Starkland S-236
Every Starkland release is an event and this one is no different. This is a composer new to this writer and likely new to most of the new music community. But fear not of the unknown. Advance praise from the likes of John Chowning (one of the reigning bright lights of electronic music) of Stanford certainly add a heady air of anticipation as we are now privileged to hear what is…
Kalvos & Damian’s New Music Bazaar, Show #97, 29 March 1997.
"People try to think “about the audience.” Who is the audience? Audience, again, is about the 10, or 100, or 1000 people, who have their own universes, their own past, future and present, and their own experience about what they have learned, or what they expect from music and so on. Every one of those individuals in the so-called “audience” is an absolutely different person."
"She had seen that the finger of Death was upon her bosom—that, like the Ephemeron, she had been made perfect in loveliness only to die; but the terrors of the grave to her lay solely in a consideration which she revealed to me, one evening at twilight, by the banks of the River of Silence."
Edgar Allan Poe (Eleonora)
Isabella Casati newsstand, sculptor Enrico Butti
Known as "The Dying", the bronze sculpture was created between 1890 and 1891 by the famous Varese sculptor Enrico Butti on commission from Count Gian Luigi Casati Brioschi, widower of the late Isabella, who died in childbirth in 1889 at just twenty-four years of age . The young woman, descendant of the noble Airoldi family of Robbiate, is portrayed in the moment of her passing, lying lifeless on her deathbed, covered with a cloth that leaves her breast exposed, on which a crucifix is placed. Her face is turned to the side of her, her eyes squeezed shut and strands of hair scattered across her pillow. The expression is relaxed and serene, of that peace that mysteriously comes after death. In the panel behind her, made of Simona della Valcamonica stone, there is a bronze disc in which angelic hosts are depicted who ideally accompany the young woman into the afterlife. The delicate sensuality that the sculpture transmits is truly touching, so much so that it makes it one of the most poignant and admired works of the Monumentale in Milan. A work suspended between realism and symbolism, it provoked more than one criticism at the time of its inauguration, as bare breasts were considered inappropriate for a funeral context.
‘The Old Breton’ as painted by Maria Melania Muter was one of the first women from Poland to be a professional painter. At the age of twenty five she left Poland for Paris. Her works were frequently exhibited in Poland, she participated in international Polish art exhibitions but always stressed that she considered herself Polish. She painted landscapes and still life and her portraits were greatly admired. In the Paris bohemia had many eminent people among her friends. Her sitters included Edgar Varese (1883–1965), Diego Rivera (1886–1957) and August Perret (1874–1954), but she also often painted ordinary, anonymous people and children.
"Help, I'm A Rock (Suite In Three Movements): '1st Movement: Okay To Tap Dance' / '2nd Movement: In Memoriam, Edgar Varese' / '3rd Movement: It Can't Happen Here'"
"The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet (Unfinished Ballet In Two Tableaux): 'Ritual Dance Of The Child-Killer' / 'Nullis Pretii (No Commercial Potential)'"
Favorite Song: "Go Cry On Somebody Else's Shoulder"
“The raw material of music is sound. That is what the ‘reverent approach’ has made people forget—even composers. Today when science is equipped to help the composer realize what was never before possible— all that Beethoven dreamed, all that Berlioz groppingly imagined possible—the composer continues to be obsessed by traditions which are nothing but the limitations oh his predecessors” -Edgar Varèse, “The Liberation of Sound.”Perspectives of New Music 5, no. 1
Contemporary electroacoustic music goes back as far as 1916. Edgar Varèse, who was considered the ‘Father of Electronic Music’, developed some of the first ideas in this respect:
“We also need new instruments very badly. … Musicians should take up this question in deep earnest with the help of machinery specialists” -Varèse, “The Liberation of Sound”
Since Varèse, the use of electronics in music has been successfully utilized by influential jazz performers and composers of the late 1950s such as Ornette Coleman and his contemporaries Pharoah Sanders and Yusef Lateef. Electroacoustic repertoire for the saxophone is developing community with composers like Jacob TV and Floating Points.
https://youtu.be/Mn8x0QbN4f8 - Promises, Floating Points and Pharaoh Sanders
https://youtu.be/2R1Ei8ozSyQ - Garden of Love, Jacob TV
https://youtu.be/PT9VD46t9-E - Tone Dialing, Ornette Coleman
Griffiths, Paul. "Varèse, Edgard [Edgar]." Grove Music Online. 2001; Accessed 1 Mar. 2022. https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000029042.
Varèse, Edgard, and Chou Wen-chung. “The Liberation of Sound.” Perspectives of New Music, 5, no. 1 (1966): 11–19. https://doi.org/10.2307/832385.
Chinatown’s Historic Great Star Theater
I have attended nearly every OM annual concert series since 2012. But pesky adult responsibilities intervened for the last few years. Having had to miss OM 25 due to my out of town work I resolved to make it to OM 26 now that I am back in California. However circumstances conspired such that I was only able to make one night of this essential new music…