Night After Night

Playlist (Lost in musing circumstances).

A weekly tally of memorable things Steve Smith has stuck in his ears.

Roland Kayn - A Little Electronic Milky Way of Sound (Frozen Reeds; 2017)

PAT (Jacolby Satterwhite & Nick Weiss) - Love Will Find a Way (Pioneer Works Press; 2019)

Bill Orcutt - Odds Against Tomorrow (Palilalia; 2019)

Nate Wooley - Seven Storey Mountain I (Important; 2009. Read more here.)

Nate Wooley - Seven Storey Mountain II (Important; 2011)

Nate Wooley - Seven Storey Mountain III & IV (Pleasure of the Text; 2013)

Nate Wooley - Seven Storey Mountain V (Pleasure of the Text; 2016. Read more here.)

Daniel Lentz - Ending(s) - Twilight String Orchestra/Nicholas Deyoe (New World; 2019. Audio samples here.)
> Continental Divide; Ending(s) - Fahad Siadat

Księżyc - Księżyc (OBUH/Penultimate Press; 1996/2013)

Księżyc - Rabbit Eclipse (Penultimate Press; 2016)

Jessica Ackerley - A New Kind of Water (self-released; 2019)

Claire Rousay - t4t (No Rent; 2019)

Shanghai Symphony Orchestra/Long Yu - Gateways (Deutsche Grammophon; 2019)
> Qigang Chen - Wu Xing (The Five Elements); La joie de la souffrance (The Joy of Suffering) - Maxim Vengerov; Fritz Kreisler - Tambourin chinois - Maxim Vengerov; Sergei Rachmaninoff - Symphonic Dances

Davíð Brynjar Franzson - Longitude - Ensemble Adapter (Bedroom Community; due Nov. 8, 2019. Audio sample here.)

Michael Pisaro - Achilles, Socrates, Diotima (The Poem of Names, No. 2) - INSUB Meta Orchestra (INSUB; 2019)

Magnus Granberg - Als alle Vögel sangen mein Sehnen und Verlangen - INSUB Meta Orchestra (INSUB; 2019)

Matana Roberts - Coin Coin Chapter Four: Memphis (Constellation; 2019)

Tuluum Shimmering - Blue Water Sunray (self-released; 2019)

William Basinski - On Time Out of Time (Temporary Residence; 2019)

James MacMillan - Miserere; The Strathclyde Motets; O bone Jesu; Tenebrae Responsories - The Sixteen/Harry Christophers (Coro; 2011)

Ted Hearne - Hazy Heart Pump (New Focus Recordings; 2019)
> For the Love of Charles Mingus – Miki-Sophia Cloud; The Answer to the Question That Wings Ask – Saul Williams, Mivos Quartet; Furtive Movements - Ashley Bathgate, Ron Wiltrout; Nobody's - Diana Wade; Vessels - Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti, Miki-Sophia Cloud, Ted Hearne; Exposure - Argus Quartet

Yes - In the Present—Live from Lyon (Frontiers; 2011)

Grateful Dead - Miami Arena, Miami, FL, Oct. 26, 1989 (Archive.org; 1989)

David Tudor performances coming up at MoMA.

Among the many, many things to admire about the newly expanded Museum of Modern Art – which officially opens to the public on Monday, Oct. 21, but actually had a secret soft opening on Sunday, Oct. 20 – is an installation of Rainforest V (variation 1), as conceived by the iconic experimental composer/performer David Tudor, and realized by Composers Inside Electronics. A collective formed by Tudor in 1973 to blaze new trails in electronic-music performance and installation art, CiE is now run by founding members John Driscoll and Phil Edelstein, with a variety of collaborators.

I had seen and enjoyed Rainforest V in a previous installation on Governors Island, in 2011. This new iteration is similar, but, according to Driscoll – who was present and fielding questions when I attended a MoMA members' preview on Saturday, Oct. 19 – includes new sound-making items. The piece is on view in the museum's new Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Studio through January 5, 2020, and was packed with engaged, delighted visitors of all ages on Saturday.

In addition to Rainforest V, Tudor is also being celebrated during the inaugural season of the new Kravis Studio with a series of live performances of Forest Speech, involving members of Composers Inside Electronics and a stellar array of guest artists. Tudor created the piece, which employs the Rainforest instruments, in 1976, and then expanded it into a group conception in 1978. In it, according to the official Tudor website, "Formant resonances, produced with the natural comb-filtering action of 'Rainforest' instruments, are used to create vocal illusions."

Here's a complete schedule of who's playing when.

Oct. 24 and 26 at 8pm, Oct. 27 at noon and 3pm
Phil Edelstein, Marina Rosenfeld, Stefan Tcherepnin, Spencer Topel, and Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste

Nov. 14 and 16 at 8pm, Nov. 17 at noon and 3pm
Lea Bertucci, John Driscoll, Ed Potokar, Margaret Anne Schedel, and Philip White

Dec. 12 and 14 at 8pm, Dec. 15 at noon and 3pm
Ginny Benson, Cecilia Lopez, Daniel Neumann, Sergei Tcherepnin, and C. Spencer Yeh

Note that tickets are required for all performances. Thursday and Saturday evening events cost $15 for general admission, $10 for members and students, and tickets are on sale now. (Oct. 24 is sold out already.) Sunday daytime performances are free with museum admission, but, according to the MoMA website, "require a separate ticket, which will be available on site on the day of the performance, on a first-come, first-served basis."

New on Confront: Philip Thomas plays Chris Burn.

>>news added to the end of this post…<<

The Morton Feldman Piano box by Philip Thomas on Another Timbre unquestionably is among this year’s foremost achievements... but Philip has another new CD that's worth your attention, as well: as if as features original compositions and Derek Bailey transcriptions (!!) by Chris Burn, just out on Confront, the hardy little free improvisation/modern composition label maintained by Mark Wastell—himself a distinctive and versatile improviser.

Burn is an accomplished pianist who started in jazz, moved into free improvisation, and then resumed an interest in composition and arrangement. The pieces on Thomas's new CD – which I won't pretend to have absorbed fully just yet – are pithy and fascinating; the Bailey arrangements resourceful and clever. You can learn more about the CD – and even order it! – on the Confront website; note that it's not available through the Confront Bandcamp page.

In poking around the web this evening for links to embed in this post, I was pleasantly surprised to discover two earlier releases featuring both Thomas and Burn. One is on Bruce's Fingers, the label operated by English improvising bassist and composer Simon H. Fell: Comprovisation, from 2007, features Thomas playing scored works involving indeterminacy or improvisation, written by Burn, Fell, Paul Obermayer, Michael Finnissy, John Cage, and Mick Beck. (Fell is Wastell's bandmate in the excellent improvising trio IST, with harpist Rhodri Davies.)

The other recording – The Middle Distance, from 2009 – is a fully improvised encounter featuring Thomas, Burn, and Fell. And that one, to bring everything full circle, is on Another Timbre—and you can get it on Bandcamp, if you like.

Postscript Oct. 20, 2019: I have been informed by Philip Thomas that his Chris Burn CD on Confront has a serious manufacturing defect. A new pressing is being prepared, and replacement discs will be provided to anyone who already ordered. I'll update this post as I learn more.