Rusty Banks

SNAKES (a)LIVE!

2008-08-13T12:12:00.006-05:00

Yay! TAXONOMY, my suite for flute and clarinet about snake genera, was selected for the S21 concert in December! Very honored. Here are links to scores/sounds for people wanting a preview. If anyone wants to perform some or all of the pieces, feel free (but let me know and send a program).

http://rustybanks.org/taxonomy.html

Also, I've listened to recordings Alex and Jeremy's works, and I can say I'm very much looking forward to hearing these works live.

Hoping to meet many of you in person,
rb

Sonic Installations, Visual Temporality

2008-07-08T20:18:00.003-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, I saw Cai Guo-Qiang's exhibit (retrospective?) at the Guggenheim. I love the sheer power of his work and how easily people can connect with it at levels varying from the playful, to the philosophical, to the technical.

The three pieces I enjoyed most were installations, one depicting a tiger being shot with arrows, one depicting a bombed car flipping through the air, and another involving wolves running into a plexiglass wall.

It struck me how, as a composer, I want more and more to create works that are like exhibits (installations, boomboxes throughout the room) and visual artists want to be more temporal (Matthew Barney�s Vaseline sculptures, Cai Guo-Qiang�s freeze frame-inspired scenarios).

Sure, multi-dimensional works like these have existed since the 1920s, but now they seem to have a new sleekness and maturity. Earlier, artists doing interdisciplinary/multimedia/event-based work had to consciously address their defiance of convention. This defiance often served as the "point" of the work and many great works came from this approach. In the post-pluralist age, this disregard (rather than defiance) of conventions simply helps direct attention to the intended artistic expression, providing an opportunity to create works as powerful, but more sublime, in such media.

Jesse Helms: How fitting...

2008-07-04T11:45:00.005-05:00

...that on Independence Day we are rid of Jesse Helms, an ardent opponent of freedom. Thank you, Senator, for all but destroying government support for the arts around the exact minute I entered college as a music major. I'm sure a very Maplethorp-ish experience awaits you in the afterlife.

Proper Documentation

2008-06-22T09:25:00.005-05:00

In my last post, I discussed collaborative works. These works tend to be 3-D in nature, with performers and visuals in one area and boomboxes throughout the space. This creates a sonically rich environment with which audiences (even traditional ones) seem to meaningfully connect. I love the fact that these works can�t be recreated in an mp3, but on the other hand, the further from convention a work is, the more a working composer needs adequate documentation.

Who out there has seen brilliant strategies in documenting multi-media (hate that word) works? I love the fluidity of YouTube, but I�m talking more high-quality. DVDs seem a good choice since they have surround sound and video. Who�s seen this done (well)?

Consider the documentation below (done in the typical post-grant-report fashion) of an installation Scott M. Conard (video artist) and I did in the vestibule of a St. James Episcopal Church in Lancaster, PA before a new music concert. It�s based on a poem called World�s End. And Worlds Begin by Richard Miller. There are some nice visuals, and you can sorta tell what it sounded like, but trust me:

You just had to be there�

Collaboration

2008-06-13T14:05:00.008-05:00

Great art is not created in committee.
--Robert Hughes

Lately, the kind of work I�ve been seeking is collaborative in nature. I suppose any composition that involves performers other than the composer must be collaborative to some extent, but I�m speaking of creating works where music is not the primary focus, but isn�t necessarily secondary either.

Some of these works are fairly conventional and easily categorized, like my current commission for large choir, trombone quartet, and the American Repertory Ballet. The work, Worlds End. And Worlds Begin, is to be a semi-evening length work that is essentially a (modern) ballet work. More on this later�

Other works may fit into categories like �installation art� and �multimedia design� though I find the first term too apt to conjure images of works from the 60�s and the latter term is just too 90�s. I suppose the word �interdisciplinary� could be used, but even that term already smells of early-00s staleness. But then, terminology has always been a problem for composers.

Anyone who has collaborated a lot (or just once and never again!) can probably recall an instance where having to collaborate was tedious rather than synergistic. I�ve had these experiences, but lately collaborating seems easy and produces work far more interesting to a broader audience than any work I could have done on my own. Because of this new found ease, I suggested to Line Bruntse, a visual artist working on an installation in Milan for which I'm designing the sound, that perhaps I�d be a total tyrant were I to encounter something that didn�t meet my vision. She emailed back:

I could see you as a tyrant, only nobody would ever know they would simply think they were just having fun with you. I don't think they would realize they were bending to your will because they would just want to... Sneaky...

As nice as that thought is, I doubt I have that much Carnegie-like prowess. I think it would be more accurate to say I�ve just come to value collaboration. Artistically, I want to be influenced by my collaborator. Years ago, it would have been possible for me to have a vision so inflexible that it might break from trying to leave room for another�s idea. Now, not opening myself to the influence of a collaborator would make a collaborative work seem inauthentic.

Who�s collaborating? Why? Why not?

Word from China

2007-11-19T05:42:00.001-05:00

Ah. Such a nice email to receive. The Continental Trombone Quartet is quickly becoming a force in New Music. They�ve already commissioned 13 new works for the ensemble, with many more in the making. I wrote them a short flashy piece for their performance in Beijing. The work in called �Bone Jump� and is a post-minimal reworking of fragments of pop tunes that have the word �jump� in the title.

We are currently working on a work for trombone quartet, SATB choir, electronics, video, and dance. More on that later�

Rusty,

Back from China and happy to report a fine performance of your well received composition. I do not know if we will receive a recording or not, that was unclear. The guys loved working on your piece and plan to continue to perform it on a regular basis.

Thanks so much for the great composition. Please be in contact with Doug, copied here, about publishing under the CTQ Series with PebbleHill Publishers.

Talk soon.

Mark

Building a Better Music Appreciation Class 2

2007-08-28T09:26:00.000-05:00

I haven�t properly posted about last semester�s Music Appreciation class, so let me now.

I was happy with it.

I taught it in reverse-chronological order and focused primarily on music after Debussy. I think teaching it in reverse was neither here nor there, but focusing on new music seemed to engage the students much more. I posted some of the topics here, and got some of the best comments I ever have in this class. Overall, it was fairly successful for a Music Appreciation class.

Now let me tell you what I really want to do.

I often begin my classes by stating �We can�t learn things from classes and books. We can only learn from meaningful experience. Classes and books only prepare us to make the most of a meaningful experience when we find or create one.� I certainly believe that Music Appreciation texts and CDs will not equal a meaningful experience.

Many Music Appreciation classes have a live concert component where students attend three concerts and write reports. I teach section of 200-300 students and find this to be a daunting administrative task. More distressing however, is that I have no way to teach the class directly about the random concerts they might attend.

But what if you could have a live concert in the class, during the class.

Well, nice if your school wants to give you thousands of dollars for your class, but fat chance. Where can we get those kinds of resources?

A text and set of CDs generally costs close to $100. What if there was a concert series that sold subscriptions for $50. What if those concerts happened in the class, during the class. What if 220 students bought $50 ticket subscriptions as their textbook?

What kind of concert series would you book with an $11,000 budget?

What if your Music Business majors handled the booking and marketing of said series as part of their Classical Music Business Class, and students could have internships running the series?

It�s happening at Millersville University. Now.

Worlds end. And Worlds begin.

2007-08-12T14:10:00.000-05:00

Writing at the End of the World by Richard Miller

I�ve been reading Richard Miller's Book about the place of humanities in education and in life. It�s a thought-provoking read for anyone working in any purely creative field, though it is written from the prospective of someone who teaches writing.

The book searches for the purpose (point?) of things like poetry, prose, and music through the lens of a handful of tragedy�s that have become part of our collective conscience: Columbine, The Unabomber, Chernobyl, 9-11. What place does something like a poem have in a world like this? Further more, what are we to teach people in our fields?

Miller gives part of his answer, or at least a reason for pursuing an answer, at the end of the preface.

�Schools currently provide extensive training in the fact that worlds end; what is missing is training in how to bring better worlds into being.�

The book is not a new-agey feel-good testament to the healing power of the written word. It is a rigorous examination of assumptions about the limits of, place of, and usefulness of creative work. It is an exercise in critical optimism.

Educators, especially those in the arts and humanities, will find many of the questions they ask themselves tackled in this well-researched, probing book.

Spatial Someone

2007-05-27T11:32:00.000-05:00

Kennesaw State students assist with a soundcheck for HYDROLOGY.

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When I was booked to play an Earth Day concert in Birmingham for the ArtBurst concert series, I wanted to add another stop or two in the Southeast. I found Laurence Sherr on the American Composers Forum website and he sent Blue Ridge Frescos for solo guitar. Perfect. It fit my not-so-heavy-handed, eco-themed show for guitar and/or guitar with electronics. I put together a show I call RUSTY BANKS: SPATIAL SOMEONE. It featured works by composers who have some tie to the South.

Laurence agreed to bring me to Kennesaw State University (a bit north of Hot-lanta) to do some comp lessons, guitar lessons, a lecture, and a concert.

My favorite thing about Kennesaw was the cross-pollination going on between the performance and composition elements on campus. Often, the guitar students would have original pieces to show me. Mary Akerman (Instructor of Guitar) was very supportive of this, and seems to do much to foster students to be creative as well as athletic (her students are as technically sound as they are creative).

There was a time when separating music into composition and performance to the extent we do now could not have been imagined.

Old stuff...

2007-04-13T18:32:00.000-05:00

Note: All posters welcome, but this is aimed at a music appreciation class I teach. We'd love to hear from composers besides me, though. If this is the only topic you see posted, go to:

http://sequenza21.com/banks.html

Well, we are done with the post-debussy portion of our Music and Culture class, and learning the ways of Mozart, Beethoven, and sonata form. I've heard a variety of feelings expressed about this:

A. "I'm glad we're finally studying the stuff I like (Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert)."

B. "I'm sad we're done with the stuff I like (Reich, Cage, Andriessen)."

C. "I'm glad we started with new music, because I would have zoned out from the start if we started with this old stuff."

D. "I wish we would have gone in chronological order rather than reverse. To end with Baroque music is a downer."

E. "I wish we could have studied Bernstien more."

So what do you think? Reverse chronological order, or no? Sonata form or prepared piano? Programmatic music or samples of speech?

Of course, I'd never settle for an "or" where we can have an "and."

By Request: omni topic

2007-03-02T18:36:00.000-05:00

Note: All posters welcome, but this is aimed at a music appreciation class I teach. We'd love to hear from composers besides me, though. If this is the only topic you see posted, go to:

http://sequenza21.com/banks.html

Is the �Afro-American Symphony� an expression of the voice of Black America or just a happy face put on the extreme oppression they were experiencing.

Also: How about that Debussy? That Schoenberg? That Varese? So close (in time) yet so far away (in style). Who do you dig? Who don�t ya?

More important: Why?

Music and Culture Topic 3: Crumb, Cage, Lutoslawski...

2007-03-01T15:44:00.000-05:00

I had a leading question about Crumb, Cage and Lutoslawski, but I decided the discussion has been so good that I didn�t want to limit possible topics.

Soooo� What did you think of those guys?

Music and Culture Topic 2: Day of Elvis, day of wrath...

2007-02-28T12:47:00.000-05:00

Does Michael Daugherty�s �Dead Elvis� pay respect to Elvis, mock Elvis, or both? How?

Other Comments?

Music and Culture Topic 1:

2007-02-25T12:48:00.000-05:00

The first work we studied in Music and Culture was Louis Andriessen�s Racconto dall�Inferno. A remarkable performance, the concert was also notable in its quick distribution on iTunes. A majority of our guided listening focused on text painting. It is easy to note that Andriessen is adept at text painting, but that leaves the following questions:

1) Does the piece have merit as music, without consideration of the text?

2) Is an experience of the piece valid if you cannot understand the text (or do not have a translation)?

Also, any comments or questions about this work, or Steve Reich�s Check it out� from City Life are welcome.

Building a Better Music Appreciation Class

2006-12-12T11:19:00.000-05:00

I occasionally find myself hired to teach what is essentially a Music Appreciation class. This year I�m teaching a 200-seat version of the beast called �Music and Culture� at Millersville University in Millersville, PA.

I�m always trying to sharpen how effective the class is at increasing awareness of (so-called) art music as well as increasing the students� ability to listen with depth and concentration.

This year I�m approaching the class from something closer to my interests. The class will deal with music and its relation to other arts, and its relation with technology. The first work to be studied will be Louie Andriessen�s Racconto dall�Inferno. This provides an opportunity to discuss modernism, tradition, literature, iTunes, and politics. Wow. From there we will process in a roughly reverse-chronological fashion, taking a more topical, rather than historical, approach.

Some other novel things:

1. No text. Each student will have an iTunes account and will purchase about $50 worth of music. Quite a steal compared to a music appreciation text. I�m also thrilled that the L.A. Phil and other organizations will have a 100-200 hit spike in their digital sales. Just think if there were 10 class like this across the country!

2. Examples of visual art as parallels (a staple in such courses) will come from regional art museums like the Philadelphia Museum of Art rather than, say, the Louvre. For that handful of students who really want to experience the material more fully, the opportunity will exist.

3. The class will be blogged on S21. The class topics will get a brief summary in my blog-space here, and extra-credit will be given to thoughtful comments. In a 200-seat class, discussion is more likely to occur this way.

4. Emphasis will shift away from common practice period music. I�ve always found it odd that the two most stylized eras, Baroque and Classical, often receive more class meetings that 1900 � The Present. Since there is a greater scope of style in music after WWII, shouldn�t there be more time spent on it? Baroque, Classical, and Romantic music will receive a few classes each, at the most. Most of the class will deal with music after Debussy.

If anyone here has tried such things in a class as such, I�d love to hear about it. I�m also open to suggestions/reflections anyone has on this subject.

Hydrology

2006-07-02T21:57:00.000-05:00

The electric guitar is hardly exotic. So ubiquitous had it become, that acoustic music was a novelty by the 1980�s. Neglected in this pendulous swing between acoustic and electric was the humble gut-stringed beginnings of �The People�s Instrument.�

Berlioz called the guitar �an orchestra in miniature� but perhaps it is better described as an orchestra of nuance. But can we hear nuance these days?

Combining the classical guitar with electronics affords us beauty beyond what either could accomplish alone. Now the guitar can crescendo. It can appear behind the audience. It can change the size and shape of the space it occupies.

Classical guitar may be the �real� guitar, but classical guitar and electronics constitute the �surreal� guitar.

Music for iPod

2006-06-23T13:44:00.000-05:00

I have a new work that is the product of several wants:

1) I like for live versions of tunes to be different from the studio versions.

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones come to mind. Their albums feature digestible nuggets that are great for driving, cooking, and getting ready for their live shows. The live shows take these little gems and develop them into full-blown works of art. The live version of the work will use boomboxes spread through the room, and will be a small part of a larger, modular work.

2) I wanted to write something that would make sense on an iPod.

Not that I want every piece to be this, but I wanted to write one, or perhaps an �album� for this type of listening. Something with a bit of groove� something not driven by development as much as it is driven by pulse and timbre.

3) The pieces I listen to on CD or mp3 aren�t necessarily my favorite works.

I tend to listen to recordings of works that work as recordings. The pieces I like to hear live usually don�t transfer to recordings very well.

4) I wanted to create a work in a more layered fashion.

Typically, I fully compose a piece for instrument and electronics before I start to realize the parts in a studio. This time I tried an approach a bit more like producing a pop tune. I recorded the guitar part, then starting �over-producing� it. I first added some percussive elements, then added some noise, then copied some of the sounds and reversed them. I�ve found this layered approach to work well for me lately. Last year, I took a solo guitar work and reworked it into a piece for guitar, strings and alto flute. This was not merely an orchestration of the work, but a new work built on that material. It�s a great way to begin a work with some reflection already in place.

How do you create? How do you push yourself out of your intuition? Does one need to do that?

Color on a Gray Day in Philadelphia

2006-05-12T09:36:00.000-05:00

I just got back from Philadelphia, where I saw a rehearsal of Gerald Levinson�s �Toward the Light� for organ and orchestra. It�s a great piece being played by great orchestra featuring a great organist.

For the most part, I find organ and orchestra to be incompatible, but Levinson navigates this problem deftly. At times the work seemed like a piece for orchestra and electronics, or organ and electronics, with one monster being the ghost of the other. The use of color (Levinson�s specialty) was not only interesting but also meticulously crafted. Timbre changes were paced the way romantic composers might have paced harmonic rhythm, providing a sense of direction and destination to an otherwise atmospheric, yet intense, work.

Afterwards, I had coffee with the ever-passionate Eric Bruskin, and the extremely amicable Jim Jordon. We discussed acoustics, Taoism, music education, and professional dancers� abilities in fist-fighting. It was a good time.

Alienation, animosity and audience

2006-05-04T11:00:00.000-05:00

I love it when an audience responds well to a work of mine. That�s because there is a lot of �me� in the work and hearty applause (with positive and meaningful comments afterwards) is a sort vindication that my technical skills supported this transaction.

When I write music for commercials, I suspend my �voice� and provide what I think may strengthen the visual message. In this case, failure to reach the audience is indeed failure.

But for my concert music, I invite the audience to meet me half-way. I think it�s fine for composers to be critical of a close-minded audience. To be un-thinking is as dangerous as it is undesirable.

I say this, having gotten almost all positive reviews and comments and applause for presentations of my work. Whenever I am programmed on a concert the presenters love to point out that I�m �modern� yet listener-friendly!� which is far too apologetic for my tastes.

On Seq21, or any new music site for that matter, there is always talk of how our audience became alienated after WWII and whatnot. Personally, I'll be glad when animosity for the audience is hip again. Not that I really hate the audience, or write music that is not listener-friendly, I just don�t understand the pressure to bend towards the wants of overly-broad focus groups. What�s the point of making decisions based on likeability? Shouldn�t composers make choices based on clarity of idea?

Castles Made of Sand...

2006-04-07T14:35:00.000-05:00

Recently, I attended a church service where the speaker offered this as a qualification for art: it has to stand the test of time. Indeed, this is fairly conventional wisdom, but I propose that it is time to challenge that wisdom.

We still have �Flight of the Bumblebee.� We still have that painting of Dogs Playing Poker. Years from now will we be able to find the Greatest Hits of country super-group Alabama? Probably. Art? Not to my mind, but it depends on whom you ask.

What about works written for the now? It seems reasonable to me that a work reflecting a current situation could have powerful meaning in a specific moment, for a specific crowd, in a specific place. Then the same work could be meaningless in a different context. To say a work must �stand the test of time� is really to say it must have mass appeal to be art.

Since when has art had that?

Who doesn't need their own madame?

2006-04-04T08:14:00.000-05:00

My wife (and my first-call woodwind specialist), Christy Banks hosted a single reed symposium at Millersville University a few weeks ago. I had a couple of works performed, and some members of Lincoln, Nebraska�s New Music Agency came out to play. The crowd was the kind I most enjoy-- between fifty and a hundred fairly curious listeners, some experienced in new music, others completely new to it. The pieces were played well and there was good conversation afterwards.

It made me realize that I have something in Nebraska and Alabama that I don�t have in Pennsylvania yet: Performers who champion my music. That will change soon enough, but for now I�ll be leaning a little harder on me, my wife, and my electronic music chops.

At least the projects are coming. I�m currently nursing the following: a commission with a choreographer as part of the Susquehanna Arts Trail, a commission for a trombone quartet�s performance at a convention, a meet-the-composer residency in Nebraska, and a performing tour from here to the southeast. That stuff doesn't happen until 2007 though, so for now I�m doing a lot of meetings. Man, it takes a lot of meetings to get projects going.

And I do like the "meeting" part of it to an extent, but if anyone wants to be my Nadezhda von Meck, I�d totally say yes�

Zen and the Art of Linguistics

2006-03-17T10:17:00.000-05:00

Recently there was a great thread about calling oneself a �composer.� It started with Randy Nordschow�s thread on NewMusicBox, with its inflammatory assertion that � �it's time to face the fact that, yes, maybe we really aren't composers.� He also states that if you aren�t making the bulk of your income from composing, you are really a �hobbyist.� This was cause for some great discussion as well as soul searching for many readers of NewMusicBox and Sequenza21. One term in Randy�s post that some readers really balked at was �hobbyist.�

Whenever there is an attempt to label me, or what I do, I usually shrug. Any word would only label a part of who I am, and many times the word can only be a useful description in limited circumstances. I�m on record as saying I call myself �musician,� a term I find more flexible, than composer, performer, or teacher. While I didn�t become as enraged as some over the word �hobbyist� (I�ve certainly been called worse!) I did notice that something didn�t feel right about it. While a good argument could be made for the term, it just didn�t feel accurate. While I never could gather words that concisely explain why, I did manage to come up with an analogy that is perhaps useful.

If someone doesn�t make their living in Buddhism, can they really be a Buddhist, or is Buddhism merely their hobby?

Hats off to Randy, for a great conversation starter!

Libretto idea...

2006-03-12T11:50:00.000-05:00

I just returned from a workshop for young guitarists at the Omaha Conservatory of Music. Guitarist Peter Vonk recently started the program, and invited me to come back to Nebraska and teach the workshops. It was a great experience, due in part to many of those participating being former students of mine. Most of the students were technically solid and some well beyond. It�s great to be able to work with kids on musicality. It�s really fun to give the ideas and the technical tools for expression, but even more fun to let them try their own ideas.

While in the airport, on standby (I was emailed the wrong departing time by the conservatory), I caught some CNN with the sound off. I saw a cheerleader being carted off a basketball court strapped to an ambulance bed. Her arms were still frantically doing some sort of hand jive that I assume was a cheer. Now, I imagine that this was a news story about how she was injured by falling from a human pyramid, or wiped out by an out-of-bounds player but still had the courage to keep cheering. But with the sound off, I couldn�t help but wonder if a cheerleader droid hadn�t short-circuited, prompting its removal from the premises. Her movements were so convulsive-- more animtron-like than courageous. I was reminded of the toys in the Nutcracker, being carried off while still fulfilling a set of directives already set in motion. It was disturbing.

2006-02-23T20:58:00.000-05:00

Micro-tonal Madman, Monroe Golden (Pell City, AL) wrote me today to share a playlist from a San Fran radio show featuring my performance of his guitar "quartet", Vegan Permaculture. I wrote back with some tongue-in-cheek heckling for Googling himself (very tongue-in-cheek, considering I Google myself, like, every ten minutes or so).

Also on the playlist...

Heavens!

But do you SEE what I mean?

2006-02-20T10:18:00.000-05:00

What is good film music like?

Usually, it is simple and evocative. Most good film music is pretty lame by itself, because it exists to strengthen a mostly visual expression. So couldn�t the emphasis be shifted the other way? What if a film is used to �underscore� a composition? Actually, this practice is common, even if this terminology is not.

Remember the first time you heard a �tape� piece presented at a concert?

It didn�t work did it? I mean, maybe the piece works, but what about the presentation? There are several pieces for recorded media alone that I love, but I don�t ever want to hear them in a darkened room full of bored composers again. I�d rather hear these works at home, on headphones.

What about live performers?

I love to watch ensembles, large and small, perform with passion, IF it guides my listening. There can be a lot going on in a symphonic work, and catching something out of the corner of my eye can bring to my attention something I might have missed. Stravinsky ridiculed the �eye-closers.� Sure, sometimes, solo performers just ham it up a bit too much. In those cases I close my eyes, and often find that the performance is as sonically empty as their motions are distracting.

But what about projections, sculpture, staging etc?

If a composer concentrates more on the visual aspects of a work than the music, the work may suffer, but the same can be said for orchestration, notation, unorthodox instruments, piece titles, and program notes. Either these things enhance or they don�t.

The New Music Agency always presents a concert close to New Year�s Eve that is reflective in nature. We then play �In C� as a sort of after-concert thing where people listen, meditate, walk around, dance, roll their eyes, whatever. We do the �real� version that is AT LEAST 45 minutes. Last time, we projected the score behind us. People loved that. For one thing, it�s sort of �dare-devil� to let people in on what you are trying to accomplish, but it also begged people to ask themselves, �well, what chunk is THAT guy supposed to be playing?� I think this would be a great idea for any Berio Sequenza as well. Again, those who wanted to meditate to the piece closed both eyes, to make their eyes single

Simple but elegant staging�

For a performance we did at the Lied Center (Lincoln, Nebraska�s premiere performing arts center) I presented one of my works in a mega-hip, visually beautiful way, simply for practical reasons. My piece used three performers, hi-fi playback, and boom boxes spread throughout the room. The space made it impractical to surround the audience as I usually do, so I worked with the stage hands to suspend the boomboxes above the performers. The problem was that the performers had to push play on the boomboxes. We worked out a pulley system, where the performers would start their boomboxes and hoist them to the desired height, and clip a carabiner to a bar. This was in front of an entirely mirrored wall. The audience was hooked. If only we could have rappelled into the space!

With bemused resignation�

Once, when the New Music Agency presented Varese�s Poem Electronique as part of a �coherent narrative,� our artistic director handed out a map of The Hundred Acre Wood, but with the place names replaced with music descriptors that would guide the listeners through the piece. Now, anyone who knows me knows this is WAY too warm and fuzzy for my dark, brooding, post modern point of view. Whatever. Did the average audience member experience the full depth of the Varese in this experience? Of course not. No one does, in the first listen, in any circumstance. Did they experience the work on a deeper level than they would have in a darkened room? Definitely. For us snobs that won�t be pandered to, we can throw the paper on the floor and shut our eyes. I, for one, just might take a peek.