San Francisco new music organization, 23five, has been around since 1993, and has been activating the medium for eleven (XI) of those years. But I only heard about them this past January, when Asymmetry Music Magazine received an email from them announcing the three events of this year’s Activating the Medium festival, an announcement I dutifully put in the “up-coming events” column of Asymmetry. After all, the likes of Krieger, Karkowski, and Niblock are certainly worth mentioning. But this became more personal with the line in their announcement about Karkowski’s “orchestral scores.” That was intriguing. And it kept intriguing, until I made up some other work to do in the Bay Area, hopped on a plane, and flew from Portland, OR to San Francisco to go to a concert. Read more »

photograph by Jim Leisy

Review by James Bash of concert one of the Carter-Messiaen Project

A concert of new serious music is the most difficult kind of event to sell in Portland, Oregon. Most performances of new music in this town are lucky to draw an audience of a hundred people and most draw only a couple dozen. So, it is encouraging to know that Chamber Music Northwest was financially sound enough to sponsor a series of three contemporary music concerts, which took place over the weekend of January 25-27. Read more »

The Portland New Music Society held its first concert of 2008 at the Towne Lounge on January 22^nd. Society founder Brandon Conway always puts together a great show, and this one, which also featured him as one of the performers, was no exception. In spite of freezing temperatures, there was a pretty good crowd there, including some people I’ve never seen before at a New Music Society show. One of these was someone who’s worked with Fred Frith, among others. That he was as impressed as I was with the evening’s offerings may serve to indicate just how talented these musicians are.

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Portland, Oregon residents who have not been to Czech Republic recently to see and hear installation artist Dan Senn’s Huffa Puffa can see a version of this at the Autzen Gallery of Portland State University through February 7. Entitled Air Lift, Lilt with traffic, the Portland installation uses the same ideas of audio and subaudio frequencies as Huffa Puffa, the subaudio to pump up the air bags, the audio to deflate them (and to give us something to listen to).

And the something to listen to is quite seductive. The note on Senn’s site, which you’ve doubtless just read, which says that the piece “is best appreciated over an extended period of time. Hours. Days” is literally true, but doesn’t suggest why this should be so: it is because if you let it, the piece will mesmerize you, will be something that you will not want, will hardly feel able, to walk away from.

You can, as some people at the opening did, walk in, walk around, and walk out again. But if you stay, you may find that you want to stay longer and longer. Perhaps days may be hyperbole. Hours is definitely not! Read more »

I met with Dhomont in Montréal the day after his 80th birthday, which was celebrated there with a five day festival of electroacoustic music by Calon, Brümmer, Martusciello and others. And by Francis Dhomont, whose concert took place on his birthday. A working birthday, too, as he presented his music himself. In the midst of all this activity, Dhomont was gracious enough to grant Asymmetry this interview, and not only that, but since he wanted to conduct it in French, his friend and colleague, Robert Normandeau very kindly agreed to act as translator for us and very naturally took part in the conversation.

Asymmetry: When you read biographies of composers, there’s often some mention of that person having studied with Nadia Boulanger, say, or Charles Koechlin or whomever. That’s the extent of it, usually. And I always find myself curious about the other people; who are the other people that a young composer, that a young Francis Dhomont—at 14, or 20, or 25—admired and perhaps tried to emulate, even? Read more »

One cannot help remark something very interesting about Dhomont’s recorded oeuvre, and that is that it is full of pieces appearing as parts of other pieces. Novars, the first piece of Les dérives du signe, appears here as the third piece of Cycle du son. The third volet, I should say. Chiaroscuro, the second piece of Les dérives, has also appeared by itself, as Chiaroscuro… ou les jeux de l’ambiguité. And Météores is also the third, and culminating, piece of Chroniques de la lumière.

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Jalons is that rare disc in Dhomont’s output that is not a cycle or part of one. It is simply, as the title (of the disc only) indicates, a collection of pieces spanning a portion of Dhomont’s career, the portion from 1985 to 2001. It is, as Dhomont says, a “mini-panorama.” And though the span of years is small, musically this is as diverse a collection as one could wish for.

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Montréal was where electroacoustic pioneer Francis Dhomont spent a good deal of his life before moving back to France, so of course Montréal was going to throw a big celebration for his 80^th birthday, putting on a five day festival of music by Elio Martusciello, Ludger Brümmer, Christian Calon, Francis Dhomont, and an evening of various composers played by the Quasar saxophone quartet.
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The title Mouvances-Métaphores covers two discs of music: Cycle de l’errance and Les Dérives du signe, seven pieces from the eighties all related by ideas of movement and change. (The word Métaphores is as literal, and as metaphorical, in French as it is in English. And both meanings are important for these pieces.)

The first piece of Cycle de l’errance, Points de Fuite, is a curious and curiously teasing sort of piece. First of all, while its points may indeed be said to vanish, as is true for any piece of music, it also provides material for the next two pieces of the cycle, giving it a literal kind of permanence at odds with its title. Second, it is inside a larger piece, Cycle de l’errance, which is itself inside of Mouvance-Métaphores, titles which might seem to account for those three rather odd little interruptions in its twelve minute span, first a passing car, next a train whistle, and last a jet plane. Seem to, but not really. Read more »

Like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, Dhomont’s symphony is made up of bits and pieces. Like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, Dhomont’s symphony has a life of its own.

Unlike the monster, however, Dhomont’s symphony is graceful and lovely, all of its bits were used with the victims’ permission, and the surgery performed has left the pieces of which it has been made alive and well.

Nothing of Shelley’s story is presented here. The title refers solely to the surgical technique, although appropriately enough two of the pieces appropriated were Les corps éblouis (Christian Calon) and Spleen (Robert Normandeau).

Sewn together in 1997, the Frankenstein Symphony is in four movements: Allegro, Andante, Scherzo (Giocoso), and Finale.

The clip is from the opening of the Allegro. If you’re interested in the corpus from which this was taken, Gilles Gobeil’s Le vertige inconnu, there’s a clip at the electrocd site.

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Also, here’s a clip from Normandeau’s Spleen:

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