The 8th Other Minds Festival of New Music, held at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco on March 7-9, 2002, got off with Executive and Artistic Director Charles Amirkhanian moderating a panel discussion with some of the Festival’s featured composers. First, Japanese composer and Ondes Martenot virtuoso, Takashi Harada, gives the history and demonstrates the various functions of this pioneering electronic keyboard instrument. Continuing the theme of early electronic instruments, Pauline Oliveros relates how her first experiences with the sounds of static emitted by her father’s radio sparked an interest in electronic sounds and music that only accelerated with the commercial availability of tape recorders. Ellen Fullman then demonstrates her long string instrument, which is essentially a set of about 36 wires that when rubbed produce a longitudinal waves the pitch of which is determined by clamps that limits the length of the wave on each string. Brazilian composer, Ricardo Tacuchian then talks about his predilection for composing for the guitar despite not being a guitarist himself. He attributes this to the fact that the guitar is perhaps the most emblematic instrument in Brazilian culture. Cuban composer Tania León then discusses her song cycle “Canto,” which was to be performed on the last night of the Festival. The panel discussion concludes with African-American jazz composer Randy Weston recalling his association with Langston Hughes, and how he was called upon to perform at the poet’s funeral. This concert portion of this program then begins with:
Suite for Ondes Martenot & Piano, “Darius Milhaud followed the development of the Ondes Martenot with great interest since the instrument made its first public appearance in 1928. In 1932, Milhaud was asked by playwright Charles Dullin to compose the incidental music to Dullin's play, ‘Château des Papes.’ The limited size of the stage available for the performance and the varied sounds of the new instrument led Milhaud to write for Ondes Martenot and small orchestra. The composer himself arranged the work for Ondes and piano. In 1933, this work was given its first performance at the école Normale de Musique in Paris.” -Adapted from Georges Hacquard.
In part two of this program the first concert of the OM 8 Festival continues with:
Poison d'or, “Premiered at Noh Theatre in Nagoya, Japan, in 2001. The work is based on emotionless piano patterns derived from the sounds of continuous snowing in the dead of night. These patterns are juxtaposed with the Ondes' expressive, human song, which paints my mind's inner landscape.” —Takashi Harada
Untitled 1, “Started as an improvisation made after visiting an art exhibition. The abstract titles of the visual artworks impressed me, and struck me as similar to the titles ‘Composition,’ or ‘In A-Minor,’ one would apply to musical works. I did some recording sessions at my studio based on the paintings' titles, and this composition is the result. I perform the work solo with tape accompaniment.” —Takashi Harada
Feuillets Inéditsm, The great French composer Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) wrote many scores that included the Ondes Martenot. His sister-in-law, Jeanne Loriod, was one of the great teachers and performers on the instrument. She had studied with the inventor Maurice Martenot and subsequently was the teacher of tonight's soloist Takashi Harada. Messiaen often included parts for Jeanne Loriod to perform in his major orchestral works such as the “Turangalîla-Symphonie” and his opera “St. François d'Assise”. At the time of his death, several pages of works for ondes and piano were left undated. They were only recently edited for publication by the pianist Yvonne Loriod, the widow of the composer, and include some of his early romantic writing with some of his later melodies inspired by his notation of bird songs. A recording of the music, performed by Jeanne and Yvonne Loriod, was released in 1999. —Charles Amirkhanian
Trois Poèmes: Ondes , Serimpie , Chant d'oppression
“Jolivet had been impressed by a demonstration of the Ondes Martenot, and composed ‘Ondes’ for the instrument's inventor, Maurice Martenot. Martenot gave the work its first performance at the Société Nationale (Paris) in 1939, with composer Arthur Honegger in attendance. The title ‘Serimpie’ is Jolivet's own invented word derived from ‘estampie.’ The ‘estampie,’is one of the oldest known dances from the Middle Ages. It sometimes was performed on the portable organ. The Ondes Martenot takes the place of the organ here. Modal and later tonal compositional techniques in the original version of the "estampie" have been replaced by serialism in Jolivet's "Serimpie," hence the first syllable of the unusual title. Jolivet described the concluding movement in 1930s annotational fashion thusly: ‘After an introduction establishing the dominant mood of controlled suffering in ‘Chant d'oppression,’ the piano plays muffled percussive sounds over which the Ondes emits a plaintive recitative that rises and transforms itself into a true melody. After several attempts to take flight, one of which is particularly violent and distressed, this melody falls back once more and ends in an aggrieved phrase, leaving us with a feeling of resigned contemplation. If this piece deserved interpretation, it would be the following: revolt has but little chance of bringing freedom, and ordeal is only salvation if it is accepted. From a stylistic perspective, this work falls outside any customary formal and compositional conventions." —Adapted from Georges Hacquard
Although for many years the full suite was performed with the first & second movements reversed, Mr. Harada will present the work in its original state.
Thermal Conductivity, “Is a masterpiece of writing for the Ondes Martenot. Shin-ichro Ikebe (b. 1943) is a distinguished Japanese composer who studied with Akira Miyoshi and has written a large body of music in all media. He wanted to explore the Ondes as an expressive vehicle for contrasting musical lines: hard and soft, short and long, organic and inorganic, as opposed to the Ondes' more conventional use as an analogue to the human voice. I gave the premiere of this solo work at the concert hall of Mito Art Tower in Japan, an hour-long train ride from Tokyo.” —Takashi Harada
Part three of this program includes:
Serenade for Frank Wigglesworth, “Is dated 12 February 1952 and was originally entitled in Esperanto ‘Serenado por Guitaro.’ It was written as part of a letter to a composer friend who was studying guitar at the time. Lou Harrison says, ‘This Serenade for guitar was written for Frank Wigglesworth as part of a private letter to him. I hope, then, that he will not mind my making public a portion of our correspondence!’” —David Tanenbaum
Music for Bill and Me, “Bears the mark ‘Oaxaca-Aptos, 66, 67.’ The work is for William Colvig, the composer's late partner and fellow instrument-builder. Colvig built many of the percussion instruments that have been used in Lou Harrison's music over the years.” —David Tanenbaum
Sonata in Inhartum, “Is transcribed for a work for single harp and is dedicated to Randall Wong. This transcription lowers the pitch by a fifth. The Ishartum mode is the ‘white key’ mode on E, and is the essential flamenco mode. It was first found on a Babylonian cuneiform inscription tuning tablet from the eighteenth century BC.” —David Tanenbaum
A Waltz for Evelyn Hinrichsen, “Was written in 1977 for a publishing project of C.F. Peters entitled ‘The Waltz Project.’ This piece takes the form of an homage to a remarkable woman and friend who used to help me as music librarian when we were both young at Mills College, and who later became the thoughtful, generous, and endearing matriarch of the publishing house of C.F. Peters Edition. —Lou Harrison
Scenes from Nek Chand, “The wonderful sculpture and architecture of Nek Chand, near Chandigarh set me to composing three small pieces in admiration. My friend Dave Scully very kindly lent his richly-toned steel guitar for me to explore for composing...Unlike the classical guitar, the National steel has a cone resonator inside the body that acts as a kind of amplifier. Invented in the late 1920s, the instrument has been revived by National Reso-Phonic which now produces an exotic array of these wonderful instruments." —Lou Harrison
Páprica, “Is dedicated to Bartholomeu Weise and premiered in the Municipal Theater of Niteroi in 1999. It is part of the ‘Spice Series,’ a group of works named for spices, for different solo instruments, all constructed on the T-System. The external sections are in Tempo Rubato, contrasting with the central section in Tempo Giusto.” —Ricardo Tacuchian
Impulsos No. 2, “Was composed in honor of José Siqueira, my first composition teacher. The premiere occurred in 1997 by Arthur Gouveia and Celso Garcia. In the work I used material from my song “Berimbau”, based on myths from the Amazon.” —Ricardo Tacuchian
Imagem Carioca, “In 1987 I transcribed the piece ‘Imagem Carioca’ (Rio de Janeiro's Images), originally for orchestra, for four guitars. The work has been played on numerous occasions by guitar ensembles in Brazil and Spain, and was premiered in 1987 in Rio at the Villa-Lobos Museum in a special concert commemorating my twenty-fifth anniversary as a composer. The composition suggests the accompanying percussion group at a samba school, with a lyrical middle section. —Ricardo Tacuchian
This part of the tape also includes a couple of performances from the second concert of the Festival held on March 8, 2002. This includes the concluding few minutes of Lou Harrison’s “Trio” for violin, cello, and piano performed by The Harmida Piano Trio, and baritone Tom Buckner performing the first 16 minutes of his and Annea Lockwood’s joint composition “Duende” for baritone and tape.
OM 8 Panel Discussion & Concert 2, March 8, 2002, This first part of this program begins with the concluding performance from the first concert of the OM 8 Festival held on March 7, 2002. The composition is “New Work,” an improvisation by The Circle Trio, Pauline Oliveros, accordion, India Cook, violin, and Karolyn van Putten, voice. The second concert of OM 8 Festival, held on March 8, 2002, then begins with a panel discussion moderated by Charles Amirkhanian and featuring Richard Teitelbaum, Tom Buckner, and composers Annea Lockwood, Lou Harrison. Teitelbaum talks about how his interest in shakuhachi music led him to collaborate with some of the great Japanese masters of the instrument and influenced many of his electro-acoustic compositions. Lou Harrison then demonstrates the tack piano, for which he thinks he has composed the only work for its solo performance. Harrison also offers a brief explanation and demonstration of various tuning systems on a harpsichord. Annea Lockwood and Tom Buckner then describe the intent and process that went into their joint creation “Duende,” which is for baritone and tape.
In part two of this program the second concert of the OM 8 Festival continues with:
Sonata for Harpsichord, Was composed by Harrison for Linda Burman-Hall to play on the eve of 2000. It offers three contrasting moods based on modal scales: a bustling, energetic opening with inner-voice trills, a warmly lyrical central meditation, and a flamenco-tinged ‘Estampie' dance accented by exuberant cluster chords. Harrison planned the work for the Baroque well-temperament Kirnberger II, which he also used to compose his first “Concerto for Piano with Selected Orchestra” (1985). “Sonata for Harpsichord” is performed on a French double harpsichord tuned at A=415. —Linda Burman-Hall
Cinna, Consists of a suite of incidental music created with Guggenheim Fellowship support to accompany a rod-puppet production of the classic French play, which did not materialize once the music was composed. Corneille's play “Cinna” is a grand political intrigue in which loyalty conflicts with revenge. Harrison's special "fully just 7-limit tuning"—which produces a spectrum of finely-nuanced melodic semitone relationships and larger intervals of either ‘pure' or ‘poisonous' affect—is particularly appropriate to a theatre world obsessed with power inequities and strategic alliances, a world in which affinity is tempered by antipathy. Instead of the ‘totalitarian tonal regime' imposed by equal temperament (which often masquerades as democracy), just-intonation pitch relationships such as those of “Cinna” give rise to a complex and changeable tonal theatre, a stratified society of sound in which pitches become actors, creating interval relationships and motives of character. “Cinna” is pitched at A=415 at the request of the composer, bringing it closer to the world of Corneille while reducing the risk of broken strings. —Linda Burman-Hall
Trio, My only piano trio was commissioned in 1989 by the Mirecourt Trio. The third movement of the work is a little suite of solos for the three musicians. They are again united in the finale. With the exception of the one chromatic movement which is dedicated to the memory of Virgil Thomson, all of the remaining movements are modal in character, and the entire work is melodic. This is the first work that I composed after triple-bypass heart surgery, and it was interrupted by a major earthquake and the death of my good friend and mentor Virgil Thomson, thus it has a complex history. The premiere performance took place with the Mirecourt Trio at the Menil Museum in Houston in 1990. —Lou Harrison
In part three of this program the second concert of the OM 8 Festival continues with:
Duende, Within an improvisational framework, Thomas Buckner explores the possibility of change of state through such transformations, moving through three stages: preparation, a first flight, and a final flight in which he moves beyond the self he knows. Thus ‘”Duende” is not a prepared, performed work, but a vehicle for experience. He is partnered by a tape drawn from the sounds of the cuica (an African and South American instrument), a large glass gong and other glass sounds, wind, a Cameroonian rattle, a kea (New Zealand mountain parrot), and a bullroarer, our thanks to Tom Hamilton for his assistance in making the tape.—Annea Lockwood
Distance de Fée, Was inspired by a poem of the same title by Shuzo Takiguchi, and was originally composed for violin and piano. Tōru Takemitsu loved the Ondes Martenot from his younger days and promised to write me a concerto, but was unable to do so before his death in 1996. However, he gave me official permission to play this beautiful piece on the Ondes, and left some important modifications and suggestions. The work is a companion to “Uninterrupted Pause for Piano” (1952). —Takashi Harada
Voyage en Septembre, Is a transfiguring suite for me, a work that will never finish. Each time I play this, I change the instrumentation and other aspects. Sometimes I'll modify even the number of movements. I usually rehearse with three movements: Prelude, Fugue, and Echoes. It might become something altogether different at this concert! —Takashi Harada
Support for Linda Burman-Hall's appearance provided by New Albion Records
OM 8 Concert 3, March 9, 2002, The first part of this program begins with the concluding performance from the second concert of the OM 8 Festival held on March 8, 2002. The composition is “Quintuplets Play Pen: Homage to Ruth Crawford,” a piano piece by Pauline Oliveros, performed by Sarah Cahill. The piece was conceived mathematically using a 10 X 10 matrix of choices and is described by Cahill as “a playful polyrhythmic dance.” Then as a tribute to the late Leo Ornstein, Cahill performs his “Morning in the Woods” as a special encore. The third concert of OM 8 Festival, held on March 9, 2002, then begins with:
Stratified Bands: Last Kind Words, Changing perspective, Drifting Areas, The Mississippi River, Never gets out of me, If I get killed #1, When you see me coming, And, if I don't bring you flowers, If I get killed #2, Looked up at the stars, Calm/penetrating
When I first met David Harrington in 1996, he asked me to listen to Last Kind Words, a delta blues song recorded by Geeshie Wiley in 1930. This song has haunted me ever since. David told me my instrument sounded like the blues to him. I work in just intonation, a natural tuning system using small number proportionate relationships. The naturally occurring seventh partial in the harmonic series is flatter than the seven in equal temperament. This interval is known to musicians as the "blues seven"... The middle section, Drifting Areas, is a series of seven "songs", each built around the mood of the chord and based on one of the vocal phrases from Last Kind Words. One chord melts into the next, some pitches remaining the same. The middle five sections use a tuning system that composer Harry Partch would call seven limit Otonality. The pitches are generated from multiplication, the overtone series is included in this pitch set. The first two and last two sections use pitches that are generated by division, Partch's Utonality, you can think of it as a mirror image mathematically from the overtone series, or the "undertone" series. In the overtone series, you can hear the "upness" of tones stacking on top of themselves, utonality seems to be oozing downward.—Ellen Fullman
The composition and world premiere presentation of this work made possible by a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission. Construction of the Long String Instrument was accomplished with the assistance of the staff of The Exploratorium.
The second part of this program continues with:
Immersion, Is a quiet and dramatic work is based on a continuous four-mallet, then eight-mallet roll on the marimba, colored by sound from a quartz bowl gong tuned in F. The bowl gong sits on the keys of the marimba, setting up beat frequencies which are gently amplified and provide a haunting atmospheric effect. The second player employs two tam-tams, one of which is "prepared" with hanging ping pong balls and other objects, which vibrate gently when excited. Both the tam-tams are bowed as well. “Immersion” was composed for keyboard percussionist Dominic Donato. —Annea Lockwood
Estruturas Gêmeas, Is one in a series of eight "Structures" pieces, unified by the sounds of modern music of this period, such as cluster tones, atonality, indeterminacy, experimentation with new ways of writing, as well as new sounds on conventional instruments. This work, translated as Twin Structures, was premiered in Brazil by Paoulo Affonso de Moura Ferreira and Maria Angelica Ketterer. This work has already been performed in Argentina, Paraguay, the United States, and Spain, and is often performed by Brazilian piano duos. I composed it in memory of Esther Scliar, soon after her death. I decided to place two pianists side by side, as if they were twins, feeling at that moment a spiritual twin of Esther's, myself. — Ricardo Tacuchian
The third part of the program continues with:
Arenas d'un Tiempo (”Sands of Time”), Was inspired by the beaches that I could see from my hotel room during a stay in Río de Janeiro. The motions and gestures of the piece were suggested by the striking change in the appearance of a beach's sand when the wind disturbs its tranquility and re-forms the sand into a pattern of ripples. —Tania León
Canto, Exists on many levels-along the lines of a multi-dimensional checkerboard. The simplicity of a song is mirrored by a solo instrument as the center of a musical universe, along with a multiplicity of harmonic and rhythmic cells orbiting around its core. The texts all are by Cuban writers, and the music was premiered by baritone Thomas Buckner, who commissioned it. —Tania León
The fourth part of the program continues with:
African Cookbook, African Sunrise, The Shrine, African Rhythms quintet performs new and classic works by Randy Weston, music which, according to Robin D.G. Kelley, New York Times jazz critic and NYU African Studies professor, "…pushes the African rhythms to the foreground and always tries to work within a framework true to the source, whether it's the West African dance music called highlife or sacred songs from Morocco. These forms fit seamlessly in a jazz context precisely because, in Mr. Weston's words, ‘the music that is called jazz ... for me is really an extension of African culture.'" Hearing African Rhythms is like, "witnessing a joyous, sacred ceremony." —Amanda Piasecki
“Their set began with the very powerful and evocative "African Cookbook", from the band's 1991 album The Spirit of Our Ancestors, which gets its juice and its resplendence from Weston's completely thought-out yet deeply felt, and thrillingly voiced chords. These are frequently parallel, and Weston makes them sound either monumental or lyrically delicate, without the slightest show of strain. There was a world of nuance here, and the band contributed beautifully gauged sonorities to the total affect. Other numbers in the set were just as impressive, especially "The Shrine", from African Rhythms' CD Khephera, which is based on a mysterious blues-redolent figure from Weston's piano, and T.K. Blue's solo flute added to the primeval effect of this great tune. The set also included deeply poetic versions of "African Sunrise " (c. 1989, but probably composed much earlier ), which Weston wrote for Dizzy Gillespie and Machito, and Bobby Benson's seductively rhythmic "Niger Mambo." He also played his festival-commissioned piece, "Blues For Langston Hughes", which he wrote to observe the centenary of the poet's death, and to honor his personal friendship with him. Weston also dedicated it to his actor friend Mel Stewart (1929-2002), who has impersonated the role of the writer, and died this February. The composer performed this short, delicate, and deeply moving piece as a duet with bassist Alex Blake. And the audience, realizing, that the whole set was, to put it mildly, one from the heart, went crazy. This, obviously, was music for a reason, and a fitting end to an evening of blues of all kinds.” —Michael McDonagh (from http://www.classical-music-review.org/reviews/OpenMinds8.html)
The fifth and last part of the program continues with two more performances by Randy Weston African Rhythms Quintet:
Blues for Langston Hughes, Niger Mamb
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