On Friday, as part of the Frontiers Festival of New Music, Simon Peacock, his Surge Orchestra, plus students of Birmingham Conservatoire (as the Thallein Ensemble) played Terry Riley’s In C (1964). This performance was held in the absolutely gorgeous setting of the rotunda of the new Library of Birmingham. The place is worth visiting just for the view: blue-lit escalators and a high-level people mover, black metal framework. Add to that a whole lot of books and exhibits and a pretty good cappuccino at the in-house café, and it’s a lovely place to visit. But we were here for Terry Riley.
Chris Hobbs, who had directed the first British performance of In C in London in 1970, introduced this performance. His introduction (the first part of which was cut off) appears here:
Hobbs had been advertised as performing with the group and had rehearsed with them once rather late in the schedule. But he decided that they had already fixed their performance and that it would be better for him to let them perform it themselves. The ensemble of students was especially excellent and enthusiastic. They would have played a classic version of In C very well indeed. Such a version would have consisted of the score: 53 little motives that are repeated ad libitum by each player, who moves through the material at her/his own pace. The resulting counterpoint of voices has made In C stand out as the first ever piece using repetitive process minimalism. Almost all performances are kept together by a pulse of repeated high Cs in octaves throughout the piece (usually on piano or mallet instrument). Once all performers reach the final repeated motive, they can end on a signal by the conductor.
I had come expecting the classic version, given that it was an anniversary event. At the very most, I had expected the group to follow the main structure and motif to motif procedure, adding occasional improvised melodic ornaments. Riley himself has added such material. However, the improvisation — or what might have been directed or newly composed material — was far more extreme than I had heard before. The group, rather bravely, rejected the C pulse, choosing to keep time themselves. Here they are, after an opening improvisatory passage, including a spoken monologue by Peacock, beginning the first real Riley portion of the performance:
The lack of a pulse made the tempo in the Riley music slow down somewhat, but not as much as some previous performances. But what was unusual was the decision by the director, Peacock, to intersperse sections of the Riley with other passages, most of which did not have the driving pulse of In C. These were described as improvisation. Peacock chose to speak some text through a microphone, both at the beginning, before Riley’s first notes, and in an improvised passage just before the final chunk of Riley’s music. This text, which was blurred and unintelligible, could have been Riley’s own prose, but I suspect was Peacock’s own. This clip has the last of Peacock’s narration (which seems to have had some sea imagery, though I am not sure) and the improvised music:
Now, this is a report of what happened, not a review, so I’ll only share a bit more of what I observed. I was not at the rehearsals, so the following is just an educated guess. I don’t think what they played was free improvisation and extemporisation of the original piece. Usually in free improvisation, there are ‘fuzzy edges’ in which a performer initiates a new texture, melody, or character to be taken up by the rest. But for me, this was too directly sectional: of Peacock, Riley, Peacock, Riley, etc. Some of the Peacock band sections had a little Riley in it. Most, like the excerpt above, had little of the incessant pulse of the original piece. The audience, some of whom had come specifically to hear In C, some of whom were library visitors who happened across it, seemed to have a different physical reaction to the Riley sections than the Peacock ones. Of course, this was due to the rock-like propulsion of Riley, compared to the more amorphous Peacock sections.
Chris Hobbs has said nothing more about this performance than I’ve indicated above, so I have only my experience as a listener to go on. And that leads me to a question. Of course, there’s nothing wrong in revising or paraphrasing a piece, but when a composer does so, he or she usually calls it ‘Paraphrase on’ or ‘Meditation on’ the original composer’s piece by the paraphrasing composer. This concert was advertised as Terry Riley’s In C and was mounted as a fiftieth anniversary of Riley’s creation. If this piece is so important as to be memorialised with a performance at a large festival of American and British music, then why change it?
Here are some pictures from John White’s birthday bash at Charlie Wright’s International Bar and Jazz Emporium. These are just tasters of some really cool happenings at the show:
1) John White introducing the events to come:
2) John Tilbury announcing his set of two sonatas by John White, whilst wearing the most amazing sequinned waistcoat:
3) Michael Parsons playing a piece about what Erik Satie would sound like if he had taken lessons with Arnold Schoenberg instead of Vincent d’Indy.
4) Chris Hobbs, introducing his two pieces:
5) Gavin Bryars introducing his piece:
That’s just a taster. We shall come back with more on this event. It was a wonderful time. Good music, great fun.
For those of you in Birmingham, the Frontiers Festival has a whole lot of music from Downtown New York and Britain — and from Texas and California (though now based in New York), Pauline Oliveros. We haven’t shared this before because the festival web site is clumsy to load and uninformative once there, with a number of events that are absent or hard to find.
But here’s an offering: a free lunchtime concert celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Terry Riley’s In C, in the rotunda of the new Birmingham Library, on Friday, 4 April from 12.15–1.15. It’s directed by Simon Peacock, with the Thallein Ensemble and Surge, with special guest star Christopher Hobbs. Hobbs is there because he mounted the first performance of In C in Britain. The story, quite cute, is here: http://www.frontiersmusic.org/events/event/terry-rileys-in-c/
If you’re hanging around Paris — who doesn’t? — this April, you might want to see Nicolas Horvath’s pianistic tribute to Philip Glass. Not only is Horvath playing a load of Glass, he’s also commissioned many, many pieces in tribute to Glass from composers all over the world, including Kyle Gann, Paul Epstein, and the EMC’s founder, Christopher Hobbs. You can find out all about it here: http://nicolaspaulhorvath.wix.com/glassworlds#!-propos1/cm9j. A Glass a day keeps the doctor away, so this must be the healthiest concert, ever!
Second set: duos, trios, quartets, quintets with:
Paul Dunmall -sax
Dave Rempis – sax
Mike Hurley piano
Chris Mapp – bass
Tim Daisy – drums
Miles Levin – drums
Ah, the cobbled streets and tiny pubs; the sound of a slow nostalgic jazz tune under shots of housetops…oh, sorry, that was Coronation Street! Well, the next best thing is happening. Those people who live in the Manchester area might be interested in next week’s Sounds of the Engine House Christmas fiesta, which will feature CHA (Bruce Coates (saxes), Christopher Hobbs (keyboards and percussion), Virginia Anderson (clarinets and other things), this year’s new free improvisation trio, plus Mark Summers (viola da gamba) and David Bainbridge (guitars), on Monday 16 December, upstairs at the Old Nags Head, Jackson Row, Deansgate, M2 5WD. The festivities start at 7.30 and run to 10.30. For information, see http://sotehupcoming.blogspot.co.uk/ and its Facebook events page: https://www.facebook.com/events/558273884246823/?notif_t=plan_user_joined . CHA’s web page on the Experimental Music Catalogue blog page is: http://experimentalmusic.co.uk/wp/?page_id=859 . Hope to see you there!
Dave Smith lets us know about his rescheduled performance of Holst’s The Planets:
Dear everyone,
6.30 pm on Saturday 30th November at Schotts Recital Room, 48 Great Marlborough Street, London W1F 7BB.
In addition to the 1st performance of my solo piano version of Holst’s “The Planets”, John White will present the British premiere of his (electronic) 15th symphony which contains two movements entitled “A survivor from Vienna” and “The crematorium organist’s favourite chords”. There will also be an appearance by White and Andrea Rocca under their collective title Bad Dog!!
Given Dave’s previous performances of his own works and arrangements of others, we expect good things of it. Plus we’ve had a heads up — John White phoned us last night with good news about this rare public performance of one of his symphonies, and enthusiasm about the new duo, Bad Dog!! (the exclamation points are mandatory, like John’s former group with Chris Hobbs, Live Batts!!!).
