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Kyle Gann on music after the fact

The Excitement of Open Music

I just now got out of a three-and-a-half-hour rehearsal for the concert I’m presenting next week, of my Open Instrumentation Ensemble at Bard. December 14 at 7:30 in Bard Hall, we’ll be presenting the following marathon program:

Philip Glass: Music in Fifths

Willy Berliner: Persistence of Vision*

Samuel Vriezen: The Weather Riots

Frederic Rzewski: Attica

Brian Baumbusch: Cyclical Counterpoint with Sangse*

Rzewski: Les Moutons de Panurge

Julius Eastman: Gay Guerrilla

Jonathan Nocera: Blues for Julius Eastman*

Rhys Chatham: Guitar Trio

Terry Riley: In C

The pieces with asterisks are by Bard students, written for the ensemble. The historical highlight is Eastman’s Gay Guerrilla, which is scored for multiples of any instrument; he always performed it with pianos, and we’re giving what is, as far as I know, the world premiere of an electric guitar version. The students love the piece (you’ll note one of them wrote a piece dedicated to Julius), and they did a dynamite job of playing it tonight. When they started echoing the hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” back and forth, which Julius subverted as a gay manifesto, it was a goosebump moment, and I suddenly felt his sardonic spirit fill the room. To be an audience of one at such a performance (since the other players had gone home) was a humbling privilege. I hadn’t directed an ensemble since 1976 – the year I gave the Dallas premieres of some pieces by Reich, Glass, and Riley at Carruth Auditorium at SMU – and I have little experience to remind me how fulfilling it is.

I’m also very proud that these students will graduate free from the academic fallacy that a score must be a complete and detailed reflection of a predetermined sonic image; that they’ll always know that compelling music can be made with repeat signs, gradual processes, and considerable performer latitude, and that it can be a real blast to try out the same music with a variety of different instrumentations, and with diverse dynamic shadings. The student pieces allow lots of performer decisions, and the composers have had fun experimenting with different rules and combinations in rehearsal – so utterly different from the classical experience in which they’re expected to notate every nuance for professional players who will execute their notation with computer-like precision. The students’ enthusiasm and dedication have astonished me, and made me proud that I have this important Downtown repertoire, and attitude, to pass on to them.

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So classical music is dead, they say. Well, well. This blog will set out to consider that dubious factoid with equanimity, if not downright enthusiasm [More]

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Sites to See

American Mavericks - the Minnesota Public radio program about American music (scripted by Kyle Gann with Tom Voegeli)

Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar - a cornucopia of music, interviews, information by, with, and on hundreds of intriguing composers who are not the Usual Suspects

Iridian Radio - an intelligently mellow new-music station

New Music Box - the premiere site for keeping up with what American composers are doing and thinking

The Rest Is Noise - The fine blog of critic Alex Ross

William Duckworth's Cathedral - the first interactive web composition and home page of a great postminimalist composer

Mikel Rouse's Home Page - the greatest opera composer of my generation

Eve Beglarian's Home Page- great Downtown composer

David Doty's Just Intonation site

Erling Wold's Web Site - a fine San Francisco composer of deceptively simple-seeming music, and a model web site

The Dane Rudhyar Archive - the complete site for the music, poetry, painting, and ideas of a greatly underrated composer who became America's greatest astrologer

Utopian Turtletop, John Shaw's thoughtful blog about new music and other issues

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