Paul Dresher Ensemble Electro-Acoustic Band with Amy X Neuburg
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Friday, December 5, 2014, 8pm Saturday, December 6, 2014, 8pm Zellerbach Playhouse Paul Dresher Ensemble Electro-Acoustic Band with Amy X Neuburg They Will Have Been So Beautiful: Songs and Images of Now (World Première ) PROGRAM Pamela Z 17 Reasons Why (2014) Text by Pamela Z Photograph by Donald Swearingen Lisa Bielawa Ego Sum (2014) Text overheard in transient public spaces Photographs by Ourit Ben-Haim Conrad Cummings At the Window (2014) Text and photo by Conrad Cummings Paul Dresher A Picture Screen Stands in Solitude (2014) Text by Michael Nelson, with special thanks to Nigel Poor Photographs: Richard Misrach, Drive-In Theater, Las Vegas, 1987 Hiroshi Sugimoto, La Paloma, Encinitas, 1993 Jay Cloidt What Is Missing? (2014) Text by Melody Sumner Carnahan Please see program notes for full photo credits INTERMISSION CAL PERFORMANCES PROGRAM Fred Frith If I Could (2014) Text by Leila Attatoi Photograph by Heike Liss Guillermo Galindo Blood Bolero (2014) Text by Juvenal Acosta, based on photographs by Maya Goded Carla Kihlstedt Gathering Storm (2014) Text and photograph by Carla Kihlstedt Ken Ueno Secret Meridian (2014) Text and photograph by Ken Ueno Amy X Neuburg Is It Conflict-Free and Were Any Animals Harmed in the Making of It? (2014) 1. Brownies 2. English bobby toilet paper holder 3. Fourth day of wimpy non-period period 4. Mountain Text and photographs by Amy X Neuburg THE ELECTRO -ACOUSTIC BAND Jeff Anderle clarinet, bass clarinet Joel Davel Marimba Lumina, audio programming Paul Dresher electric guitar, electric bass Marja Mutru keyboard Karen Bentley Pollick violin, viola Gene Reffkin electronic drums John Schott electric guitar Brendan Aanes sound engineer The Norman Conquest sound recorder Mark Palmer video engineer SPECIAL GUEST ARTIST Amy X Neuburg voice, electronics Cal Performances’ – season is sponsored by Wells Fargo. PLAYBILL PROGRAM NOTES OR NEARLY A DECADE , on the summer sol - Tonight, we finally have the opportunity to Fstice, Amy X Neuburg and I (along with share these ten works with you. Each com - my Invented Instrument Duo partner Joel poser has taken their own unique approach to Davel) have shared the Small Chapel in the the commissioning task. The marvelously di - Chapel Of the Chimes Columbarium at the verse approaches to the commission’s artistic remarkable Garden of Memory event (con - parameters and the wide range of musical re - ceived and curated by Sarah Cahill). During sults are exactly what we had hoped for in the those years, we developed a deep mutual re - largest sense when we commenced on this gard for each other’s compositional and per - journey. In addition to the composers and formance artistry. At some point we started to photographers who have generously given discuss how we could collaborate on an permission to use their works, we also want evening-length project. In exploring ideas, I to thank the many individual and institutional shared with Amy a text that I was considering supporters who made the project possible and setting i n a composition—photographer to Cal Performances for presenting a project Diane Arbus’s 1962 application for a fellow - about which almost nothing specific could be ship from the Guggenheim Foundation. In defined in advance of their decision to present this single typewritten page she eloquently the world première. and poetically defines her then-revolutionary Paul Dresher, November O, JHIL aesthetic, that the commonplace habits, ritu - als and social spaces of everyday life hold a I have admired the work of Paul Dresher ever meaning and importance that will only be un - since I moved to the Bay Area in the late derstood in the future, because “they will have 1980s. The kinship was obvious: our interests been so beautiful.” in the theatrical elements of music and in the While it was not possible to obtain the nec - use of the vernacular in text, instrumentation, essary permission to set this text (something and musical style. It has been an honor and a I still hope to do), both Amy and I felt that pleasure to develop this project with Paul, Arbus’s writing and the aesthetics of her ex - to get to know him as a friend and a very traordinary body of work would be a com - generous colleague, and to work with his ter - pelling organizing principle for our project. rific ensemble. We decided to commission a stylistically di - Before I myself became a composer, I began verse set of eight composers, who would each my career in new music as the only vocalist at compose a song-length work for Amy and the Oberlin Conservatory who was not afraid to Electro-Acoustic Band, which would soon tackle the unconventional works of the com - celebrate its 20th anniversary. The works position students, and through this I fell in would be in some way inspired by Arbus’s cel - love with the process of bringing new songs ebration of the commonplace and of the “cer - by fellow musicians to life. These days I rarely emonious and curious.” Each composer was get to do so, so when Paul and I discussed a asked to select or create one or more photo - collaboration this was what I requested. I graphic images and find or create a text con - could not be more pleased with the results; nected in some way to the image, and to use tonight’s commissioned songs are every bit as these as the basis for their composition. Amy strange and wonderful and challenging as I and I would each write a new piece with the had imagined. I hope the audience enjoys same guidelines, to make it an even ten. them as much as I do. Amy X Neuburg, November O, JHIL CAL PERFORMANCES PROGRAM NOTES Pamela Z based on overheard fragments of speech that 7: Reasons Why (8679) I collected all over the world over the course of 14 months. Even after creating the 35-minute IO Reasons Why was inspired by Donald Chance Encounter for soprano and orchestra Swearingen’s photograph of a treasured San (for performance in transient public spaces) Francisco landmark—the enormo us “17 rea - and several other small works using these sons” sign that once loomed large over the overheard texts, I have nowhere near ex - corner of 17th and Mission streets atop what hausted the poetic charms of this library. In is now the Thrift Town building. The sign, Ego Sum , I have selected phrases from it based which was erected in 1935 on the roof of simply on their use of the first-person subject Redlick’s Furniture to display their slogan, was “I” at the beginning of the sentence (and fur - a spectacular example of classic Depression- ther refined the list based on the inherent era lighted metal signage. The store closed in charms of each phrase). On discovering Ourit 1975, but the sign remained for decades— Ben-Haim’s gentle yet gritty images of various slowly becoming tarnished, covered with graf - “I”s assembled in public space, mostly in the fiti, and eventually losing the word “why.” New York City subway system, where so many Like many residents of the Mission District, of these texts were collected, I knew I had a I was extremely fond of that elegant and new context for these restless egos to which grandly peculiar sign, and was saddened when we are both drawn, over and over again, in our the inevitable happened—the sign was dis - work. Ms. Ben-Haim says, “Lisa knows the mantled and covered in vinyl for advertising. world I found in street photography…. It’s Donald had shot several photographs of the such a wonderful vibrational match.” building in spring 2002, just a few months be - fore the sign was taken down. Aware of my sad - ness at the sign’s disappearance, he made me a Conrad Cummings gift of a framed print of one of t he photos. At the Window (8679) Walking in Diane Arbus’s footsteps, as Paul Lisa Bielawa and Amy asked, is quite a challenge: Find an Ego Sum (8679) image, a ceremony of the every day, then write the song it inspires. Where should I start? I The title “Ego Sum” oscillates between its guess from where I always do, right after meanings in Latin—“I am”—and in English— breakfast. Write some, stop, write some more, loosely, the aggregate of conscious beings. An stop. Wonder if it will be brilliant; dread that incurably urban sort, I tend to find inspira - it will be stupid. Then remember that it will tion, solace, and even radiant joy in transient be neither. Just work ahead like any other day. public spaces, where I can feel the sum of so And feel so lucky that there’s someone in my many egos around me. I become aware of my - life who can remind me of that. A huge thank self as just one consciousness among many, you to Paul and Amy for bringing this wildly flowing shoulder to shoulder through our variegated collection into being. I’m so proud modern world. It is no accident, then, that, to be part of it. I hope Arbus would be pleased. long before the invitation from Amy X Neuburg and the Paul Dresher Ensemble to create a short work for inclusion in their set of Paul Dresher pieces inspired by Diane Arbus, providing lit - A Picture Screen Stands in Solitude (8679) eral and musical snapshots of “intimate re - flections on contemporary American life,” I About three years ago, my friend and photog - had already written an entire body of work rapher Richard Misrach shared a text that had PLAYBILL PROGRAM NOTES been written by a 28-year-old man incarcer - Jay Cloidt ated at San Quentin for a murder committed What Is Missing? (8679) when he was a teenager.