerly “bad” part of the city and still bears this stigma. ICA and University of Pennsylvania venues are somewhat tainted by the perceived inaccessibility of West Philadelphia and University City, which also borders some rather notorious urban areas. Among the spaces accessible to smaller groups, many lack a good piano, the prime determinant of a good venue. Some, such as the Ethical Society, even lack air conditioning and proper ventilation for warm weather performances. Ethical does, however, have an excellent concert grand piano, which contributes to its popularity among new music groups. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, the more old-world, conservative, and classical public images of many venues such as the Kimmel Center and the Ethical Society create the wrong context for new music. To date, no Philadelphia venues have established a strong enough new music identity to override extant older and dustier images and associations. Finally, there is the issue of the “Avenue of the Arts” project. The Avenue of Arts is the successful product of a powerful consolidating force for the city’s performing arts venues. With the recent addition of the Kimmel Center, nobody is yet sure whether the Avenue will make it more or less challenging for other venues throughout the city to compete for exposure and public accessibility for their programs.

Two of the largest problems faced by all performing arts in the city are parking and transportation. The Philadelphia Parking Authority is legendarily ruthless in its time-restriction enforcement of the limited on-street parking, and lot and garage prices have been increasing steadily. Public transportation is poorly advertised and limited in its reach, fueling the perception that the neighborhoods where many of the smaller venues are located are inaccessible, or, in some cases, actually making them inaccessible.

So, considering all the challenges that new music performance faces in the Philadelphia, is there hope for the future? Most certainly. One hope lies in educating and lobbying local presenters. Over the coming year, we will all be watching RPAC closely to see how it decides to utilize its spaces, and those of us representing the new music community are already pushing for some new music commitment. The Annenberg Center and Penn Presents, as well as the Painted Bride also may offer a renewed interest in a new music series by local and outside groups. Conversations are under way. The identification and development of an extant venue as a new music and contemporary performing arts space for Philadelphia talent would be a possible solution; however, many long for a new, smaller performing arts center dedicated to contemporary work. We will have to wait some time for the fervor of RPAC to pass before such a project can even be considered by the local community.

The most hopeful, realistic, and immediate solutions lie in partnership and collaboration among the smaller local performing arts groups. Collaboration and multilateral agreement would be essential in identifying and establishing an extant venue as the locus for contemporary performing arts. Also, as funding and operational resources become increasingly challenging to secure, programming and production partnerships among mid- to small-size organizations and larger institutions are all the more crucial. The extraordinary time and effort that effective partnerships require from all sides have not deterred local groups from engaging in this process. Relâche has forged strong associations with the Institute of Contemporary Art and The University of the Arts for much of its programming. Network for New Music, Orchestra 2001 and the Settlement Contemporary Players have been able to use productively their ties to the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, Swarthmore College the Curtis Institute and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Relâche, in cooperation with the local chapter of the American Composers Forum and its colleagues Network for New Music and Orchestra 2001, is wo
rking earnestly on educational and composer service programs. Whatever the reason—whether it has been the issues raised by RPAC or ever-increasing funding and audience building difficulties—this season has brought a sense of renewed and stronger commitment on behalf of the local new music community to join forces to help increase the visibility of this vital art in Philadelphia. Perhaps one day Philadelphia will be known not only for its older and larger music institutions, but also for its vibrant and diverse collection of contemporary performing arts organizations. There is much tremendous new music happening in Philadelphia. All it needs is a good home.

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Thaddeus Squire is currently Artistic Coordinator & Executive Director for Relâche Ensemble, which is based in Philadelphia. Relâche Ensemble offers a quarter-century of dedication to commissioning and performing the works of living composers, with an emphasis on “downtown” new music. The Ensemble is an 8-member instrumental group and has been administered by the not-for-profit company Relâche, Inc. since 1979. Relâche performs an annual, self-presented Philadelphia season of roughly 25 concerts, featuring 4-5 World Premiere commissions and numerous guest artists. In addition Relâche tours locally, nationally and internationally and engages in educational programs, artistic residencies, mixed media collaborations and recording projects.

Orlando Jacinto Garcia Photo by Rafael Salazar

As we enter the next century the music world can seem a bit confusing. Twenty-five years ago what was considered the Western Art music canon consisted of music from either Antiquity or the Renaissance through the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and into the 20th century. The music called by many in the general public “classical” music was relatively well defined in so far as the composers and their works. Today, this repertoire is not the only music deemed as relevant. Especially in post-modern times where categories are being redefined, it is easy for many to assert that a tango, a rock tune, and a Beethoven symphony are all the same except perhaps for the musical parameters that define the style. This can have its positive as well as negative ramifications. The positive perhaps being that all types of music are understood as having similar importance, the negative that everything is considered in many ways as being the same.

Given the current post-modern climate how does one define and/or understand different forms of musical expression. Are questions of style merely enough to describe different types of music? In my view there are much more than just stylistic parameters to consider when trying to understand music in the beginning of the 21st century. What are these additional concerns? I believe that there are differences in function and in the type of experiences that different types of music generate, that can be generally understood and discussed. Given the limitations of space, the following are general notions not to be considered as all encompassing or complete but instead as some concepts that may help to clarify the situation.

To begin with, popular, ethnic, commercial, etc., music can be generally understood as being functional (i.e., it has relatively obvious and direct social functions) and some of the music from the Western Art music tradition does not (i.e., it exists primarily for its own sake). Historically functional music has generally been created to communicate with a large number of people while non-functional music has been devised to be consumed by a smaller number often somewhat versed in its musical language. Examples of functional music include (1) songs that recount historical, political, and socio/cultural events, (2) music for celebrations and rituals with or without dance and (3) music written with the express purpose of generating large sums of money. The target audience for this music was and still is usually a large group of people. Although important, these are simplistic notions and distinctions, that need to be and will be clarified shortly.

Much non-functional music has origins as functional music. A good example of this is Western sacred music which had the task of inspiring worshipers to come close to their deity. Later the main purpose for many of the composers of this music became pleasing the royalty commissioning it (some of whom were musicians themselves). Its value at times increased, based upon the composer’s ability to create a more abstract and complex experience for the patron and court. In the past, composers of non-functional music often created functional music as well to supplement their earnings. This phenomena is rarely seen in the 20th century. As the system of patronage more or less ended, the more abstract music was left standing as absolute music, generally speaking, with little if any function except to exist for its own sake. Since it was not understood by or written for the masses it was, for the most part, not economically viable. In the 20th century, institutions such as governments and universities became the supporters of this work. This music, heard by smaller numbers, was and is often revered for its potential to elicit powerful reactions in audiences; both for and against it. Similar examples can be found in the other arts.

The simple and limited historical explanations of functional and non-functional music presented above are relatively obvious although often ignored by those discussing music in post-modern times. Although to some extent generalized and simplified, I believe that they raise some important notions that can help understand some of the differences between a tango, a rock tune, and a symphony by Stravinsky. At the same time that they are of importance, these notions are not enough by themselves to help categorize and/or fully understand the music that exists today.

In addition to the differences in the historical functions of music, there is perhaps the more important concept of the experiences that different types of music generate. These differences in the responses they elicit, may best be understood by examining works in the other Arts and the responses which they generate. For example, the experience one has when reading a work by Michael Crichton or Mickey Spillane is not the same as the experience one has when reading James Joyce or Borges. One is not better than the other but their works definitely generate different responses. Novels by the first two writers usually include great story telling and can be quite enjoyable. The books of the latter two are much more abstract and generate a very different intellectual and emotional experience (pleasurable for some and not so for others). Reading books by the latter several times is often necessary to capture all of the details as well as some of the more abstract concepts presented.

A similar analogy can be made when examining visual art. The experience one has while viewing a fairly representational seascape watercolor painting by Carolyn Blish is not the same as the experience one has when viewing Guernica by Picasso. The watercolor may be pleasing to the eye and may even make an excellent addition to ones living space. The Picasso however could be very troubling given the abstract imagery and surrealistic depiction of horrific events. Repeated viewing is often necessary to understand it and including it in ones living space may or may not be of interest. As in the first example, these experiences are not better or worse; just different.

A similar case can be made for music. The experience of hearing the music of Michael Jackson, Julio Iglesias, Madonna, or a tango by Gardel is not the same as the experience of hearing Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, Berlioz‘s Symphonie Fantastique, or Ginastera‘s Cantata para America Magica. The first group of works may move one to dance, sing along, or converse with a friend at a bar, while the latter generally does not. With the Stravinsky, Berlioz, and Ginastera works, repeated listening may be required to assimilate an
d react to the music, while this may not be the case with the first examples. Again one group is not better than the other; rather the responses to the works and the experiences one has are very different.

In general, what do these experiences have in common? The latter in each of the examples is probably more abstract than the former (i.e., more removed from concrete experiences of reality and every day life). Does this necessarily make one experience better than the other? Probably not, since although a more abstract experience might seem more substantive to some it can often create much discomfort. A discomforting response could cause the individual to close out the work that is evoking the experience (a common reaction to the unfamiliar). At the same time having the greatest acceptance by mass audiences does not necessarily mean that something is worthwhile. On the contrary, there are many instances where mass acceptance implies that what is being accepted is very banal and of little worth.

What is the implication of this view? First, style is not the determining factor when defining what Art music is or is not. Rather to some extent the functionality of the music and more importantly the experiences generated by it are. Some would ask what about jazz? My response would be who do you mean—the late John Coltrane or any Kenny G? What kind of experience does their music generate for you? The same for some rock and pop musicians—do you mean Michael Jackson or Brian Eno? What about the functional music that Mozart, Haydn, et al wrote? Are things black and white? Of course not, and there are plenty of issues to continue to discuss. Some genres and works will be difficult to explain but that is what makes talking about music so interesting.

Lastly, a brief word about the label Art music. While some of the more sensitive find that it demeans other music by implying that one is high art while the other is not, it should be noted that the label Art music comes from the label Art song applied to some of the songs in the 19th century as a way of differentiating them from other songs of the time. The term was also used as a way of separating these songs from the notion of the “Art of Music.” This does not mean that it is superior to other music, simply that it is coming from the Art song tradition (analogous to the visual art of the time). While I find that the terms serious or classical music are irrelevant when applied to Art music, I do not have a problem with the terminology that grew out of the notion of Art song. This being said, the nature of mass marketing has made the term “classical music” the term of choice for the general public whether they are talking about Bach or Stravinsky.

What I propose in this brief article is not meant as an iron clad test for categorizing music, but rather an attempt to deal with a phenomenon that in my opinion clearly exists. It is also my desire to give musicians some philosophical concepts to consider when discussing different types of music. As young man I had the great fortune to study philosophy. If I learned anything at all while studying this subject it is that while one can never know the truth, one can try and come close to it.

Sarah Rothenberg Photo by Christian Steiner

Over the years I’ve noticed that the space in which one plays new music can have a big effect on how the audience responds. Of course, some of this may be due to the fact that certain spaces attract certain audiences, and if I add that some of my favorite venues have been contemporary art museums it may sound as though I just like to preach to the converted.

But I think most of us involved with contemporary music have noticed that the art world does not always share our musical preferences, so we actually do encounter new audiences this way as well. A space that houses contemporary art immediately introduces the right elements of surprise, difference, even strangeness, that one wants the music listener to be ready for.

As Artistic Director of Da Camera of Houston, I have the opportunity to take this one step farther. We have the privilege of presenting concerts in the world-renowned Menil Collection, housed in a majestically serene building designed by the architect Renzo Piano. From the start, I’ve been interested in using the collection as a context for new music. This has resulted in a number of unusual programs.

To celebrate the opening of a new gallery devoted to the work of American painter Cy Twombly, we picked up on the Greek myths in his abstract paintings and presented a program entitled Ancient Greeks and Modern Americans. As the audience sat in an open gallery space surrounded by Twombly’s work, they heard performances of such works as Elliott Carter‘s Syringa and Milton Babbitt‘s Philomel. Another program, Morton Feldman and the Abstract Expressionists, presented Feldman works with titles referring to De Kooning, Rothko, Guston, and Franz Kline that we performed with paintings by these artists on the walls. The memorable finale on this evening involved the entire audience walking over to the contemplative Rothko Chapel, a block away, for a performance of Feldman’s masterpiece created for that space. The unique marriage of music and place was something the entire audience felt in a visceral way, and will probably never forget.

Coming up this season, we will be presenting the premiere of Jane Ira Bloom‘s new work, “Chasing Paint,” inspired by the work of Jackson Pollock, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston in a gallery hung with Pollocks. This is as exciting for Bloom as it is for the rest of us.

These are rather rarified examples, and I don’t think that there needs to be a programmatic connection between the art and the music for the effect to be felt, although this can certainly intensify the result. I have wonderful memories of performing a new work by George Tsontakis with members of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at the DIA Foundation in New York. The space was filled with Richard Serra‘s enormous “Torqued Ellipses,” forcing us musicians into a corner of this rather cavernous space, where we were dwarfed by the towering steel sculptures. As there was only natural light and the concert was at night, a few halogen lamps around us gave off a cave-like glow. The addition of a torrential rainstorm outside created an amazing sense of shelter and community as everyone gathered inside to hear new music. Spaces that allow for that community, diminish separation between artist and audience, generate an energy that encourages openness: these are important characteristics that can make a difference for both performer and listener. Anything that radiates the opposite of “business as usual,” and instead wakes people up.

Amy Denio Photo courtesy Amy Denio

I have been playing and listening to new music around the world for the past 15 years and have come across hundreds of different venues and situations for listening, all of which offer unique advantages and problems for both the player and the listener.

For music involving purely acoustic instruments, I much prefer playing indoors, without amplification, so the instruments can ring truly in a live room. When acoustic instruments are amplified, the sound is always altered, however subtly, and the original beauty can be altered to something more synthetic. I find it ironic that perfectly good acoustic spaces are equipped with amplifying equipment—the aesthetic of making sure music is (more than) loud enough to hear is very frustrating to me.

One dynamic which interests me is that of the typical division of performer and audience. I think of music as a social tool—concerts provide the possibility to forge an instantaneous community. Often at my concerts, people from widely varying backgrounds are in attendance, and together we experience a common beauty (well, what I consider beauty). One of the inherent problems with music in Western culture is that it is often relegated to the realm of specialists—performers and listeners. In this regard, I prefer not to use a stage if there is one, as this is too great a metaphor for the concept of performers as specialists, audience as consumers. I prefer to surround the audience with my music, when possible, and often compose pieces in which the audience is invited to participate.

In my experience, the ideal situation for music is one in which the audience can be totally immersed in the experience of listening, without distraction. My colleague Francisco Lopez produces his acousmatic concerts in darkened rooms, where he is situated in the center, all chairs or cushions are facing outward, towards a ring of speakers which surround the audience. The audience is invited to wear blindfolds, to experience “la belle confusion” of sound immersion. This way, each person has a unique listening experience, while at the same time being part of a larger, anonymous group. In his concerts, usually there are no visual or auditory distractions, and as a result, the experience of hearing his creations is very intense.

I must add, though, that I am a big fan of embracing the chaos of our noisy world and always enjoy non-programmed sounds entering the performance venue. In this regard, music performed in open-air venues can be an invitation to listen to the world.

Shortly after Sun Ra died, my sax quartet was performing at an open-air festival in Ottawa, Canada, and our repertoire included an arrangement of “Mu,” one of his pieces. As soon as Marjorie started her solo, the church across the street began tolling its bells in celebration of a wedding. It was a lovely sonic addition. Several hours later, we performed a different set, but including the same piece. As soon as we started, the bells joined in, but only during “Mu,” and stopped when we did. From then on, whenever we performed “Mu” there was always an extra environmental audio ingredient, no matter where we were. Lovely!