musicians such as Elton Dean, Gary Windo, Nick Evans, Harry so that I moved into a short solo that allowed me to get it all off Miller and Mike Osborne. my chest. Luckily, the engineer gave me a tape of this “blow” I regularly practiced each weekend in the Mildenhall with the solo on the end. My horoscope has a pattern named factory’s canteen for up to 13 hours a day. My father had a by Dane Rudhyar as the Wedge, or Funnel, pattern. For these reel-to-reel that he’d recorded the Black Cat Bones on, and I reasons I’ve named this short piece Wedged Into Release. used to record some of my practice sessions or rehearsals (Mu- In principle, I stopped playing with everyone in 1974 to sicians Union) to gain objectivity, to analyze for improvements “woodshed”—to totally rethink my musical vocabulary. I did a and simply as a record. In 1970, I’d done a summer season in few Ovary Lodge and Ark gigs and around 1977 formed a duo Penzance, Cornwall, with The Jazz Roots and had bought a with David Toop (Tee-Pee). But largely I’ve pursued my solo Philips cassette recorder for the reasons given. I’d also record direction—unfolding meditative soundscapes utilizing various my solo work and the rehearsals with Balance (co-founded combinations from around 700 of my instruments, overtone with guitarist Ian Brighton) at my bedsit in Crouch End, Lon- and undertone chanting and boo flutes, appearing on around don, until the tape recorder was stolen. 60 albums. I decided to move back down to London in January of 1970 and on the evening of the move I had a gig at Ray Man’s club, The Crucible. I began at 7:30 P.M. and emerged “house drum- PIECE FOR CELLO AND ACCORDION (1974) mer” at 7:30 A.M. Evan Parker played as part of SME and also Composer: Michael Parsons happened to live down the road from Mike Sullivan’s place in Performers: Michael Parsons (cello), Howard Skempton (accor- Kilburn. We’d often go down there, so I got to play with Evan, dion) then formed The Frank Perry Trio with Derek Bailey and we Note by Michael Parsons, Flat 4, 148 Fellows Road, London, did a few gigs. NW3, U.K. Being part of the Beat generation, I’d been listening to mod- ern jazz (Modern Jazz Quartet, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, etc.) After the break-up of the Scratch Orchestra and the split be- since 1963. I’d also gone out and bought Spirits by Albert Ayler, tween its “political” and “experimental” factions, there was a re- being interested to read that he thought of the recording ses- grouping of composers (including Howard Skempton and my- sion as a kind of séance (I’d discovered that I was a “trance me- self, John White and Chris Hobbs) who did not wish to associate dium” in 1965) that brought another energy to the proceed- themselves with the political line adopted by Cornelius Cardew ings. I dug what Albert was doing but never thought of playing and others. We also reacted against the more anarchic aspects of that music myself! Who would I play it with? Then I discovered early Scratch performances and became interested in a return the improvised music scene as it was happening in London. Yet, to elementary musical procedures. At around this time I took up whilst SME was free, it wasn’t the same style as Albert’s. playing the cello for a while, in order to take part in perfor- By playing regularly at Ray Man’s Crucible, I got to play with mances with groups of art students in Portsmouth, where I was many individuals. Ray’s stayed open all night—so players a visiting lecturer. Although my bowing technique remained ru- would often come over after playing at Ronnie’s (wherever), dimentary, I found that I could play plucked notes with reason- which closed at 3 A.M. One time Chris McGregor and Mongezi able accuracy (especially if some of them were on open strings). Feza popped in and asked if I wanted to jam. Actually, I’d In 1974 Howard Skempton and I formed a duo to perform never heard their music and didn’t have any idea who they our own pieces (mostly for voices and percussion). I was at- were. We played a remarkably “happening” set—a kind of tracted by the contrast of sonority between the cello’s low spiritual unity reminiscent of Albert Ayler’s music—and so I’ve pizzicato notes and sustained sounds in the high register of the titled this piece: Blowing in the Wind. Whenever I met Chris accordion, and this piece, written in February 1974, was one of he’d always say that we must release that jam. the first results of our collaboration. It is harmonically static, After that initial meeting, Chris often booked me to play in using a limited selection of pitches in the cello part, which are various groups. gradually extended and shifted in relation to the accordion’s Harry Miller was bassist with Chris at the time and had sug- sustained sounds. The process is fairly transparent; it reflects gested that Keith Tippett check me out. Keith rang, then came our association at the time with Systems artists such as Jeffrey and visited. We talked and he asked me to join his group, The Steele and Peter Lowe, who used a similar kind of repetition Keith Tippett Trio, which we soon co-founded as Ovary Lodge. and displacement of elements in their visual work. We did a couple of gigs, and then it was into the recording stu- This performance was recorded by Dave Smith at the British dio to finish what was to become the album Blueprint. Music Information Centre in London on 8 August 1974. Keith’s style was mostly about getting into an emotional groove, and I sometimes found that frustrating, being as I was more sanguine and enjoyed making music of the “Now”— FOUR ASPECTS (1960) where the music was free to change at any one instant. At that Composer: Daphne Oram time I was more familiar with that particular way of listening Note by Hugh Davies, 25 Albert Road, London N4 3RR, U.K. that was of a more intensely intuitive, psycho-spiritual nature. E-mail:
96 LMJ11 CD Contributors’ Notes
Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/lmj.2001.11.96b by guest on 01 October 2021 Daphne Oram was born in 1925. Following her musical stud- As with its companion pieces, for one and two springs re- ies she worked as a music balancer for BBC radio in London. spectively, this work uses part of an amplified instrument Her unperformed, half-hour-long Still Point (1950), for double called My Spring Collection. The three springs, which are 20, orchestra, prerecorded instrumental sounds and live elec- 25 and 38 cm in length, are amplified by means of four mag- tronic treatments, may well have been the very first composi- netic pickups arranged in a square; two of them are connected tion in any country to incorporate live electronic transforma- to the left channel and two to the right. The springs are tion. In the mid-1950s, having failed to convince anyone at the moved around in different combinations and positions above BBC of the importance of the recently introduced electronic or directly on the pickups and are played by the fingers and a music and musique concrète, she began with Desmond Briscoe variety of small implements. to assemble a temporary tape studio at night after broadcasting Out of more than a dozen significant solo pieces of mine for had finished, producing in this manner, both independently my invented instruments, this is one of only two that have not and in collaboration, background music for several radio and already been issued on a recording or will appear on a CD in TV drama broadcasts. This led in 1958 to the foundation, pri- the course of 2001. marily sponsored by the drama department, of the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop, of which she was the first director. However, unhappy with the lack of interest in the musical pos- PLUM (1973) sibilities of the medium, she left in 1959 to set up her own pri- Composers/performers: Lol Coxhill/Steve Miller vate Oramics studio. Note by Lol Coxhill, 17 Laney House, Portpool Lane, London, Like Raymond Scott in the same period, Daphne Oram EC1N 7UL, U.K. Steve Miller (deceased). combined her work as a composer with developing a special- ized composition machine; they both financed their studios During the 1970s, continuing into the 1990s, pianist Stephen by concentrating on commercial work, in Oram’s case prima- Miller and I worked together on many occasions, either as a rily for television and documentary films. Her only commer- duo or with the group Delivery, or with other musicians. This cially recorded work is Electronic Sound Patterns (1962), in the track is an excerpt from an improvisation during an early series Listen, Move and Dance. A working version of the 1970s tour of colleges in Britain. Steve plays electric piano, Oramics machine, involving drawn sound techniques, was and I play saxophone with a Watkins Copycat echo unit. completed in the mid-1960s, so it did not feature in the cre- ation of Four Aspects. This machine was overtaken by digital developments in the 1980s, and Oram spent several years PART 3 (1968) working on a computer-based system to replace it. Following Performers: The People Band—Terry Day, Mel Davis, Lyn Dob- two strokes in the mid-1990s, she has sadly been unable to son, Eddie Edem, Tony Edwards, Mick Figgis, Frank Flowers, continue any of her work. Terry Halman, Russ Herncy, George Khan I now manage the archive of Daphne Oram’s papers and Note by Terry Day, The People Band, 80 Bulwer Road, Barnet, tape recordings; my first experience of working in an elec- Herts, EN5 5EY, U.K. tronic music studio was as a guest at her studio in 1962. It is likely that a recording of her electronic compositions will be The People Band was an amalgam of the personnel from five released in the future. to seven regular bands that played at the Starting Gate pub in Wood Green, north London, circa 1965–1970. The original name of the band was the Continuous Music Ensemble, the THE JUDITH POEM (1973) concept of continuous music being a primary tenet of its phi- Composer: Bob Cobbing losophy, which it consistently held and pursued. The notion Performers: abAna—Bob Cobbing (voice), Paul Burwell (per- was that “music is in the air”—all one has to do is plug into it cussion), David Toop (electric guitar) and catch it, for music is continuously there, all around. Note by Bob Cobbing, 89A Petherton Road, London, N5, U.K. At around this time, John Stevens called his various groups the Spontaneous Music Ensemble. The Continuous Music En- This is one of my Girlie Poems done between 1969 and 1977 semble decided to change its name to avoid confusion. From and published by Good Elf in 1982. It is for Judith Walker, and 1965 the Continuous Music Ensemble had been collaborating the poem is made of the letters of the name Judith. It was in- with the People Show (an alliance between music and theater) tended to be somewhat dramatic in form and was one of the on the underground/alternative circuit. This included Middle first poems to be performed by the group abAna (Bob Earth club, Drury Lane Arts Lab and so on. These were the Cobbing, Paul Burwell, David Toop, plus Christopher Small, days when collaborations between the arts became “events” Lynn Conetta and Herman Hauge). It dates from 1971. and “happenings,” involving musicians, painters, poets, actors, dancers, environmentalists, installationists, etc. These were also the days of audience participation. Many USIC FOR HREE PRINGS M T S (1977) were the gigs when audiences would gradually move forward Performer: Hugh Davies during the evening and sit in with the band. The audience had Note by Hugh Davies, 25 Albert Road, London N4 3RR, U.K. little choice. The whole space of an environment became the E-mail:
LMJ11 CD Contributors’ Notes 97
Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/lmj.2001.11.96b by guest on 01 October 2021