Anyone knows who is the Rudolf Steiner that William Hooker (quotes ? and)\r\nthanks in his album Mindfulness with DJ Olive and Glenn Spearman ? \r\nI have an uncle who left to America and his name was Rudolf Steiner, we lost\r\ntouch. Anyone ? \r\n\r\nThanks. Benjamin\r\n
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Date: Thu, 22 Oct 98 09:42:34 -0500
From: brian_olewnick@smtplink.mssm.edu
Subject: Zorn at Merkin
JZ's annual Radical Jewish Culture concert at Merkin Hall last night
featured five of his compositions:
RUGBY (the program gave a date of 1993 for this; unless there's been a
change to the rules, I assume this was a misprint)--The band was Zorn,
Friedlander, Jim Pugliese, Winant and Coleman, with Steve Drury
conducting (negotiating?). Great fun, though I always wonder how
pieces like this (and the 69 paroxysms below) work on a purely aural
basis. Much of the enjoyment, I find, comes from watching the
mini-coalitions form and dissolve and observing the obvious enthusiasm
of the players. Whatever the case, it worked, with a natural flow I
sometimes find missing in Zorn's written work like...
MEMENTO MORI A string quartet (EF, with Feldman, violinist Joyce
Hammann and violist Lois Martin). To me, it sounded too much like a
collection of "all the effects I couldn't get into 'Forbidden Fruit'".
While it didn't genre-jump, it seemed to wallow uncomfortably between
a striving for cohesion and a slide-show of avant-garde string
techniques. He does utilize, here and elsewhere, the persnickety habit
of ending an otherwise so-so piece with 30-60 seconds of absolute
gorgeousity, kinda like Ali saving all his boxing for the last 15
seconds of the round in an effort to sway the judges.
MUSIC FOR CHILDREN PatRice's review of the recorded version sounds
about right to me (here performed by Winant, Feldman and Drury).
Winant was pretty much the featured player but, again, it was a bit of
a grab bag of percussion effects (as fascinating and enjoyable as
those might be) and less of a cohesive composition.
ETANT DONNEES Well, if you're familiar with the recorded version, this
performance was all that plus big dollops of humor. Why this piece
works far more successfully for me than the previous two is hard to
say. Perhaps the simple allusion to Duchamp in the subtitle allows one
into a more accepting frame of mind, especially with regard to the
slapstick elements: Winant and Pugliese noisily slurping bowls of
water, hammering nails into a two by four, sawing apart a stool, etc.
Fine, noisy fun, attested to by the grins on the performer's mugs
throughout.
KOL NIDRE After four works of controlled anarchy (!), Zorn once again
pulls an Ali by ending with a sublime string quartet. I'm not quite
sure to what extent the melodic line is the same as that used in the
pre-Yom Kippur ritual (I understand there are differences between
versions used by Ashkenaz and Sephardics), but it was moving,
mournful, plaintive, elegiac--choose your adjective. A stunning piece.
Brian Olewnick
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Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 09:04:04 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Joseph S. Zitt" <jzitt@humansystems.com>
Subject: Re: jazz/fusion (was d n' b...was hip-hop)
On Thu, 22 Oct 1998, Brent Burton wrote:
> weather report? return to forever? fuck that crap! hancock's
> _sextant_, miles davis' _on the corner_ and tony williams' lifetime
> _emergency_ are the *raw* fusion. three amazing records that valued
> genre-busting over proficiency.
Also don't forget Ornette Coleman's harmolodic fusion on the earlier Prime
Time albums, such as Body Meta and Of Human Feelings (I'd love to find a
CD of that...). And, of course, the Mahavishnu Orchestra's "The Inner
Mounting Flame".
I've been binge-listening to Miles's live 70s stuff this week. Lots of
layers in there that I hadn't noticed before, plus the cues, compositional
aspects, and organization of what's going on is more evident, now that I'm
