New Releasings
Labor Records in collaboration with Naxos is releasing a series of recordings of my work covering more than half a century! The most recent release is "Jukebox in the Tavern of Love" paired with a new work by Meredith Monk. "The Nude Paper Sermon" and "Wiretap" is a double album containing no fewer than five works; see below for details. "Civilization & its Discontents" is a words-and-music collaboration with Michael Sahl. More information, reviews and ordering (physical or digital editions) is available below or by going to Labor Records.
SIGNAL TO NOISE article published
SIGNAL TO NOISE calls itself “The Journal of Improvised, Experimental and Unusual Music”. I’ve now seen a copy of the latest issue (#63; Spring 2012), just published. It includes a major article by William Gibson about new music on Nonesuch about half of which is devoted, in some detail, to a remarkable shout-out for The Nude Paper Sermon. (see also my last post below). This is especially timely because the original Nonesuch recording is about to be reissued by Labor Records (and distributed by Naxos) in a boxed set together with the four pieces that make up my old Finnadar album Wiretap. The magazine is distributed by Barnes & Noble, the Downtown Music Gallery in NYC and many stores around the country. You can find a full list on their web site <signaltonoisemagazine.org> or by e-mailing them at <operations@signaltonoisemagazine.org>. Or you can just send $10 to SIGNAL TO NOISE, 1128 Waverly Street, Houston, Texas 77008.
Date Posted // April 29, 2012
In Categories // Music Theater, News, Recordings, The Nude Paper Sermon, Wiretap, Works and Productions
William Gibson Article on The Nude Paper Sermon in Signal to Noise Magazine
The Spring 2012, issue of Signal to Noise magazine has an article by William Gibson on the Nonesuch contemporary music recordings of the 1970s that is, in fact, mostly about The Nude Paper Sermon. This was the second Nonesuch commission (after Mort Subotnik’s Silver Apples of the Moon). It was written for the Nonesuch Consort, an early-music ensemble of voices and renaissance instruments (founded and directed by Joshua Rifkin), to which has been added an actor (Stacy Keach), a chorus (the N.Y. Motet Singers) and electronic sounds (Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Studio). It was one of the first works of contemporary music to be written for recordings, making original and creative use of the then-new multi-track recording technique to craft a multi-media or music-theater work in sound. This was also some of the first new music to be written for Renaissance instruments in half a millenium! The recording uses the illusion of depth produced by stereo to produce the effect of listening through the surface of the loudspeakers (defined by aural graffiti in the form of electronic sounds) to some distant, mythical golden age. Also close to the surface is the voice of Stacy Keach who is, in turn, a preacher, a politician, an evangelist, a new-age guru–in short, an amalgamation of all those bloviators who use language to control others. The actor’s text was created especially for this work by poet Steven Wade (Wade Stevenson), not as a parody, but as a prose poem about contemporary life; these words are scored with accents, rhythms, tempi and dynamics as they rise above and are submerged by the musical textures. The sung texts are John Ashbery’s Three Madrigals which he had coincidentally sent me just at the time that I was thinking about this work.
The Nude Paper Sermon is scheduled to be re-released by Labor Records in conjunction with Naxos this summer. More on this shortly.
Date Posted // April 20, 2012
In Categories // Music Theater, News, Recordings, Reviews, The Nude Paper Sermon
Workshop Performance of Big Jim & the Small-Time Investors
An atelier or workshop performance of Big Jim & the Small-Time Investors—music by Eric Salzman, libretto by Salzman after a text by Ned Jackson—will take place at the Flea Theater, 41 White Street, Tribeca, New York City, on March 29th at 8:00pm. This new work is about an L.A. con man who claims to have invented a virtual reality machine which allows the user to see his wildest fantasies come true. Matt Morgan plays Jim, Laila Salins is his wife Kim, Scott Bearden is his manager Stan, Marni Nixon his Mom and there is an ensemble of 8. Antoine Laprise will direct and Michael Fennelly is the music director. The production is part of a week-long event at the Center for Contemporary Opera at The Flea that includes three other workshops and a special evening honoring John Cage’s 100th birthday. Grethe Holby directs performances of Cage’s Europera 5 and a staging of the Satie Socrate that uses his arrangements.
Date Posted // February 28, 2012
In Categories // Big Jim and the Small-Time Investors, Events, Music Theater, News, Works and Productions
The Nude Paper Sermon
The Nude Paper Sermon will be reviewed in the forthcoming Signal to Noise Magazine. The full article by William Gibson, A Nude Paper Rendezvous: Electronic Psychedelic Nonesuch, will be included in issue no.63. Here is a preview from the article:
“[The Nude Paper Sermon] is both of its time and still amazingly fresh. There are portions that sound like Gyorgy Ligeti’s music for 2001: A Space Odyssey. And there are moments that sound like free jazz. And there are moments that sound like nothing else I’ve ever heard.”
Date Posted // November 08, 2011
In Categories // News, Reviews, The Nude Paper Sermon, Works and Productions
Big Jim and the Small-Time Investors
The Center for Contemporary Opera (CCO) will produce a workshop version of Big Jim and the Small-Time Investors, a new opera or music-theater work currently in progress. The piece (libretto by Ned Jackson and Eric Salzman, music by Salzman), based on a real story, concerns an L.A. con man who persuades investors to put substantial amounts of money into the development of his invention: a virtual reality headset which enables viewers to imagine that their deepest dreams have come true. The workshop production is scheduled for next fall.
Date Posted // April 04, 2011
In Categories // Big Jim and the Small-Time Investors, Music Theater, Works and Productions