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Welcome to Off The Air, the HGRNJ Forum, where you can exchange ideas, suggestions, criticisms, praise and anything else that pops into your head with your fellow HGRNJ listeners and DJs. The Forum will evolve over time and may include record and concert reviews, photos, Top 5 "now playing" lists, and anything else you want to share with each other. It's fun and easy. Feel free to join in on a conversation or start a topic of your own. Columbia
University School of the Arts Pauline
Oliveros Saturday,
March 27, 2010 8:00 PM Pauline Oliveros is one of the foremost classical composers of the 20th and 21st centuries and also one of a handful of highly successful electronic music pioneers. Her works rest easily against other giants in the field such as Stockhausen, Terry Riley and her friend and collaborator Morton Subotnick. Ms. Oliveros’ work’s cross many genres within the avant-garde and are more successful than others due to her all encompassing humanity. A creator of the Deep Listening theory and performance art, she has imbued her works and her audiences listening (and enjoyment) experiences experientially upward and inward at the same time. Focused listening to a Pauline Oliveros performance or recording is a richly rewarding delight and can send shivers of elation down to the sub-atomic level. Ms. Oliveros was justly honored at the Miller Theatre as the recipient of the prestigious (William) Schuman Award, an unrestricted $50,000.00 grant and one of the largest endowments handed out to any composer. Ms. Oliveros is the only female composer so honored with this award and joins the ranks of previous winners such as Gunther Schuller, Steve Reich, John Zorn and William Schuman.The main presenter was Carol Becker, Dean of Columbia University’s School of the Arts. Ms. Oliveros was a gracious speaker and kept the evening immediately focused on the reason we were all there, her music. The “formal” opening piece was the second time, early in the evening, that the audience was a participant. Lear from her wonderful Deep Listening cd on New Albion was playing as the audience filtered in and chatted prior to the dimming of the lights. I’m not sure many knew the concert was a living entity that began on one’s entrance. Another facet of the Oliveros musical ethos is her firm belief that non-trained people are the most receptive musically. Hence the first “formal” piece on the program entitled Sounds from Childhood: Sonic Meditation. Ms. Oliveros enjoined the audience to close their eyes, take several deep breaths and think of three sounds from their childhood which they loved to make. Upon the last led exhalation she asked that we begin to vocalize these sounds but to listen to our neighbors and put our sounds in the spaces of the other sounds. It was a delightful exercise in which the disparate sounds filled and echoed round the auditorium and coalesced into a musical tempo and rhythm that proved uniquely satisfying. One wanted it to go on indefinitely. The
remainder of the evening was peppered with notable speakers who waxed
rhapsodic about the art and humanity of Ms. Oliveros.
David Bernstein, a professor at Mills College; Michael Century, a
professor at New Media and Music in the Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute, Jenneth Webster, for twenty years curator and producer for
Lincoln Center’s Out of Doors Festival, and David Felton a Pulitzer
Prize winning journalist and president of Deep Listening Institutes Board
of Trustees who also joined in on IPhone for the evening finale DroniPhonia,
a astonishing musical evocation involving multiple IPhone musical apps as
well the Deep Listening Band and Timeless Pulse.
This was a powerfully intriguing and mystically layered series of
drones and loops along with acoustic sounds in real time that tickled and
enriched the ear and soul.
When listened to intently it had the effect of sending one into a
relaxed and deeply meditative state.
Prior
to the final piece mentioned above, the evening was interspersed with
various short pieces and excerpts from Ms. Oliveros’ oeuvre including
video clips, sound collages, and live ensembles of various size.
All were highly satisfying performances that merely scratched the
surface of this endlessly fascinating and forward thinking musician and
humanitarian.
Ms. Oliveros is a living, breathing, ceaselessly creative presence
and one justly honored this evening.
I
urge anyone even tangentially interested in modern composition and the
uniquely improvisatory impulse to seek out Ms. Oliveros’ recordings and
most importantly to go to performances of her composition/creations. I’ll let Pauline Oliveros have the final word. “I’m not terrifically interested in leaving so-called masterpieces; I think that more important is the work that I have done to facilitate creativity in others as well as myself.”
John
Hammel Miller
Theatre – Columbia University – Friday, February 5, 2010 – 8:00 PM Fireworks
Ensemble – Ulrich Krieger, conductor and musical director Transcribed
by Ulrich Krieger and Luca Venitucci Oren Fader, guitar
– Brian Coughlin, bass – James Johnston, piano – Eric Poland, percussion
– Esther Noh, violin – Leigh Stuart, cello Madej, tuba – Chern
Hwei, violin – Arthur Dibble, viola – Ron Lawrence, viola – Jane O’Hara, cello
– Brian Snow, cello Ah, Metal Machine Music. It was something that the faithful dutifully listened to, at least and usually only once, and either stretched the limits of their idolatry to embrace the work or was angrily castigated and then ignored. There seemed to be no middle ground. And that’s a compliment. Lou certainly adhered to one of the dictums of art by provoking a rather strong emotional response which has resonated down through the decades. Mention Metal Machine Music to the cognoscenti and take one giant step back. Now Ulrich Kreiger and Luca Venitucci have created a butterfly out of a rather hoary caterpillar and blurred the lines between arrangement and re-composition. The Fireworks Ensemble, with numerous guest musicians, birthed this Frankensteinian baby to vivid and enthralling life on the stage of the Miller on this night. The score is richly delineated with strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion and even an accordion, providing depth and accented nuance that was totally lacking in the original four sixteen minute sides of feedback. Subtle key and rhythmic changes occurred out of the thick chordal maelstrom of sound, with violinist Esther Noh cuing viscerally the dynamic shifts of volume and rhythm. The entire work grew in power over the course of the intermission-less evening, expanding in force and enveloping the listener in an avalanche sound world which was nearly overwhelming but ultimately hypnotic in its scope and passion. One felt compelled to surrender to the void, as it were, and become part of the machine. The full experience, for me at least, sitting in the darkened auditorium with eyes closed, was one of near transcendental meditation. The
work kept to the sixteen minute per side concept originated by Lou Reed on
his RCA album and there were spontaneous smatterings of applause at the
end of each movement. At the
work’s conclusion there was a deserved standing ovation for the
musicians and for Mr. Krieger who brought Lou Reed up to the stage to bask
in the afterglow. He seemed
craggily sheepish as if, even Lou knew that this work really didn’t
belong to him any longer but was a part of a greater amalgam and
collaboration, albeit one conceived without his direct involvement.
Kudos, to Krieger and Venitucci, for their highly original and
evocative re-creation and belated thanks to Lou Reed for his original
concept.
John
Hammel |
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