The EMC Blog

Ordering the little way….

Occasionally we get requests from big companies, publishers, universities and so on, assuming that we’re a big publishing firm. But we’re just a little group of people putting out the odd score and CD (some admittedly, odder than others). We’re kind of like a village women’s club who sell a few pots of jam to cover the cost of the sugar, fruit and jars, simply because they like making jam. And of course the composers get royalties on each sale. It’s only a little bit (a straight 10%), but we think it’s important that they get recognition.

So here’s a bit of EMC housekeeping: how to order stuff from the EMC. We like to do things in the easiest way possible. We recommend that order through us by email and pay by PayPal. It’s the cheapest way we’ve found to get the good ol’ EMC stuff from us to you. The information about how to do this is here: http://www.experimentalmusic.co.uk/emc/How_to_Order,_Submissions,_Privacy.html.

We usually get the money transferred into our Paypal account and immediately send out the order within a day or two — the very next day the Post Office is open, usually. And you can always email us at questions**experimentalmusic.co.uk (for the **, substitute @) if you need any assistance — heck, just to chat.

Right, that’s enough housekeeping. The next blog post will be more interesting, promise.

 

Canard de “Fizzle”, avec lapin

Bruce Coates brings us news of the new season of Fizzle, curated by Andrew Woodhead. This concert may quack you up, so be sure to attend: hop to it!

The new season of Fizzle kicks off with the fabulous duck-rabbit, featuring:

Joe Wright – saxophone/electronics,
Tom Taylor – piano/electronics,
James Opstad – double bass/electronics

Should be a delightful gig, come on down!

Gig starts at 8pm at the Lamp Tavern, Barford St, Birmingham.

£5/£3 OTD

Behind the Irritable Hedgehog

One of our regular go-to composers is the founder of Irritable Hedgehog Recordings, David D. McIntire. McIntire works on worldwide minimalism and postminimalism, totalism, and all the postmodern ‘isms’ anyone could want, from his base in Missouri. The official site of Irritable Hedgehog has music by a number of composers (pianism by R. Andrew Lee, design by Scott Unrein) is worth visiting: http://irritablehedgehog.com/Recordings.html . However, today we were perusing McIntire’s Soundcloud page, which includes a bunch of his Hedgehog tracks, plus E.I.O, a free improvisation group which McIntire co-founded. Well worth a little listen: https://soundcloud.com/irritable-hedgehog-music .

The Tortoise, His Journey — No Dreaming

The Tortoise and His Raincoat: Music for a Very Long Walk is an event created by Nat Evans, who is hiking the 2600 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada, creating environmental recordings and collaborating with composers along the way. Scott Unrein, a Portland-based composer who is associated with the Missouri-based minimalist recording company Irritable Hedgehog, has written episode 6: Nacre. You can hear it (if you listen carefully — it starts very softly!) here: https://soundcloud.com/natevans-1/the-tortoise-6-scott-unrein-oregon-nacre

Edited for errors. Really, we shouldn’t let admin try to write copy! (Virginia)

Lewis-Shrapnel Duo in London

Well, this looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun. John Lewis was one half of the legendary 1970s piano duo with Dave Smith. Hugh Shrapnel was a member of the (can we repeat legendary? Oh, okay, we will) legendary minimalist quartet the Promenade Theatre Orchestra. Both composers have come up with loads of great pieces over the years, so we expect good things from this concert. And the free wine’s a bit of a draw!

Hugh Shrapnel and John Lewis Piano Duets and Solos

Saturday 27th September 6.30 pm                                  

Schotts Music Publishers, 48 Great Marlborough Street, London W1F 7BB                                                   (Nearest tube Oxford Circus)

Shrapnel and Lewis’s music complements each other. The former’s amiable sepia-tinted portraits of S.E. London life and locations contrast with the latter’s more aggressive jazz-tinged depictions of the Chemical Elements.

Expect train journeys, rare-earths, cemeteries, evil-smelling liquids and much more…

Admission £8, (concs. £5) and free wine!

EMC upgrades move to Jems

The current summer updates to the Experimental Music Catalogue website have now moved to our associated peer-review journal, JemsThe editors have added a category called ‘Links to like-minded writings’, which will connect Jems to work that will amplify and contextualise the discourse on experimental and minimalist music. These writings are already in fixed format and will be available through open-access. The first link is James Pritchett’s perceptive study of Cage’s spirituality in the 1940s and 50s. There will be more to come.

EMC Upgrade/update

Sharp-eyed readers will see a lot of changes slowly appearing to the EMC website. First, there’s a slightly sleeker look. We think that it might be easier to find things with our new menu. We’re placing more pictures on the page, sound file samples of the CDs that we currently sell, and are just starting to put short samples from our scores, with a bit more information about each piece. You can see an example of this last improvement here, with a page for Chris Hobbs’ 24 Preludes for solo piano: http://www.experimentalmusic.co.uk/emc/Hobbs_24_Preludes.html . More — much more — to come. We hope to add many more freebies as we go, so keep in touch!

Jon Hassell trio on KCRW

Those fans of minimalism and ambient music might like this rare visit by Jon Hassell and his trio to Los Angeles’ KCRW programme, Morning Becomes Eclectic. The trio includes movie music guy John Von Seggern on bass and electronics and Cold Blue artist Rick Cox, whose guitar, electronics and sax work has been delighting postminimalist friends for decades. Interesting, jazzy stuff. We’re listening to it now….

http://www.kcrw.com/music/shows/morning-becomes-eclectic/jon-hassell-2014-07-16

Pritchett on Cage

James Pritchett has been adding to his blog series on Cage, now in six episodes: http://rosewhitemusic.com/piano/writings/cage-spirituality/ . This is a very useful addition to the thinking about John Cage’s work and ideas. Too often recent scholarship has stepped back from Cage’s spirituality as motivation for his work, preferring instead to focus on the nuts-and-bolts of his compositional technique. Pritchett, an expert in the philosophy and musical elements in Cage’s work, brings rich detail to his exploration. Very highly recommended.

New series of blogs on Cage

Cage fanciers will be thrilled with this new series on James Pritchett’s blog. Pritchett is one of the great writers on Cage: author of The Music of John Cage, and of the Grove Dictionary entry on him. Pritchett has written a lot on Feldman and others on this blog. Well worth checking out. See http://rosewhitemusic.com/piano/2014/05/31/cage-spirituality-still-point/