Re: [microsound] visual artists

["mat.the.w" <craque@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I had the opportunity to study with David Patterson at U. of Maryland, who
was hired in their musicology department and immediately started up a John
Cage music course. I went to grad school there for 2.5 years, studying to
perform opera.

But much earlier as an undergrad at Virginia Tech, I was exposed *first* by
my buddy Jason the world of Naked City and John Zorn, and that was the
beginning of the end for me. Once I saw the avenues, I headed down them
straightaway. Derek Bailey, Ikue Mori and Bill Frisell were my early heroes.

So it's kind of funny that, for me, I actually was indoctrinated early into
the improv/free/out world as a player and improvisor before really "getting"
a lot of the academic side of experimentalism. I got a radio show on WUVT
and started getting into the other 20th century geniuses (we actually had a
list of composers we were NOT allowed to play, this was in an age when we
had an experimental radio program for 3 hours every single weekday morning).

Once I started learning about Cage (did a 4'33" for guitar at my sr.
recital), I couldn't get enough. When I ended up in grad school studying
voice and theater, I got a similar experimental radio show on WUMD and did a
great deal of performing experimental vocal works, which led me immediately
into meeting and knowing Pauline Oliveros, who is one of my biggest
influences in both philosophy and music making.

So through all this 'academic' (though you see how it really wasn't)
training, I found I had the same troubles getting people to recognize more
experimental composers as repertoire. Even though a recital wasn't required
for opera soloists, I did one anyway, filling it with vocal works from
Pauline, Cage, Polifrone and Bowles. Of course, all of that activity brought
me very close into 'classical' electronic music and I did a LOT of other
concerts (including AtlantiCage and a huge Stockhausen evening) that started
my stompbox and looper collection.

It was around this time I joined forces with Comma and Gray Code, you can
check out links to our membership at http://www.metatronpress.com - though I
will warn you it's in plenty need of updating. Both groups dealt with live
electro-acoustic performance, though Comma was primarily just three voices.

Man I didn't mean for this to go on like this.

I didn't even come to realize what was going on with 'electronica' or even
microsound until after I had dropped out of grad school and started a
computer job doing network and systems administration and architecture. Most
of my interest really lies in live performance with instruments you learn to
play, or sounds you learn to make, or things you improvise with to create
endless palates of sound.

Of course, one of my biggest questions at the time was why use a computer to
make sounds you can just as easily make using live gear and
toys/objects/instruments?

I happened to be introduced to Paul van Dyk spinning at Twilo by my
coworkers in NYC, and it sounds so cheesey but the night changed my life. It
completely rearranged my entire viewpoint and outlook on what music was,
what it could do to people, and how it was such an incredibly raw driving
force in our culture.

So I got into dance music, and you can just imagine how my classical
background converged on that, so it wasn't long before I was completely
entrenched. My strange output in musical 'composition' (not improvisation)
consists of everything you read here, mushed into about 5-7 minutes, and
completely unpublishable. ;)

Not really visual art I guess, but I have a very deep love and involvement
for theater and design... Gesamptkunstwerk to the max!

//\

On 2/8/06 7:47 AM, "bruce tovsky" <bruce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> scribed:

> 
> On Feb 7, 2006, at 7:16 PM, David Powers wrote:
> 
>> A lot of musicians still maintain very old fashioned ideas, on the
>> other hand, and they are never forced to ask themselves hard aesthetic
>> questions or consider broader questions on the nature of sound and
>> music. They typically consider someone like John Cage to be a complete
>> joke and crackpot!
> 
> well, even though i come from a mostly visual art background i have to
> take some issue with this statement. my big eye-openers regarding experimental
> music came by way of an academic music institution -  Indiana University in
> Bloomington, IN.



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