The pseudo-fact that we are ‘visual creatures’ has been drummed into mass culture for the past several decades. It’s pernicious pieces of propaganda, one of those marketing tools that is so pervasive and in-plain-sight that social critics and paranoids searching for subliminal messages and methods of mass coercion not only overlook it, they embrace it. We see and therefore we buy what we see is the way it goes, from artful design to pornography to fine art, where currently overcompensated rentiers pay immoral sums for works meant that, when hung on the wall of the McMansion, are meant to dazzle
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Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Events, Exhibitions, Experimental Music, Los Angeles
For the next few months, The City of Angels is going to be the epicenter of all things Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001). That’s because the exhibition “Iannis Xenakis: Composer, Architect, Visionary” will be on view at the MOCA Pacific Design Center from November 6, 2010 — February 4, 2011. The exhibition explores Xenakis’ wide range of sketches, scores and drawings, not only musical but architectural and aesthetic as well. Not always simply notes on score paper, many of Xenakis’ sketches and drawings conjure up artistic visions, in ways perhaps only matched by John Cage’s documents of his own explorations. Defintely a
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CDs, Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, Exhibitions, Experimental Music, Houston, Improv, Mix Tape
[Ed. — After many years in NYC but fresh to my own stomping ground of Houston, Chris Becker has offered to write some semi-regular musings on the new-music scene down thisaway. His own introduction: In its March 2010 Global Ear column, The Wire magazine described Houston as “the weirdest and wildest of (Texas) cities” with a “rich tradition of unofficial and DIY art.” Speaking as a recent transplant from New York City (where I lived for twelve years), I can confirm that our British friends were on point with their analysis of H-Town. I am in my third month as a
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Composers, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Exhibitions, Experimental Music, Festivals, New York
An illegal immigrant with a civil engineering degree in Paris, fugitive from his native Greece for his WWII resistance activity (for which he nearly died, and lost one eye) Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) eventually found himself working for the famed architect Le Corbusier, first as one of any number of assistants but soon enough as collaborator. Yet he was always drawn above all else to the need to compose music. Nadia Boulanger, Arthur Honneger, Darius Milhaud –all were either rejecting or rejected. It wasn’t until Xenakis stumbled upon Olivier Messiaen that he found a teacher that saw past the inexperience and
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Cello, Chamber Music, Concerts, Electro-Acoustic, Exhibitions, Experimental Music, Music Events, San Francisco
That’s what early settlers said about the wild mint growing all over the peaceful hills and oceanside that would one day be paved over and known as San Francisco. In fact, for many years starting in 1835, that’s what the settlement was called, only in Spanish: Yerba Buena. History lives on in the name of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, located on 3rd Street between Mission and Howard. YBCA’s New Frequencies performance series, curated by Performing Arts Manager Isabel Yrigoyen, is well underway, and offers a couple of intriguing choices in coming days. First on Saturday evening, August 22,
Read moreI’ve only been living in New York City for a few years, but I already feel like there are times when I just simply take the city for granted. Or worse, I don’t take advantage of all that it has to offer. But I think what makes living here so exciting is the opportunity to accidentally stumble onto incredible events, or to go places expecting one thing and end up (pleasantly) at something totally and completely different. This is exactly what happened yesterday afternoon as I wandered in to the World Financial Center Winter Garden during the third hour of
Read moreLast year I mentioned seeing an exhibition here in Houston, “Every Sound You Can Imagine“; a compilation of all kinds of newer musical manuscripts and scores. Then just yesterday I was reading of a show at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, “Notation, calculation and form in the arts“. All, of course, continuing the tradition of John Cage’s and Alison Knowles’ seminal 1969 book Notations (available complete online right now as a PDF download). Which seems all the more reason to mention the long-awaited Notations sequel just released: Notations 21, brought together by Theresa Sauer. Besides the book, the Notations
Read moreMy first year in college (1974-5), we were treated to an exhibition of the original score pages selected by John Cage and Alison Knowles for their highly influential 1969 book Notations (currently available as a free PDF download at UbuWeb). For young composers at the time, these bits and pieces of anything-but-standard notation were eye- and ear-opening, sent us scouring the library stacks for more, and led us all to go a little crazy trying to mimic or out-write what we saw there. Then as sequel this year, Theresa Sauer carried the idea up to our own time with Notations 21, an updated
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