Night After Night

Hear, now: Nina C. Young.

Going back to the Yeats poem… I would like the audience to think about Project 19 in that way: that they're going to hear 19 new pieces by people who sometimes don't feel like they can have a voice, who are being given an opportunity to have a voice—and for audiences, once again, to tread softly about this living art, and not to dismiss it, because these are our dreams, and if they're not tread upon, then they might live and blossom into other people's dreams.

The New York Philharmonic made a powerful commitment to contemporary music and to artistic equity this season with the announcement of Project 19, a multi-year initiative through which the Philharmonic has commissioned new works from 19 women composers, to commemorate the centenary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It's one of the boldest, most proactive, and frankly most appealing undertakings the institution has put forward recently—and, speaking personally, I very much hope to hear every piece performed.

This afternoon, the Philharmonic amplified that initiative with the first in a series of video profiles introducing the composers involved with Project 19—and these, too, are being created by women artists. In just under five minutes, the director Veena Rao introduces Nina C. Young, whose Tread Softly is included in Philharmonic concerts on Feb. 5, 6, 8, and 11, inaugurating the series. Young – who's quoted at the top of this post – talks about her earliest sonic memories, the Yeats poem that inspired her ("Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven"), and how she found the text complemented her thoughts about women's suffrage.

Should you wish to hear more of Young's music – and yes: yes, you should – there's plenty to see and hear on YouTube. I'd recommend her chamber-orchestra piece Vestigia Flammae, played in its local premiere by Ensemble Échappé, the new-music sinfonietta Young co-founded. The performance (which I was fortunate to attend) took place on April 20, 2018, at St. Peter's Church, Lexington Avenue.

And, if your travels will take you anywhere near Troy, NY, in March, Young has another fascinating performance ahead. On March 19, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute presents The Glow That Illuminates, the Glare That Obscures, a evening-length audiovisual performance-installation piece for brass quintet, overhead wave field synthesis, and projections, performed by Young and the American Brass Quintet. You'll find all the details you need here.

Happy Birthday, Philip Glass.

A warning, in advance, that what follows is a sentimental wallow.

I first came to know the music of Philip Glass in 1983, when – as an ambitious 17-year-old autodidact subscriber to the classical-music division of the RCA Music Club – I forgot to send back the "ship nothing" reply card one fateful month, and thus found myself in possession of the newest album by a living composer I'd never heard of. Truthfully, I doubt that I could have named another living composer then, let alone one whose idiom was so far afield of the Copland, Stravinsky, and Varèse I was devouring at the time.

Which is how I acquired my first Glass recording: The Photographer. On cassette.

I found the music instantly fascinating – the two longer pieces, Act II and Act III, especially – even if I lacked the technical acumen to explain how and why they worked. The response was visceral… it quite simply was.

But I can't say I fell deeply in love with Glass's music until a month or so later, when I ventured to acquire another tape…

Glassworks was a nakedly commercial venture: a set of appealing pieces, and succinct ones by Glass's standard, intended to introduce lay listeners to his language gently. It worked. And to this day, I pull Glassworks out (or, more likely, stream it somewhere) on a regular basis.

And then came the plunge into the Real Deal…

I still recall the pride I felt in using Christmas money from my grandparents to purchase a recording of A Complete Opera—and a weird contemporary one, to boot. (For some reason I was oddly certain they'd be impressed; I don't know that they were, actually.) This was the original Tomato version of Einstein on the Beach, re-pressed on four vinyl LPs by CBS Masterworks.

Truthfully, I'd had a taste of Einstein already: an absolutely roof-raising live recording of "Building" was included on The Nova Convention, a two-cassette release from Giorno Poetry Systems, which I'd acquired principally because it featured Frank Zappa (forgive me) and William S. Burroughs. This would have been one of my earliest encounters with Laurie Anderson, too.

Sadly, the Nova Convention "Building" hasn't been ripped and posted, near as I can tell. But the original one is fierce, too, and it paved my way toward Glass's more conventional subsequent operas.

I can't and won't claim to have heard every single note that Glass has composed or recorded—I mean, who has, apart from Glass himself? But I've heard a lot, and I continue to listen… and I still believe that "Hymn to the Aten" (or "Hymn to the Sun," if you prefer) from Akhnaten is the single most beautiful thing Glass has composed, to date.

Having waited for decades, I finally heard Akhnaten and the "Hymn" performed live on opening night of the Metropolitan Opera run last year. To be perfectly honest, I had serious reservations about aspects of the production; maybe you noticed I never reviewed it formally, or even posted much about it on social media. But the performance was magnificent, convincing me that Akhnaten actually is a better piece than I'd thought it was, these past 30-plus years… and time stood still when Anthony Roth Costanzo sang the "Hymn."

Glass turns 83 today, and he's still going strong: writing new music, touring the world, earning standing ovations in Big Cultural Institutions that once shunned him. (The ovation he received at Akhnaten was thunderous.) In the coming weeks here in New York City, the current manifestation of his long-running Philip Glass Ensemble will play the watershed composition Music in 12 Parts at Le Poisson Rouge – without Glass – spread across two nights and four sets on Feb. 16 and 17, while his newest music-theater project, Mud/Drowning, a collaboration with director JoAnne Akalaitis, opens on Feb. 21 at Mabou Mines, running through March 7.

But for the record, Glass remains worthy of more and better attention. His symphonies are solid pieces, deserving wider circulation; at least a few merit repertory status. And while it's been wonderful to experience Glass's great "Portrait Trilogy" operas among audibly appreciative sold-out crowds in New York over the last decade and change, I'd still love to see some of his stronger subsequent operas mounted here. I surmise that the revised Appomattox suits that description, to read my friend and colleague Anne Midgette's review, and I strongly believe that Waiting for the Barbarians – which I reviewed for The New York Times in its U.S. premiere at Austin Lyric Opera – also merits production—especially in the present political moment.

I'm grateful to have lived with Glass's music all these years, and glad as well to have had numerous professional intersections with him over the decades. Glass actually was one of my first-ever interviews, back when I was a undergraduate reporter writing for the campus newspaper. (Some day I'll locate that article and decide whether it's worth scanning or transcribing.) Twenty years later, I had the distinct pleasure – and challenge! – of tailing Glass, tape recorder in hand, while he chased his two youngest sons, then aged 5 and 3, around a Houston Street playground, and documenting his impressively composed train of thought for a New York Times feature about having old and new operas appearing on both coasts, more or less at once.

A decade after that, I shared the National Sawdust stage with Glass, John Zorn, and my present employer, Paola Prestini, leading a conversation about influence, lineage, and legacy. However calm and professional I might have appeared on that occasion, inner me was utter Wayne and Garth.

Happy birthday, Mr. Glass. And for all these decades of inspiration and joy: profound thanks.

Happy Birthday, Éliane Radigue.

The extraordinary French composer Éliane Radigue was born on this day in 1932, and celebrated her 88th birthday today as an artist whose star very much appears to be in the ascendant. Her recordings are widely available now, in lovingly prepared editions with beautifully restored sound. Occam Ocean – the body of acoustic work Radigue has busied herself producing since 2011, after a lifetime of creating tape and electronic music – has swollen to more than 50 pieces now, and counting. Last year, the independent curatorial concern Blank Forms mounted a nationwide tour devoted to some of these works, as well as a series of New York playback concerts featuring newly restored analog-tape recordings. To the best of my knowledge, every event sold out.

More opportunities to hear Radigue's music, as played by expert interpreters and collaborators, loom ahead. Frequency Festival, happening in Chicago in February, includes two Radigue programs: one on Feb. 26 featuring violist Julia Eckhardt and trumpeter Nate Wooley, and one on Feb. 27 featuring cellist Charles Curtis, linchpin of last year's Blank Forms tour.

Should you happen to be in Paris come March, Ensemble Dedalus will be playing an all-Radigue program at the Philharmonie de Paris on March 20—though it appears to be sold out already. And on May 2, Brooklyn location TBA, Nate Wooley shares a bill with composer-guitarist Michael Pisaro (presenting a version of Radigue's electronic piece L'Île Re-Sonante) under the big banner of Long Play, a new three-day festival presented by Bang on a Can.

There surely are more concerts. (If you know about one, tell me and I'll add it.)

Interested in getting to know more about Éliane Radigue? This 15-minute IMA Portrait documentary is a lovely place to start. It's in French, but includes subtitles.

I strongly recommend highly Intermediary spaces/Espaces itnermédiares, published in paperback last October by les presses du réel. The book, printed in both French and English, features a lengthy, substantial interview of Radigue conducted by Julia Eckhardt, the aforementioned violist. Also included are an authoritative timeline detailing events in Radigue's life, and an annotated guide to her complete works. The book is available at a handful of online retailers, but I ordered my copy directly from the publisher, inexpensively and with no fuss.

Beyond that: just listen. Do whatever it takes to get your hands on Œuvres Électroniques, the extraordinary 14-CD box set of Radigue's complete electronic output, issued in Nov. 2018 by INA-GRM. The box has gone into a second printing after the first one sold out faster than anyone could have anticipated.

Then, get to know Radigue's acoustic music, in which players of extraordinary focus and patience fashion the same kinds of acoustic phenomena the composer long pursued with feedback, tape, and her ARP synthesizer. Occam Ocean 1, a 2-CD collection of solos, a duo, and a trio, and Occam Ocean 2, a spectacular performance by an orchestra of improvisers, are available on the French label Shiiin—and, thanks to U.S. distribution by Naxos, those recordings also are on YouTube, Spotify, and other major streaming platforms.

Dive in…

Tony Malaby at the Internet Café (Village Voice R.I.P.).

I wrote for the Village Voice only one time, very early in my professional career, at the tail end of the full-time jazz journalism stage that preceded my return to classical music after around five years of estrangement. The article was published Feb. 27, 2001, or so the website tells me. That I never returned to the Voice was not because of dissatisfaction on anyone's part; I was just getting too busy with my new line of work for Billboard.

There are plenty of things I still like about the article, a "Regulars" column on Tony Malaby in residence at the Internet Café, one of the crucial hangs in the mid-to-late '90s. I'm especially fond of the bit about Malaby and Tim Berne repeatedly bending at the waist while they played, "like the insatiable 'drinking birds' everyone's grandfather used to have." One detail I reported and enjoyed was cut by the editor: while Malaby and Berne were blowing fire, Wynton Marsalis was directly overhead, pontificating at length in the Ken Burns Jazz series on a TV with the sound turned off.

But there's also a bit in the article that embarrasses me so profoundly now that I've never shared it, either on this blog or on social media. It's a passing bit of casual snobbery meant to help evoke the setting, the inclusion of which now smells too much like a sexist jibe for me to make peace with it. I regret writing it, and I'm sorry it's out there as part of my permanent record.

Still, if today is the day the Village Voice died, then I suppose I can celebrate my one little, tiny piece of it. As for the rest: we live, we learn, we atone and try to do better.

The Tony Malaby column is here, but I'm going to quote the complete text after the page break… just in case.

Clarice Jensen: A Consummate Team Player Calls Her Own Tune

"Clarice Jensen: A Consummate Team Player Calls Her Own Tune"
National Sawdust Log
April 3, 2018
[link]

As the founder of one of New York City’s most versatile and in-demand new-music groups, the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME), the cellist Clarice Jensen has been an advocate for countless composers. The ensemble initially bridged the so-called uptown and downtown musical worlds, while also pursuing significant byroads into the works of Meredith Monk, Joseph Byrd, Julius Eastman, and others. But for more than a decade Jensen and ACME also have built bridges extending well past the conventional bounds of the concert platform, through collaborations with ambient, drone, and minimalist composers and collaboratives such as Stars of the Lid, A Winged Victory for the Sullen, Hauschka, Max Richter, and Jóhann Jóhannsson.

Jensen’s connection to Jóhannsson was especially durable, so it’s fitting that her debut solo album, For this from that will be filled, includes one of the last concert works the widely admired Icelandic composer-performer completed before to his sudden, untimely death in February. Jensen’s album also includes a new piece by Michael Harrison, for layered cellos in just intonation. And the work with which the album shares its title comes from a composer making an auspicious debut: Jensen herself.

Jensen’s album is due on April 6; the following evening, she’ll perform alongside her creative and domestic partner, the video artist Jonathan Turner, in an Ambient Church concert in Bushwick. Headlining that event is the Belgian video artist and composer Christina Vantzou, on whose latest album, No. 4 (also due April 6), Jensen is a featured guest; here, Jensen and her ACME colleagues will play in Vantzou’s ensemble.

Over lunch one recent afternoon at a Brooklyn café, Jensen talked about her work with Jóhannsson and Vantzou, the evolution of ACME, and the development of her solo practice.

NATIONAL SAWDUST LOG: The timing of your album’s arrival, so soon after Jóhann Jóhannsson’s untimely passing, must be kind of a very sensitive coincidence.

CLARICE JENSEN: Yeah, it was. The timing in general was a little eerie. When we got the news, I was in L.A. recording with Dustin [O’Halloran] and Adam [Wiltzie] from A Winged Victory for the Sullen – Dustin has a studio in L.A. The night before we got the news, we all – with his manager and other friends – we went to a Lakers game and had a great time. And then the next morning Adam got a call from Siggi [Finnsson], [Jóhann’s] assistant in Berlin. And we were just talking about Jóhann. So I feel lucky that I managed to get that one.

We did it all in one day, basically… the tracking, anyway. He came to Francesco [Donadello]’s studio in the afternoon and came up with the concept; he had this really crazy concept with the tape loops slowing down, but the pitch staying the same through the loop. And then I kind of had some ideas for the melodic and harmonic material that would fit in with the rest of what we had already tracked. So we just did it in a day, and then Francesco and I edited the next day.

This was a really collaborative piece, then.

Yeah, yeah. It was definitely Jóhann’s concept entirely, and then I kind of came up with the notes – I mean, it’s just a loop and a major scale, a major scale over two octaves, and we kind of came up with that together, like it was just something to go on top of this loop – we didn’t want it to be like a melody, but we wanted it to feel melodic. So I was like, why don’t we just do a scale? And we tried it.

How much of the sound of that piece is post-production, if any?

Francesco just added reverb, and that’s it, really. He didn’t even add reverb to the tape loop, because I wanted the warbling and the sound of the tape to be as noticeable as possible, and any time we started adding reverb to that, it was kind of masking it, kind of glossing over it.

I really like that warbling. It’s a beautiful texture.

Francesco works a lot with tapes, and that sound, too. In fact, when they were doing the Arrival soundtrack together, the original piece that was supposed to be on the soundtrack, before they replaced it with Max [Richter]’s piece, was something [Jóhann] wrote that was basically a really slowed-down tape loop with inside-the-piano noises. I want Francesco and Jóhann to have credit for that concept, because it wasn’t my idea at all.

But now that I’m keen to slowing down tape sounds and making tape loops, I’m really into it, so I’m using it a lot more for future pieces. I just got this machine that this guy who lives in Greenpoint makes – it’s called a Crudman, and it’s a Walkman that can be controlled with a MIDI controller. It has a three-octave range, and it’s scarily accurate. He invented it sort of as a new Mellotron, basically, so you could put any kind of sustained tone on a cassette and play it, and it sounds incredible.

That’s amazing.

I was looking for something to be able to do Jóhann’s piece live without just having a backing track – I get bored with that, just hitting the space bar and playing along. I wanted to find a way to be able to do it, like a performance cassette, and this is perfect. I just got it and I’ve been experimenting, and I think I have a solution for the show on the 7th.

Does that also add an element of chance, or at least variety? The piece is never 100 percent the same way each time.

It’s never the same, for sure. And also sort of an element of danger, because like a Walkman is made of tiny little screws and springs and stuff [laughs], so I was like, maybe I should buy two, just in case the other one… you know, whatever happens. But I’m just taking my chances that it’ll work out.

You worked for an extended period with Jóhann, didn’t you?

Yeah, our first tour together was in ’09, so almost ten years now. I obviously love his music. He was just such a private guy. I spent a lot of time with him, but I feel like I don’t really know a lot about him.

How did you connect?

Through Adam. We did a tour with Stars of the Lid, and I guess one of those shows was a Wordless show. And then [Wordless Music producer] Ronen [Givony] booked Jóhann for a Wordless show, and Adam decided to turn that into a U.S. tour, so he hired us for that.

[Editor’s note: Ronen Givony is now part of the National Sawdust programming team.]

Clarice Jensen (Photograph: Ryuhei Shindo)

Clarice Jensen
Photograph: Ryuhei Shindo

How did you connect with Michael Harrison?

I met Michael through my sister [artist manager and publicist Christina Jensen]. He had written so many pieces for Maya [Beiser] that I liked. I always liked his just intonation pieces, so I wanted a piece like that. I think we were talking at an ACME house concert that we do once a year. He had just written a piece for Mari Kimura, and he’s like, I’ll send you that. So he did, and I really liked it. And Jonathan, my boyfriend, met him at the same party, so it just kind of came together that way.

So then Jon made a short video based on an excerpt of some sine-tone Constellations that Michael was sending. That video was maybe 12 minutes long, but it kind of turned into the material for the whole show, basically. I watched it and I picked out certain things that I liked, that I wanted to be extended or become ambient projections during the show. So basically all the visuals for the show came from this shorter video that Jon made from what Michael sent him, that was a proto-version of the piece that he wrote for me. It was kind of all connected that way.

Again, another collaborative kind of situation, sparked by what the composer did first.

Right. Just a concept, at first. Michael wrote the piece in SuperCollider… I don’t really understand everything that’s going on. [laughs] It’s a lot. But I thought it would fit with what I’m doing, because when you layer that many cellos, it doesn’t sound like a cello anymore. What I’m doing with my pedalboard is making a lot of layers that sonically still fit, even though it was a piece I didn’t write at all. And it’s a piece for multi-tracked cellos that I perform with backing track. It is definitely the classical piece on the record. But to me, I think it fits; I don’t think it sticks out.

They don’t really train you in conservatory to play cello while working pedal boards.

No! [laughs] Not at all.

And everybody’s got pedals now, whether they’re doing effects or just turning the page on their iPad. It’s an amazing skill set for the 21st century.

I had to figure out my own way. I don’t wear shoes, and then I just turn the knobs with my toes. It took a long time to figure out what pedals work with the cello: I knew I wanted to make tones, I knew I wanted a way of looping stuff. So it took a while to figure out what works. I got this Mellotron pedal – I was so excited about it. It’s an ElectroHarmonix pedal, a Mellotron simulator. It just sounds comical by itself, so I had to figure out what order to put things in, and what to put in front of it. But it’s really fun, because you can really expand your instrument so much in it.

I was wanting a way to use pedals that’s like I’m still playing the cello, so that it isn’t like: here’s a layer, and then I’m going to add a layer. A lot of people will make music that way, but my music is more durational, and it’s not really so rhythmic, obviously. [laughs] I was more interested in ways of finding new sounds, and more compelling sounds, as opposed to counterpoint.

Did you train as a composer at all, or did you find your way into composing through the pieces you interpreted?

Well, in school everyone has to take theory and ear training and those things, and I had a lot of composer friends. I hang out with a lot of composers. But not formal training, no. I think I found my way into it by touring with groups like Stars of the Lid and Winged Victory for the Sullen and Jóhann. I was like: I really want to make music, I love this music, I want to make music like this, I have ideas about how this music could go. I’ve wanted to do a solo thing for a long time, but I felt restricted by the sound of the cello by itself, and I don’t feel too excited by having a set-up with a computer. I wanted it to be still somehow connected to how I perform, how I’ve performed since I was three years old. I didn’t want it to be completely removed from that.

You’re looking for something physiological and kinetic, something that’s connected to your actual presence, as opposed to, as you said a minute ago, hitting the space bar and just having it go.

Exactly. I mean, I totally understand; I play music that way, too. But for this project, I wanted it to be a little more interactive and physiological. And it took a while to figure out how do that. My friend Grey McMurray, he’s a master with pedals, and I would play shows with him… I bought a reverb pedal first, and then I got a Line 6 DL4 pedal, and that was the start. And then I figured out some things, but it was kind of a long process.

Grey was great, because he would just force me into situations where I’d have to use them early on. I’d be scared, and then I’d use them, and then it just kind of turned into… I was playing sets by myself and improvising, and then I would record them and find things that I liked and that worked, and then put those together into pieces.

What are the structural ideas in the two parts of the piece?

The first part, I wanted a piece on the record that was shorter, and that was basically a satisfying chord progression that was still drone-based. It starts off where the second part ends, in a way, too, harmonically and with the arpeggiated chords, but with so much delay and the Octaver is really spread. So it’s the same arpeggios and things, but the beginning sounds like a crazy organ, I think, and then at the end it’s just acoustic cello at first, but then it gets layered and bounced around. That’s the general structure, I guess: A and B. Also, I just really hate naming stuff, and those were the two pieces on the record that were totally mine, and so I just kind of felt that they would just be called A and B. [laughs] It’s very vague, and not entirely meaningful.

American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME): L-R Ben Russell, Yuki Numata Resnick, Clarice Jensen, Caleb Burhans (Photograph: Mark Shelby Perry)

I’m curious about the evolution of ACME in terms of the kinds of music the group champions. I’ve been tagging along since the very beginning, and I remember the days at the Tenri Cultural Center when it would be, like, Elliott Carter and Nico Muhly sharing a program. But it seems like along the way you identified a direction, and a sound world that you wanted to occupy and linger in. Is that accurate?

That’s very accurate, yes. I guess I got frustrated playing that music. I love that music. I love to study it, and I love to practice it.

When we say it, we’re talking about Elliott Carter et al?

Elliott Carter, Donald Martino… It feels good to really rehearse that music and feel like you’ve gone somewhere. It’s a unique challenge to try to make music out of such dissonant sounds and such unnatural sounds. I enjoy it – but I don’t enjoy performing it. It’s just, you try so hard, and then you look up at the end and don’t know if anyone had a good time.

For the record: I had a good time. But at the same time, you introduced me to Nadia Sirota, you introduced me to Nico Muhly—you even introduced me to Anohni, via Nico. You opened my eyes and ears in a lot of ways, where I was drawn in the door by names I recognized, but then lingered for the ones I didn’t.

Which is great. I mean, that’s how New York works, and I really like that. But yeah, I guess I saw so much… like, the first Stars of the Lid concerts we did, I hadn’t played music like that, and a world opened up for me, in which I had to play really long notes for a long time, or really, really slow melodies. I saw sounds being made by Adam in ways that I didn’t understand, but I really liked these sounds and the open structure. I think that’s when I was really like: why struggle, when you can just make beautiful sounds? [laughs]

I mean. I don’t feel that way every day. But when it comes to me wanting to do my own solo, that kind of language is where I have the most to say. I don’t want to say this like I can’t write hard, complicated music, but my music’s not complicated… I mean, it’s complicated to do, actually. But it’s like: I like the way this sounds, and I’m going to figure out how long I should do it – maybe for five minutes, or eight minutes. So that’s the process for me: finding things where I love the way it sounds, how long should I do it, what can I layer on top of it?

To help with that, I like to do graphic scores. It’ll start out scribbly, just to kind of figure out… I’ll demo things and listen to it, but especially with long pieces, you lose perspective when you listen to it over and over… you’re like, maybe that was too long, maybe this is boring now. It helps visually to see how something is going.

Leaping out from the world of Carter and Martino, from being a product of the academy, where did you first come into contact with the likes of Stars of the Lid and Winged Victory?

The first time, it was through Ronen, actually.

You were the pick-up band for a Wordless gig?

Yeah, [Stars of the Lid] were doing a Wordless concert, and Adam got my name and wrote to me. He was like, are you free? And I was like, yeah, I’m free and I like your music. He’s like, OK, great… do you know how to read notes? [laughs] And I was like, I totally know how to read notes. So we did a little East Coast tour, that was the first tour, and then Jóhann was the next tour with Adam. After that, I met Dustin; he was hanging around backstage after a Hauschka show that we did at LPR. He hired us to record Lumiere, and we played shows with him. It was really through Wordless and LPR.

You’re on the new Christina Vantzou album, No. 4, and you’ll be playing with her on April 7. This is the first time ACME has worked with her on one of her numbered albums, right?

Yeah. It wasn’t really ACME; it was just me, and then she recorded with other players in Belgium. But ACME is playing the show on the 7th. Christina’s also from Kansas City, where I’m from, but we never met in Kansas City. I think we just kind of got along, had the same kind of language. She’s not really from a musical background. She’s more of a visual artist. In The Dead Texan, she didn’t write; she did the visuals, and Adam [Wiltzie] wrote all the music. But she just kind of dove right in and started making her own stuff.

How does that work, on a practical level? Does somebody create scores for the players to read, or is it something that’s more informal, conversational?

It’s more conversations, and some things are written down, like cells of stuff to perform. I’ve only performed with her once, and it was for a Monkey Town… and it was near the end of Monkey Town, so it was like a pop-up Monkey Town.

I didn’t get to go, but I remember that gig, because it was right around the time I was first becoming aware of her work. Her music is so unambiguously beautiful, and so unapologetic about being really, really pretty.

[laughs] It’s true. And I feel jealous of the way she works, because I think I’m so confined in my conservatory mind and my conservatory experience that I don’t want to record anything I can’t do myself, live. And she’ll be like, “Put this here!” Or, “What I need for this track is a gong,” so she’ll get this gong player and record. She’s just wild with her imagination. It’s so decadent!

Decadent is a good word.

And I’m just like, if only I could let myself do that. But I don’t think I can. I think I need parameters, because I already feel so free as it is that I think I need constraints. And she’s just like, whatever!

Is it also a case of preferring hands-on control? Not to paint you as a control freak, but I can see someone who’s used to using their hands to produce their sound might also want to have a more tactile control of what it is they’re producing.

Exactly. That, and also, I have been working collaboratively, playing chamber music, for so long, and I finally am doing something that’s just me. [laughs] I don’t need to negotiate with anybody else. I get to decide everything. And I’m really happy with that to have that as an outlet. But I wouldn’t want it to be my whole career, obviously, at all, because I love working with people, and I love working things out with people and negotiating stuff.

For this from that will be filled is due April 6 in vinyl, CD, and digital formats on Miasmah Records; preorders are available now via Bandcamp. Clarice Jensen performs with video artist Jonathan Turner and with Christina Vantzou’s ensemble in an Ambient Church event at Bushwick Methodist Church on April 7 at 7pm; ambient.church

Input/Output: Joda Clément, TIME + PLACE

Photographs courtesy of Joda Clément

Originally published by National Sawdust Log on Dec. 15, 2017

I've always listened to a lot of what might be termed electronic music, but I haven't always felt especially comfortable writing about it. Evaluating music in print can be challenging under the best of circumstances, given the intrinsic subjectivity of listening. But when writing about music made with tools and methods unfamiliar to the average listener, finding a useful approach can be daunting. It's easy to lapse into merely compiling a chronological tally of onomatopoeic descriptions – "dull bang, gushing sound, human shriek," to co-opt the title of a 1987 Bobby Previte solo album – or, alternately, to engage in impressionistic navel-gazing with no practical rigor.

Still, a lot of exceptional electronic music is being made now by vital artists working in synthesis, collage, live improvisation, field recording, and still other techniques and approaches. If covering this music can be a challenge, not covering it is critical malpractice.

Input/Output, a new series on National Sawdust Log, is meant to address music produced largely or wholly with electronics and/or computers in a new way: by going to the source, enlisting the creators themselves to share insights about the music they make, the tools and processes they employ, and the goals they have in mind. That's the "input" portion; the "output" is my questions, comments, and other interventions.

The inaugural column features the newest release by Joda Clément, a Canadian sound artist whose work I've found consistently fascinating and deeply moving. Sea Songs, released in 2016 on the Caduc. label, was among my favorite albums that year, a record I listened to repeatedly and near-obsessively some days. Its follow-up, TIME + PLACE, was issued recently on Glistening Examples, a busy imprint impeccably curated by another sound artist, Jason Lescalleet (who just this week reissued his own essential 2002 solo disc, mattresslessness, on the label).

Clément – born in 1981 and the son of renowned Canadian composer and sound artist Tim Clément – describes himself succinctly on his SoundCloud page:

Raised in Toronto and based in Vancouver, Joda Clément has been performing and composing experimental music in Canada for over 15 years. His work utilizes analog and acoustic instruments, field recordings and feedback to carefully construct listening environments that transcend the distinction between sound, site, and source.

Across the span of five solo albums and numerous collaborations, Clément has created a body of work diverse in tone and technique, yet consistent in its elegant organization and allusive potency. His music is rich with evocative sounds, some more recognizable than others. Yet he leaves his conjured soundscapes open to a listener's personal interpretation.

"Coincidentally, this is also something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and struggled with myself: how to explain what’s going on in my music without imposing specifics on the listener's experience," Clément wrote in his initial response to my proposal for this column. Our exchanges were conducted via email and Facebook Messenger, and edited lightly for clarity and flow.

Photograph: Rhonda Hunte

NATIONAL SAWDUST LOG: Might you reveal some of the tools and techniques you used to create the pieces on TIME + PLACE?

JODA CLÉMENT: Typically on albums I've just listed the sound sources that could be described as "instruments" (for example: MS20 synthesizer or harmonium) and then "field recordings," usually with a reference to the location where it took place but no specific description of what I was recording or "how." I chose not to do this for Time + Place, largely because at this point, a lot of the material that ends up in my compositions could be defined as some kind of "field recording," but that definition falls short of what's really going on.

This album is very much an amalgamation of sound experiments that reach deep into my archives (more so than my previous efforts). I suppose you could say that I've arrived at a sort of "lifestyle music," through what's become a very non-linear working method. It's an effort to maintain an ongoing activity of recording, listening, and living that all inform each other in such a way that there's a harmony, and then music becomes effortless, like a lifestyle.

Is there a central idea or theme running through these pieces?

A lot of the music on this particular album (and Sea Songs, actually) was created as a personal "antidote" or escape from my experiences as a front line Mental Health Worker in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, which is famous for its high concentration of drug addicts, mental illness, and HIV. We’ve been experiencing an epidemic of opioid overdose deaths in British Columbia, number one cause of death in the province.

Once you've compiled your sounds, how do you assemble your pieces? Is your sequencing intuitive – what sounds or feels "right" – or is it more rigorously structured, like a musical score or a film storyboard?

Everything is eventually mixed on my laptop, in what they call a "digital audio workstation" or DAW. I use Reaper, which is a great alternative to Logic or ProTools and it's much more affordable (it was recommended to me by Bhob Rainey in 2008). I point this out to make the distinction that nothing is "sequenced," and I'm not deliberately using any kind of rhythmic structures, which is a common practice for sound artists using a program like Ableton Live, which is more or less loop-based.

My arrangements are assembled intuitively, yes: what sounds right. Some people might work from a fully realized idea, but I rarely do. I obsess over every second of music. This process can take hundreds of hours. But, worth noting, the sounds I'm mixing on the computer are sometimes "composed" moments or situations that were captured in a studio or fully realized setting in itself. I then distill these moments, from years, into what becomes the final pieces you hear.

What I've done here is break down each track on the album in a kind of stream-of-consciousness, point-form, literal description of what sound events occur in each piece. It is not a linear description of what's happening, necessarily, and these lists are not comprehensive. It also does not really describe anything about how I arrange things. I've simply narrowed in on the most important sound elements (I've left out certain less significant details).

Photograph: Andrea Maurice

1. aim of blue (11:42)

INPUT:

• Korg PS-3200 synthesizer (with broken F-sharp key that triggered some kind of unpredictable pink noise) (2002)
• Recordio 1930s record cutter making feedback generated by "glass tubes" a.k.a. crack pipes (which we provide as part of our harm reduction initiative at my job in the Downtown Eastside). Recordio found in the neighbourhood (2017)
• my refrigerator (2016)
• homemade record loops, radio experiments (recorded to Minidisc at home in Chinatown, Toronto, 2002)
• harmonium + piano board played with electromagnetic feedback with Tomasz Krakowiak (percussive gestures), recorded at Somewhere There, Toronto (Dec. 2012)
• a "one-take" bathroom recording from Montreal, 2004/5: harmonium, LP of Moon River pitched down on portable turntable, Casio SK-1, and noisy taps (slowed down)
• field recordings/activities (at home, 2017)
• unknown neighbour practicing cello, recorded in the hallway of my apartment (mixed w/ harmonium fragments) (2017)
• modified Neil Young sample, from live bootleg version of "A Man Needs a Maid"
• "various field recordings" (dense mix)
• acoustic turntable experiments (at home, 2017)
• malfunctioning Korg Polysix "drone" [cassette transfer] (1996) + amplified electromagnetic resonance of Polysix drone (2015)

OUTPUT:

Glassy sounds, buzzing irritants, and whining feedback establish an initial impression of free-floating unease, though the focus is soft and slightly distant—which makes the mundane rustling sounds that commence just over a minute into the piece register with unsettling clarity and proximity. Continual similar shifts in perspective, along with the frequent presence of analog tape hiss, hold the listener at arm's length, even when recognizable sound sources emerge.

A brief shift from busy tactility to spacious resonance just before the five-minute mark provides a clear demarcation before the next referential episode, when a snippet of Bach played by an unknown cellist prefaces what might be rippling water, crickets, and a radio with only the most tenuous grasp on a signal. A sweet, distorted melody can't quite sugar-coat nagging echoes and distorting scrapes in the waning minutes of the piece, which ends in a place not unlike the beginning.

One note of clarification: "taps," identified here and in "light thread burning," refers not to the military bugle call, but to bathroom pipes and faucets. "If you rotated the hot water tap beyond a certain point the pipes vibrated excessively," Clément explained, "creating a violent noise that one could control with the subtle variation on the hot/cold taps."

2. unhoused vacuity (8:59)

INPUT:

• Field recording (not sure origin) (2017)
• mysterious drone from outside apartment, recorded while eating dinner (2017) -
• another mysterious drone of unknown origin, from outside, recorded inside apartment (2017) -
• Field recording from inside the Stanley Hotel, an SRO in the Downtown Eastside (where I worked) after it had been vacated and declared uninhabitable in April 2017 -
• Judith Hamann: non-pitched cello sounds (outtakes from the "Taking Tiger Mountain" sessions, 2017) -
• excerpt from Eugene, OR live show w/ Mathieu Ruhlmann from tour (March 2015) -
• close mic’d harmonium recording at home (2017)
• various field recordings (dense mix)

OUTPUT:

The simultaneity of sensory input that constitutes our day-to-day life is always present in Clément's music, the chief difference being that where in real life we try to filter out peripheral and extraneous noises, one point in listening to tracks like "unhoused vacuity" is to perceive their multiple aural strata all at once, and (perhaps) to contemplate what their juxtaposition might mean. Reading that one of Clément's sound sources is a "mysterious drone… recorded while eating dinner" suggests an equality between those sounds—yet from an anthropomorphic perspective, it's hard not to prioritize mundane mouth noises, and to assign to more fascinating unknown sounds the role of accompaniment.

Here again, closeness becomes expansiveness becomes closeness again; faraway sounds of engines and car horns register with clarity even as noises seemingly closer might be muffled and indistinct.

3. light thread burning (5:04)

INPUT:

• Blank tape sound from cassette found in defunct tape machine purchased at Oakland flea market while on tour 2015
• phone crackle from DAT tape (2002)
• "bathroom drones" recorded in various establishments in downtown Toronto (1999-2000)
• "one take bathroom recording from Montréal 2004/5": pitched-down Moon River LP, harmonium, Casio SK-1 and taps (at regular speed)
• Distant trains recorded in North Vancouver (2017)
• Judith Hamann: non-pitched cello sounds (outtakes from the "Taking Tiger Mountain" sessions, 2017)
• field recording near train tracks in Toronto, throwing rocks, waiting for train that never came, listening to Shostakovich from cell-phone speaker (July 2017)

OUTPUT:

One thing that sets TIME + PLACE apart from Sea Songs, for me at least, is a stronger sense of personal sounds on the newer album—personal in the sense human presence, as in the fragments of speech here, and corporeal noises such as the previous track's dining sounds. Sea Songs, by contrast, somehow felt more spacious and environmental, more natural and less human-adjacent. TIME + PLACE might well incorporate as many outdoor field recordings as its predecessor, but the scale of these pieces feels considerably more proximate and intimate.

One more noteworthy feature of TIME + PLACE is a sensation of closure and wholeness that results from Clément's use of common elements in multiple pieces. Brief as this piece is, it recalls elements from those that came before it—the Moon River LP and "taps" from "aim of blue," the recording of cellist Judith Hamann from "unhoused vacuity" (and the cello itself, recalled from "aim of blue"). Likewise, the Oakland "blank tape" used here recurs in "you will dissolve before me," as does the "glass tube feedback" from the opening track. These subtle repetitions give TIME + PLACE a satisfying holistic integrity that suits the album's title.

4. you will dissolve before me (14:09)

INPUT:

• Blank tape sound from the same "blank" cassette from Oakland flea market, 2015
• various textural field recordings, throughout
• Recordio + glass tube feedback (2017)
• PS3200 synthesizer drone (2009)
• GO Train microcassette recording (Ontario, 2007)
• ‘laundry room’ (2017)
• "Satta Massagana" by the Abyssinians re-recorded/degraded 8x in jar from cell phone, re-recorded in open air on top of the Stawamus Chief, Squamish, BC, microphone 30 feet from source (from outdoor site specific installation in 2013)
• Computer "dub" feedback (2006)
• Field recording from Stanley Park, factory activity across the water, in the rain (2016)
• Fog horns, field recordings (2014-16)
• recording from concave rock formation, Stanley Park sea wall, 2016
• tape crackle + bleed through of Adagio in G minor by Albinoni, from the same ‘blank' cassette from Oakland flea market, 2015
• Field recording of Adagio in G minor by Albinoni played by mysterious busker on saxophone w/ pre-recorded distorted organ blasting from a shitty amp in Montreal subway tunnel circa 2005 + body-manipulated "lake feedback" from a mic taped to a canoe running through a portable military radio taken in Perth, Ontario (2006) + Recordio glass tube + feedback (2017)
• "unknown" sounds outside window (2017)
• harmonium fragments (2016)

OUTPUT:

This gracefully sequenced piece is, for me, closer in spirit to Sea Songs than are the other tracks on TIME + PLACE. As on much of that previous disc, "you will dissolve before me" feels broad, spacious, and unhurried, with sensations of tidal sweep and salt-air tang enhanced and underscored by referential buoy bells and sea spray.

If the overall sensation linking this to the other pieces on TIME + PLACE is one of isolation, and of pensiveness bordering on melancholy, here – amid distanced voices and disembodied music (the opportune and brilliantly evocative use of Albinoni's Adagio in G minor especially) – those sensations register as loneliness in public rather than in private.

There remain in this album things I cannot explain or put into words easily. The passage that begins around 9:15 and extends through the helicopter's entrance just before 12:27 is among the most powerful, gripping musical sequences I've encountered this year. The "input" checklist Clément provided reveals at least some of the constituent elements involved. But the process by which he distributed, balanced, and blended those selected sounds to elicit an emotional impact exceeding the sum of its disparate parts resists easy explication.

Therein resides the clearest definition of Clément's music: an art whose specific parts and their references are personal and oblique, but whose aggregate impact is universal, inclusive—and open to interpretation.

Paola Prestini and Steve Smith: What Is the Log?

Photograph: Paola Prestini, by Brigitte Lacombe

Originally published by National Sawdust Log on Oct. 3, 2016

When I first met with composer Paola Prestini just over three years ago to discuss her dreams, plans, and goals for the wide-ranging arts venue, incubator, and accelerator that would become National Sawdust, she expressed her conviction that journalism and criticism are fundamental parts of the artistic ecosystem. A few months ago, having overseen National Sawdust’s birth and its widely acclaimed initial season, she returned to thinking about how a journalistic venture might be implemented among National Sawdust’s programs – and our conversation resumed.

Recently, in anticipation of this new initiative making its public debut, Paola and I sat down together once again – this time in the National Sawdust performance space, for a discussion in which we’ve endeavored to lay bare the thinking behind this unconventional pursuit, what we hope to achieve, and what further initiatives we plan to pursue as time goes on.

STEVE SMITH: When we first spoke, you already knew that you were undertaking a huge project, offering much more just than a venue to the artistic community. And from near the start you knew that you wanted to incorporate journalism and criticism into the mix.

PAOLA PRESTINI: Yes. I often plant seeds of ideas, and then it takes a long, long time for them to develop. And I’m really comfortable with that, because I feel that then things happen at the right time. Certainly with this project of National Sawdust, I think I understood the enormity of it, but because it took so long to come to fruition – it took seven years of us thinking through the project, thinking through the mission, really doing everything right, and then trying to fundraise for it – when it finally did happen, I was prepared for it. And so similarly with the idea that we had together, for me, writing in all of its forms has always played a very central part to my own artistic process. As I grew up in New York as an artist, in my early 20s and in my 30s, there was always a fascination with and a fear of criticism. And so, like all things I’m afraid of, I really wanted to understand why, and understand what it is in me that doesn’t allow me to embrace it or understand its relevance or not be afraid of it.

Can you identify what that fear was based in?

I think it’s a very common fear that artists have, which is that the artistic process and creating work in today’s artistic ecology is so difficult. It’s rooted in a very basic fear of acceptance, which every artist has – that is certainly not unique. But I think that more profoundly, what I was reading, in reviews and in general, didn’t really contextualize the scene in a way I felt the reader would, one, want to listen to the music, which was the whole point, I think, of why you write about things: not only to give your perspective, but also to allow the field to thrive. I felt that many of the reviews I was reading, and then eventually I was getting, were kind of shallow, and weren’t really contextualizing work, and weren’t really meant to get audiences to come out and see things and make up their own minds about things, or to report on what was happening, or to have the artist’s voice in it, or to say, “This isn’t for me, but let me tell you a little bit about this artist and what they’re thinking about and what the context is and what’s going on in the scene.” I just didn’t feel like any of that was happening. So all of a sudden, it was like a fear of and a disdain for something that I always had respected, and that always, in its many different forms, had played such a central role to me as an artist.

So, fast-forward - I’m over-generalizing – you start to read certain reviewers who are fantastic, and who really write in a profound way. I started to realize it wasn’t that it didn’t exist, but that it was rare. I started to think, What if the community can be more united? What if the community can be more this place where it’s constructive, and where we work together? And it’s not about receiving “bad press,” because they say that all press is good press, and I certainly understand that now. It’s more about the field feeding itself, wanting to perpetuate, wanting to create a space where writers and musicians and creators can coexist and can feed each other.

I knew I couldn’t roll it out right away – when we first started, we had a staff of three, if you can imagine, to run 350 shows. So slowly, as I built the board and helped them to understand what we were really starting, which wasn’t going to be just a typical club or venue, then I began to get support for the different ideas – and finally got support to make this a reality.

Even when looking back, Jack DeJohnette forges ahead

Jack DeJohnette (center) and Made in Chicago, by Wes Orshoski/ECM Records

Even when looking back, Jack DeJohnette forges ahead
Boston Globe
May 17, 2015

For the featured jazz story in today's Summer Arts Preview issue of the Boston Globe, a brief but event-filled article about jazz drummer, bandleader, and composer Jack DeJohnette, who brings his legend-studded quintet Made in Chicago – saxophonists Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Threadgill, pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, and bassist Larry Gray – to the Newport Jazz Festival on Saturday, August 1.

In a quick yet generous conversation, we talked about Chicago and the seeds of the AACM, which DeJohnette helped to plant; his crucial work alongside Miles Davis, the 60th anniversary of whose Newport debut is being celebrated in this year's festival as well as a terrific 4CD box set due in July; and the band that he really wants to talk about, his trio with saxophonist Ravi Coltrane and electric-bass player Matthew Garrison, with whom he'll be recording and touring this fall.

It's always tricky to get to interview longtime heroes, because the temptation to lapse into fawning is great. But there is no question at all that DeJohnette is among the most important figures in my personal development, starting with my "what the hell was that?" response to "Journey to the Twin Planet," a track from his ECM album Special Edition, which I heard in 1980 on one of the last releases in the enlightened and enlightening Warner Bros. "Loss Leaders" double-LP sampler series: the ECM-centric volume Music with 58 Musicians, Volume One, a set that changed my world in manifold ways. (At left, the ad through which the set could be ordered, which I'd have seen in Rolling Stone.)

A few years later, fairly freshly into my training as a percussionist, but still in the throes of a jazz-drumming obsession that started when Peter Criss proclaimed that Gene Krupa was among his foremost influences and teachers, I received as a birthday gift a copy of Tin Can Alley, the second ECM LP by Special Edition. The dear friend who bought it for me didn't know anything about the record or its makers; she'd simply asked for a strong example of modern jazz drumming at a local record store, and somehow had encountered a salesperson wise enough to select this album. I wore it out then, and the music still holds up.

Time passed, players moved on from Special Edition, and ultimately the group parted from ECM, signed away by MCA to help that corporation relaunch the fabled Impulse! label in 1987. Irresistible Forces, recorded with a lineup that included young-blood saxophonists Greg Osby and Gary Thomas, veteran guitarist Mick Goodrick, bassist Lonnie Plaxico, and special guest percussionist Nana Vasconcelos, was slicker and smoother than any of the Special Edition recordings that preceded it. But it was still a stellar example of DeJohnette's vital drumming, perceptive knack for assembling a band, and enviable skill for composing memorable tunes. (This set revisited one of DeJohnette's all-time best tunes, "Silver Hollow," and added a few new ones to the stack; the newfangled CD version added "Third World Anthem" as a bonus track.)

It would have been late in 1987, or possibly early in 1988, that I finally got to see Jack DeJohnette play live for the first time, when I drove from San Antonio to Fort Worth to catch the Irresistible Forces lineup of Special Edition (minus Vasconcelos) at Caravan of Dreams. At this distance, I recall the playing as having been superb, DeJohnette's presence as titanic, and his generosity in granting a fleeting personal audience to a starstruck, tongue-tied admirer above and beyond the call of duty.

And now, almost 30 years later, it's nice to have had a chance, once the formal interview had concluded, simply to thank DeJohnette for the potent and meaningful jolt of his early work.

David Torn soars through 'only sky' at Regattabar

David Torn, by Wes Orshoski/ECM Records

David Torn soars through 'only sky' at Regattabar
Boston Globe
May 12, 2015

Scanning social media recently, Torn came across a journalist who was crowd-sourcing questions to ask him in an upcoming interview. A common reply: Ask what he’s been doing since “Cloud About Mercury.” That’s Torn’s most famous album, sure, but it came out in 1987.

I'm reasonably certain that I heard David Torn on the two Everyman Band LPs that ECM released before Cloud About Mercury arrived in 1987, but what an impact that record made on me. How could it not? Mark Isham played stellar trumpet, and the rhythm section was the then-current King Crimson tandem of Tony Levin on Chapman stick and bass, and Bill Bruford on electronic and acoustic percussion. Over it all, Torn's guitar dipped and soared, gliding like some proud bird of prey. The album holds up for me even now, and led to further adventures by three-quarters of the band - joined by Chris Botti on trumpet - as Bruford Levin Upper Extremities (B.L.U.E.).

Torn's done quite a lot since. But instead of continuing to build, his renown took something of a dip. Maybe part of it was that he signed to Windham Hill when that label, formerly the iconic stronghold of acoustic New Age, was exploring other routes; surely part of it was a health crisis that kept Torn out of the spotlight for a time. But as he indicated in this interview, he kept extremely busy with sideman and soundtrack work; you've quite likely heard him on film, on television, in video games, on singles by John Legend, and on albums by David Bowie.

In 2007, Torn came back to ECM with Prezens, a disc that found him working with saxophonist Tim Berne, keyboardist Craig Taborn, and drummer Tom Rainey - collectively, the trio Hard Cell, whose most recent recordings for other labels Torn had produced.

Now Torn has a new CD out: only sky, a completely improvised solo album that showcases his knack for fashioning moody atmospheres with guitar, oud, loops, and pedals. It's a quiet stunner, and to celebrate its arrival, he's touring solo for the first time in around 20 (!) years. On Wednesday night (May 13), he'll be playing sounds consistent with the album - but not identical, mind - at Regattabar in Cambridge.

Two videos here: first, rare footage from 1987 of the Cloud About Mercury band, with the late, lamented bassist Mick Karn filling in for Tony Levin, and second, a recent TEDxCalTech lecture/concert by Torn that demonstrates the kind of magic he works on only sky.

After 20 years, Keith Lockhart keeping the Pops youthful

Keith Lockhart, by Suzanne Kreiter/Boston Globe

"After 20 years, Keith Lockhart keeping the Pops youthful"
Boston Globe
May 5, 2015

My front-page story about Keith Lockhart and his eventful journey to the Boston Pops, with which institution he celebrates his 20th anniversary in a spring season that starts tonight (May 6) with a swanky concert featuring Bernadette Peters.

My record for hitting the front page of the Globe with BSO-engaged conductors remains perfect, since my first A-1 placement as a writer, published last September and evidently never posted on this blog, was a breezy snapshot of Andris Nelsons arriving to commence his tour of duty.

Hopefully, I won't have cause to extend this particular streak any time soon.