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Zorn List Digest       Tuesday, November 2 1999       Volume 02 : Number 784



In this issue:
-
       Hello.  Cobra?
       interesting Fennesz project
       Re: interesting Fennesz project
       RE: Zorn "Defense" Letters
       new Sonic Youth...
       Re: new Sonic Youth...
       Re: new Sonic Youth...
       West Coast Tour?
       Re: new Sonic Youth...
       Bruce Eisenbeil's New CD - Press Release
       recording streaming audio
       RE: Zorn "Defense" Letters
       Spool and Red Toucan?
       Re: Spool and Red Toucan?
       pfMENTUM this Friday in Ventura CA
       (Fwd) [forumhub] from Alvin Curran

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 18:46:44 -0500
From: bruce estey <[e-mail]>
Subject: Hello.  Cobra?

Hello and sorry if this offends anyone;
I just joined the list and I am searching for a printable version of the
"rules"(guidelines) for Cobra,  zorn's musical game.
I would like to start working with it with a few fellow musicians in my
area,  and cannot seem to locate anything more than descriptions.
I could wing it,  but if anyone can help me with this I would really
appreciate it.
Thanks
[e-mail]

- -

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 12:41:51 +0200
From: "Jeroen de Boer" <[e-mail]>
Subject: interesting Fennesz project

Continuing with last weeks Fennesz-thread I would like to draw your
attention to Orchester 33 1/3, a 14-piece ensemble playing a kind of
big-band techno music. Groovy pieces take turns with noise or free
impro parts. Personaly I like it a lot and it uncovers yet another
part of Fennesz' oeuvre. Members of the ensemble are:

Christof Kurzmann: arrang., sax., elektronics
Christian Fennesz: arrang., git., elektronics
Mex Wolfsteiner: drums
G=FCnter Castanetti: elektronic perc.
Wolfgang Ritt: e-bass
Michael Moser: e-bass
Michael Krupica: kontrabass
Franz Reisecker: guitar
Klaus Filip: saxophon, elektronics
Gerhard Birschitzky: posaune, guitar
Richard Klammer: trumpet
Thomas Berghammer: trumpet
As Guests:
Didi Bruckmayr: vocals
Markus Binder: maultrommel
Peter Br=F6tzmann: saxophone

All the compositions are written by Fennesz
and  Christof Kurzmann. Further info can be found at the Plag Dich
Nicht website:

http://plagdichnicht.sil.at/eorch.php3

They just released their second album, which I haven't heard yet, but
surely will in the very near future.

Greetings,

Jeroen



Jeroen de Boer
co-director Cyberslag Foundation
music director Open Electronic Festival
Munnekeholm 10
9711 JA Groningen, The Netherlands
[e-mail]
[e-mail]
tel. [phone]
fax. [phone]
http://www.cyberslag.com

- -

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 07:22:11 -0500
From: Brian Olewnick <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: interesting Fennesz project

Jeroen de Boer wrote:

> All the compositions are written by Fennesz
> and  Christof Kurzmann.

[Orchester 33 1/3]

Slight correction: Although the above credit does, in fact, appear on
the disc, two of the tracks are covers of Michael Mantler's 'Preview'
from the (incredibly great) 'Communications' album. They're referred to
here as 'Review' 1 & 2 and Mantler, the JCOA and Pharaoh Sanders (the
original soloist) are thanked; why Kurzmann/Fennesz seem to have taken
credit for composing them is mysterious.

It's an intriguing album nonetheless. I somehow think the group is
capable of far more. The mere fact of choosing these covers does, I
think, show that at least some of their heads are looking in the (or a)
right direction.

Brian Olewnick

- -

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 09:34:00 -0500
From: "Vanheumen, Robert" <[e-mail]>
Subject: RE: Zorn "Defense" Letters

I'm interested too.=20

> -----Original Message-----
> From:    Stephen Fruitman [SMTP:[e-mail]]
> Sent:    Sunday, October 31, 1999 12:02 PM
> To:    [e-mail]
> Subject:    Zorn "Defense" Letters
>=20
> Someone (Steve Smith?) mentioned that the week after the Schatz =
article on
> Zorn, three critical letters to the editor were printed in the NYT, =
one of
> them by Dave Douglas.
>=20
> For my own research purposes, I wonder if there is anyone out there =
who
> could photocopy those letters for me (unless they are online, and you =
can
> point me at the right site)?
>=20
> E-mail me privately if you can do me that favour. All the best, =
Stephen
>=20
>=20
>=20
>=20
>=20
> ------------------
>=20
> Bj=F6rn Olsson,
> Inst. f=F6r id=E9historia,
> Ume=E5 universitet
> 901 87 Ume=E5
> tel. [phone] fax 143374
> e-post: [e-mail]
>=20
>=20
>=20
> -

- -

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 08:44:48 -0800
From: "Patrice L. Roussel" <[e-mail]>
Subject: new Sonic Youth...

    Anybody knows if the following record has been released?

- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*** - GOODBYE 20TH CENTURY: Sonic Youth

  Neo-postclassicist interpretations of works by John Cage, Pauline
  Oliveros, Steve Reich, Yoko Ono and others. Guests include Jim O'Rourke,
  W. Winant, Christian Wolf, Kosugi and more.

    1999 - SYR (USA), ??? (2xLP)
    1999 - SYR (USA), ??? (2xCD)

- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Any comments on it welcome also.,

    Patrice (puzzled, or maybe scared).

- -

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 11:48:54 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: new Sonic Youth...

In a message dated 11/1/99 11:45:50 AM, [e-mail] writes:

<< Anybody knows if the following record has been released? >>

next week, November 9.

Jon
www.erstwhilerecords.com

- -

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 16:52:40 -0500
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: new Sonic Youth...

It's due out November 8th.  Check the Smells Like website for more info (well not much more).  ICE says it's supposed to have a CDROM-accessible video of one performance but that's not mentioned on the site.  Anyway, these seem more post-neoclassicist to me.

LT



"Patrice L. Roussel" <[e-mail]> wrote:
>     Anybody knows if the following record has been released?

- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*** - GOODBYE 20TH CENTURY: Sonic Youth

  Neo-postclassicist interpretations of works by John Cage, Pauline
  Oliveros, Steve Reich, Yoko Ono and others. Guests include Jim O'Rourke,
  W. Winant, Christian Wolf, Kosugi and more.

    1999 - SYR (USA), ??? (2xLP)
    1999 - SYR (USA), ??? (2xCD)

- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Any comments on it welcome also.,

    Patrice (puzzled, or maybe scared).

- -



- -

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 16:21:54 PST
From: "Dr.J.M. Schuller" <[e-mail]>
Subject: West Coast Tour?

Hello.

I am hoping people could reply to me privately. I play in "Ham and
Treachery" a Seattle Improv Duo. We are planning on booking a tour of the
west coast for January. If you do booking or know someone who does for
avant/experimental/improv shows let me know. If you know of places to
contact in your area, or need music to come to your town let me know.

We are planning to start in Seattle, go through Portland, Eugene, San
Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Pheonix, Las Vegas, Portland, Seattle. Or
something like that.

Any help would be helpful.

http://members.tripod.com/brokenmusick/biopsy.html

Thanks,
John Schuller

______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

- -

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 18:46:42 -0800 (PST)
From: Tom Pratt <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: new Sonic Youth...

- --- [e-mail] wrote:
>
> In a message dated 11/1/99 11:45:50 AM,
> [e-mail] writes:
>
> << Anybody knows if the following record has been
> released? >>
>
> next week, November 9.

Also, Jim O'Rourke has been in NYC recording Sonic
Youth last week and this week for another new album.

        -Tom Pratt

=====

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com

- -

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 22:02:03 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Bruce Eisenbeil's New CD - Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NYC Guitarist Bruce Eisenbeil's New CD Release

November 1, 1999

Recently released is the CD titled, Bruce Eisenbeil's Crosscurrent Trio MURAL
(CIMP 194).   It is available through North Country/ Cadence Distribution.
They can be contacted by telephone [phone], Fax [phone], email:
[e-mail]

This CD features 9 compositions , written and arranged by Eisenbeil, in the
most modern avant-jazz vein.   With Brooklyn contra-bassist J Brunka and San
Antonio drummer Ryan Sawyer this trio is highly original and exciting. Prior
to the recording, this band played a lot of music together and with a unique
abstract bond they often perform at an intense level. Extended periods of
growing intensity bring about moments akin to epiphany.

Along with the 60+ minutes of music, extensive liner notes were contributed
by David Wild, Leroy Aiello, Bob Rusch, and the engineer Marc Rusch.
Eisenbeil says about his new CD, "MURAL showcases my recent melodic, harmonic
and rythmic developments. I think that any instrumentalist, especially
guitarists, would be interested in my modern approach to organizing pitch
material on the guitar and the trio's diverse rythmic drive."

Eisenbeil, a New York City cutting edge guitarist, improvisor and composer
has performed with trumpeter Eddie Gale, William Hooker, Roy Campbell Jr.,
Jason Kao Hwang, Oluyemi Thomas, Fred Lonberg-Holm, John Bickerton, Sabir
Mateen, Daniel Carter, Steve Swell, Jackson Krall, Christina Wheeler, Edgar
Bateman, Toshi Makihara, violinist India Cooke, Ernesto-Diaz Infante, and
many other jazz explorers.

Eisenbeil's debut CD Nine Wings (CIMP 144) was released in September 1997.
This CD features his compositions and guitar innovations in performance with
Rob Brown (as) and Lou Grassi (d).  The CD received extensive airplay
throughout North America, charting on many Top 10 college playlists and in
CMJ magazine.  MURAL has already charted on many jazzTop 10 playlists.

"Eisenbeil sounds like a wild man in spite of himself.  He plays unadorned
electric guitar, without effects or accoutrements, in a simple open tone
that's bent into service as an avant-garde instrument.  . . . he leads the
trio through eight compositions ( and one brief improv) that break down
structure into bloody three-way confrontations."
 3 out of 4 stars, Richard Cook & Brian Morton;
The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, Fourth Edition, 1998

Bruce's trio and his other ensembles have performed at the Texaco New York
Jazz Festival, CMJ Music Conference, Buffalo Interprov Festival, Philadelphia
Mellon Jazz Festival, Trenton Avant-garde Festival, and the Philadelphia
Fringe Festival.

Featured articles about Bruce Eisenbeil and his music have been presented in
Coast Weekly, Staten Island Advance, La Salle Collegian, Hunterdon County
Democrat.  Enthusiastic reviews have been heard from the Village Voice,
Chicago Reader, Jazz Times, Jazziz, San Francisco Weekly, Hi-Fi News and
Record Review, Your Flesh, Philadelphia Inquirer, The Austin Chronicle, The
Buffalo Artvoice, Cadence, AFIM Music Mix, Halana, Outside and the
Philadelphia City Paper. Eisenbeil's music has also been noticed in Europe,
with reviews in The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, The Wire, ImproJazz, Art  &
Culture Magazine (Belgium), Jazz Magazine 477.  Eisenbeil has been
interviewed on WNUR (Chicago), CFFF (Peterborough, Ontario), KAZU (Monterey,
CA), WPRB (Princeton, NJ) and WSUB (Stoney Brook, NY).

"Rather than fall back on a noise barrage of avant-garde cliches, Eisenbeil
prefers a complementary tack - smoothly executed, single-note lines and
well-placed, tastefully screwy chords - which deepens the music's range
without dampening its edge." ---
Sam Prestianni, San Francisco Weekly, August 11,1999

"Leading a trio, the young guitarist has an infectiously complicated style of
trampling chords and wiggy lines that dart like bats with an attitude."---
Gary Giddins, The Village Voice, February 16, 1999

"One of the thrills as an observer of any scene is spotting the new talent
early.  Downtown denizons are quickly getting excited about guitarist Bruce
Eisenbeil.  Though he studied with famed mainstream jazz guitarists Joe Pass
and Joe Diorio, he considers himself primarily self-taught, and one listen to
his distinctive guitar approach on his album Nine Wings (CIMP) confirms that
he comes from no particular school but instead has built a fresh style.  His
single-note lines are knotty and unpredictable, and he'll sometimes dwell on
chiming, dissonant chords for several bars."---
Steve Holtje, CMJ New Music Monthly

"Bruce Eisenbeil's original approach on Nine Wings is extraordinary. . .
Eisenbeil escapes the usual fretboard constraints in a virtuoso engagement
with sound that transcends style.  The scope of his sonic dynamics makes most
guitar improvisers sound academic, contrived or reliant upon "effects", while
he appears to escape such constraints. ---
David Lewis, Cadence Magazine


For more information about Bruce Eisenbeil please visit his website :
http://www.eisenbeil.com
Or send a FAX to:  212-888-2726
###

- -

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1999 00:30:54 -0500
From: Lang Thompson <[e-mail]>
Subject: recording streaming audio

Does anybody know of a program that I can use to record streaming audio to
my hard drive, preferably one with a timer?  I'd like to be able to listen
to some radio shows broadcast over the Internet at a different time.  The
info for RealJukebox implies that it can do this but most of the info on
their website is focused on recording CDs and not streaming audio.   (My
stereo is too far away to hook together.)  Any other suggestions?

LT


- -

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 12:55:49 +0200
From: "Jeroen de Boer" <[e-mail]>
Subject: RE: Zorn "Defense" Letters

Me too!!



> I'm interested too.
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From:    Stephen Fruitman [SMTP:[e-mail]]
> > Sent:    Sunday, October 31, 1999 12:02 PM
> > To:    [e-mail]
> > Subject:    Zorn "Defense" Letters
> >
> > Someone (Steve Smith?) mentioned that the week after the Schatz articl=
e on
> > Zorn, three critical letters to the editor were printed in the NYT, on=
e of
> > them by Dave Douglas.
> >
> > For my own research purposes, I wonder if there is anyone out there wh=
o
> > could photocopy those letters for me (unless they are online, and you =
can
> > point me at the right site)?
> >
> > E-mail me privately if you can do me that favour. All the best, Stephe=
n
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------
> >
> > Bj=F6rn Olsson,
> > Inst. f=F6r id=E9historia,
> > Ume=E5 universitet
> > 901 87 Ume=E5
> > tel. [phone] fax 143374
> > e-post: [e-mail]
> >
> >
> >
> > -
>
> -
>
>
Jeroen de Boer
co-director Cyberslag Foundation
music director Open Electronic Festival
Munnekeholm 10
9711 JA Groningen, The Netherlands
[e-mail]
[e-mail]
tel. [phone]
fax. [phone]
http://www.cyberslag.com

- -

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1999 08:40:41 -0800
From: "Patrice L. Roussel" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Spool and Red Toucan?

    I remember that the owner of Red Toucan wanted to start a new label.
Could it be Spool?

    Patrice.

NP: MILANO: FOR ISSEY MIYAKE MEN: Nobukazu Takemura

- -

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 13:15:05 -0500 (EST)
From: Ken Waxman <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Spool and Red Toucan?

Nope, Red Toucan was a partnership between two Sixties avant-garde
jazz survivors based in Montreal, whereas Spool seems to be a partnership
between Peggy Lee (cello) & Dylan van der Schyff (drums) of Talkling
Pictures in Vancouver and the folks who run Verge Music Distribution in
Uxbridge, Ont.

Ken Waxman



On Tue, 2 Nov 1999, Patrice L. Roussel wrote:
>
>     I remember that the owner of Red Toucan wanted to start a new label.
> Could it be Spool?
>
>     Patrice.


- -

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 02 Nov 1999 10:57:27 -0800
From: s~Z <[e-mail]>
Subject: pfMENTUM this Friday in Ventura CA

Contents:
A few reminders and something new...
*Rob Blakeslee Quintet, featuring Vinny Golia and more, this Friday
*Jeff Kaiser Trio, featuring Woody Aplanalp and Steuart Liebig, this
Friday. Celebrating the release of the new pfMENTUM CD Asphalt Buddhas
* Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States Web Concert
*************************************
Friday, 5 November 1999
8 pm, $7 admission
Ventura City Hall, Downtown Ventura
The Rob Blakeslee Quintet
Featuring an all-star cast of musicians from Portland, Oregon; Chicago,
Ill; Boston, Mass; Oakland, CA; and Los Angeles, CA.
Rob Blakeslee, Vinny Golia, Scott Fields, George Cremaschi, Damon Short
Be sure to come out and support this multi-state (in more ways than one)
ensemble.
Invite friends...

Opening will be:
The Jeff Kaiser Trio
Jeff Kaiser, trumpet, electronics; Woody Aplanalp, guitars; Steuart
Liebig, basses
CD Release Celebration of the new Kaiser/Aplanalp Duo CD
Asphalt Buddhas (Available at the concert)
No Advance Ticket Sales, Tickets Available at the Door Only
City Hall is located at the corner of Poli and California in Downtown
Ventura
*************************************
The Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) is
proud to announce the 1999 edition of the SEAMUS AudioClip Web Concert
is on-line.  18 works by SEAMUS composers, all under two minutes in
length. The web concert is part of ElectroAcoustic Music Week, a
national celebration of electronic and computer music in the United
States (http://seamus.lsu.edu/eamusicweek/).  Check the EAMusicWeek site

for information on events happening in your area.

The AudioClip Web Concert can be heard at
http://seamus.lsu.edu/audioclips/
*************************************

Thank you,

Keith and Jeff
[e-mail]
http://www.jetlink.net/~pfmentum


- -

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 13:33:44 +0200
From: "Jeroen de Boer" <[e-mail]>
Subject: (Fwd) [forumhub] from Alvin Curran

The following interesting email was posted by Alvin Curran on the
forumhub mailing-list. I think it may be of interest to the members
of this list. although there is no real Zorn-content.

Best wishes,

Jeroen



********************************************************************

Normally I would avoid like a plague, joining forums about anything
because inspite of the exciting possibilities of connecting with a
lot of people you don't know - this kind of communication is very
time consuming, in contrast with the ancient analogue forms of people
getting together at precise times to meet in the piazza, town square,
parlaments, university, church or temple to discuss important and
pressing issues and ideas.. that said, I was so taken by your
intelligent and provocative questions that -here I am- sitting and
writting answers to them.. bravo.

I will in fact not even answer the questions but respond generally to the
dust, which these important questions stirred up..

In my view, our contemporary music "condition" is presently akin to a
derelict boat  that is afloat on the seas with no crew, no pilot, and and
no knowledge of where it is going, and to some extent with no knowledge
where it has come from.  The reason is simple, no one, until very recently,
has experienced a truly global music culture - one  which permits a
multichanneled daily  mix ("contamination" as the European critics like to
say) between the tribes of Papua New Guinea, the tribes of Ircam/Steim and
those of South Central Los Angeles.  We, all of us,  are presently
experiencing the birth of such a "new music" and we are, as my derelict
boat implies, a bit lost in the process; nothing  quite like it has ever
happened. But being lost at sea is not necessarily a negative condition,
because it is an experience which biologically generates  constant hope -
hope that one will, in fact, survive the ordeal and land  somewhere safely.
 More specifically, that we will find a new common language, a new common
practice from all of our hectic, blind and brilliant searching  and
experimentation of the last 50 years.  True, research is done to find
answers and solutions, which often lead to the need for more research; but
sometimes we need a rest... and the music of this century anyway gives no
sign of resting.  Ever since Arnold Schoenberg installed democracy among
the 12 equal European tones, and since Cage democratically confered musical
citizenship to any sounding phenomena, and improvisors like AMM, MEV and
Braxton declared music could be made by spontaneous combustion and David
Tudor and later the whole Cyber revolution was to discover Neural Networks
as a model of musical structure and behaviour - the music of this century
has KNOWN NO PEACE. Furthermore, for reasons entirely beyond our control
(namely economic ones) all of humanity is literally drowning in and choking
on music which it consumes in quantities equal to the air it breathes and
water it drinks - this may prove like many of our  recent inventions a
danger for human physical and mental health, who knows?

Musically speaking no historical culture that we know about has ever had to
deal with the phenomenal task of living with all possible musics all of the
time...Most peoples have lived quite contentedly with one music only -
their own.  Debussy for example did not hear a Balinese Gamelan orchestra
until 1898 when at the Paris world's fair such an ensemble performed its
impressive music for the first time in Europe. Now we can hear Balinese
music whenever we desire  and this indeed describes our state of electronic
liberte et fraternite, and the infinite freedom of choice of what music to
make, or listen to, where, when, and with whom; this fact, to many people,
east west, north or south  is less and less a problem - first, analogue
systems and now digital ones are creating a new global music venue, but
nobody is quite sure "where" this venue is located.   None the less, we
remain happily but confusedly thinking that we are making music with two
stones, two sticks and a rattle whether in Central Australia or in the
Leipzig Gewandhaus, but in fact we are now netcasting these sounds and
sonic events everywhere as well and asking listeners to press buttons, move
faders, sing into their microphones, write simple code, drop midi-acid into
 their computers and imagine they are either Bach or the Aborigines or
both.  Where's the concert? Where's the fire?  Who wrote the score?
Beethoven, Boulez or Braxton???  who made the instrument?  Adolphe Saxe or
Apple.  Is your music an extension of your own body or your  computer's
CPU? or your netserver's indifferent slowness? answering questions with
questions is of course no answer - just talmudic tradition.

Before I ramble on too long I wish to report about a recent concert that I
created to open the Donaueschingen Festival 1999 (just two weeks ago).  I
meticulously sampled from 5-30 seconds of music each from about 100
compositions which represent the core of the this historic festival's music
founded by Hindemith in 1922.  With these samples (stored in an Akai 6000 -
 each as if a single color, gesture, or musical idea fixed to our common 88
note keyboard,) I created a spontaneously improvised music, as if playing
what lay under my fingers were the sounds of the whole 20th century - which
in many respects they were. Uninterrupted following my 30 minute
performance two computers - a G3 with MSP connected to PC linux running
CSound (in collaboration with Nicola Bernardini and Domenico Scianjo which
I will describe at some other time) began to randomly process these sounds
for three consecutive days, reducing them first to their "molecular"
contents, then genetically recombining them in new forms of musical life -
made audible through 16 loudspeakers (D+B) placed around a 4000 square
meter park -with castle fountains and ducks... I only mention this because
of its relevance to all of your questions - from tendencies and instruments
to appropriation to notation vs. improvisation, to musical space and
ritual.   These are indeed  the  big questions and I think the only way we
can answer them is to continue our work, looking under every stone or at
all the old dusty notes to find, as we are doing anyway, the path into or
out of this bizzare but wonderful moment of musical uncertainty that we are
experiencing -  it's happened all so fast, and it's all so new that we may
be in Hell or Heaven and don't even know it.

Oh yes, the reason I mentioned this concert was simply to say that as part
of my compositional process I had to listen to hours of music on a 15 CD
set (by Col Legno) music representing the grand tradition of European
contemporary Concert Music, the so called  "music of our time.".. in fact,
musics which have pushed the boundaries of speed,duration, timbre, dynamics
on the old european acoustic instruments to their outer physical limits; as
have the tonal aggregates (harmonically and polyphonically speaking) been
strained to their ultimate limits.  Much like space travel, I view these
extreme tendencies as part of our musical way of trying to take flight, and
leave the earth's confining atmosphere... But to the unexperienced
non-western ear, which is what most people hear with  on this planet, I
strongly suspect that all this "molecularization" of tone and gesture and
time - leading as it must inevitably toward organized NOISE  and hence some
form of new entropic stability - is hardly what most people in the world
would call music. On the other hand it is perhaps a most honest and
stunning portrait of our own time, in all its chaos, disorder, fear, and
endless frantic searching.

At the same time its archaic attachment to its own ancient traditions has
in my opinion left it petrified  somewhere in the end of the 19th Century;
and dreaming of composing symphonies for 100 dinosaur-musicians is still
very much the dream of most young composers. Neither great musical
body-builders like Varese, Messiaen, Schaefer, Xenakis, Ligeti, Feldman,
Nancarrow, Coltrane, Cage nor electronics, nor improvisation, nor chance
operations, nor fractals, nor hip-hop, nor dub, nor Stock and Hausen, nor
Cecil Taylor, nor the Red Brigades, have been able to dislodge the
immovable cultural icons, the likes of Beethoven etc.  who constantly prove
to be far more contemporary than all of us, if only because they probably
occupy about 95% of the musical space in the whole world.  Certainly the
Internet will not be a home to these great musical masters of the past, but
it will be a home to their managers, editors, owners and producers to
promote the constant lucrative sales of these dead monuments.   So let's
get to the point:  there are no real problems in music today that
composers, dedicated performers, creative producers,  improvisors and
programmers  and their mad flow of creativity can not overcome. We should
not point the finger at Beethoven,  who's clearly out there laughing at all
of us (on his way to the bank), but at the music machinery, it's clever
producers and managers - who perhaps in the name of the gods of Mammon and
Money have so refined the art of selling anything, that they have flooded
the whole world with their wares in unconscionable ways.  But worse these
same Mogols detain marketing powers which seem to determine , tout court,
what the music of our time  is or seems to be.  Such cultural power has
never before existed - outside of the abberant times of historical
tyrannies.  And to answer our own simple questions, we must take a good
look at this abuse of power, and resist it in every way.  Music is like
biology, it takes care of it self. Dying a bit here, growing there,
mutating here again.  It really needs very little to keep it going, just
the constant committment of the evolutionary work  we are all doing.  Viva
la Crisi.

Alvin Curran



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End of Zorn List Digest V2 #784
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