Friday 30 June – Sunday 2 July 2017 School of Music, University of Leeds
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PERFORMING INDETERMINACY: AN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE Friday 30 June – Sunday 2 July 2017 School of Music, University of Leeds Welcome Dear colleagues and friends, It is our pleasure to welcome you to Performing Indeterminacy, an international conference held at the University of Leeds, in collaboration with the University of Huddersfield, between 30 June and 2 July 2017. The conference addresses the performance of indeterminate and experimental musics as its central theme, and is intended as a forum for the exchange of perspectives from musicologists, performers, composers, and a wider audience. By fostering dialogue and debate about the performance of indeterminate music in its many manifestations, through papers, practice-based contributions, and musical performances, we hope over the next several days to contribute to broadening understandings of a music which remains at the margins of performance studies, and to ask challenging questions about where the limits of performance and composition lie. We are especially delighted to welcome Catherine Laws, Benjamin Piekut and Christian Wolff as our keynote speakers, whose work has inspired us over many years. The conference is part of the research programme of the AHRC-funded project, ‘John Cage and the Concert for Piano and Orchestra’ and includes a performance of John Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1957–58) as well as the world premiere of Christian Wolff’s Resistance, performed by Apartment House. We are excited to welcome you to Leeds in person, to hear your contributions, and to engage in rich conversation and debate over the coming days. Philip Thomas, Chris Melen, Martin Iddon and Emily Payne The Conference Committee cageconcert.org Contents Conference schedule at a glance 1 Invited speakers: abstracts 5 Spoken papers and lecture recitals: abstracts Day 1: Friday 6 Day 2: Saturday 9 Day 3: Sunday 19 Concerts, performances and installations: programme notes 24 Day 1: Friday 25 Day 2: Saturday 28 Contributor biographies 30 Socialising in Leeds 39 Practical information 41 Campus map 43 City map 44 Notes 45 Schedule at a glance • Parallel sessions: A sessions will take place in Lecture Theatre 1 (LT1); B sessions will take place in Lecture Theatre 4 (LT4). • To allow for technical setup, Session 6B (Technology and mediation II), will take place in Lecture Theatre 3 (LT3). • Plenary sessions will take place in LT1. • Concerts will take place in the Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall (CCCH). • Tea and coffee breaks and lunches will be provided in the CCCH Foyer. • Spoken papers last 30 minutes in total (20 minutes followed by 10 minutes of questions). • Lecture-recitals last 45 minutes in total (35 minutes followed by 10 minutes of questions). • During the conference there will be a screening of John Cage’s One11 and 103 (1992) in the School of Fine Art. See further details on page 24. Day 1: Friday 30 June 11:00 Registration (a welcome desk will be open in the School of Music reception area from 11:00, with tea and coffee available in the in CCCH Foyer) 13:45– Welcome (CCCH Foyer) 14:00 14:00– Session 1A (LT1) Session 1B (LT4) 15:30 Critical approaches Games and play [Chair: Sean Williams] [Chair: Chris Melen] Élan vital and how to fake it What’s the point? Balancing purpose and play Ryan Dohoney in game compositions (Northwestern University) James Saunders (Bath Spa University) Do performers have to listen? What Cage Musical indeterminacy in interactive media learnt from Duchamp Julian Peterson Anthony Gritten (Gearbox Software) (Royal Academy of Music) Listening indeterminately, 1967-2017 Game scoring: Gameplay, the performance of Patrick Valiquet aleatoric composition and FEZ (2012) (Institute of Musical Research) Mack Enns (University of Western Ontario) 15:30– ‘Composing’s one thing, performing’s another…’, says Cage: what, then, of that 16:30 indeterminate other? Invited speaker: Catherine Laws (Pianist / University of York) [Chair: Martin Iddon] 16:30– Tea/coffee break 17:00 17:00– Concert of submitted works (CCCH) 18:00 21:00– Organ performance of John Cage’s Organ2: ASLSP (As Slow as Possible) (1987) 08:00 Diane Luchese (Towson University) (Sat) Please note venue: St. Anne’s Cathedral, Leeds City Centre 1 Day 2: Saturday 1 July 21:00 Organ performance of John Cage’s Organ2: ASLSP (As Slow As Possible) (1987) (Fri) – Diane Luchese (Towson University) 08:00 Please note venue: St. Anne’s Cathedral, Leeds City Centre 09:00– Session 2A (LT1) Session 2B (LT4) 10:30 Politics and democracy Praxis [Chair: Anthony Gritten] [Chair: Scott Mc Laughlin] How democratic is indeterminate music? Notating a community: Christian Wolff’s Robert Adlington (University of Huddersfield) coordination neumes Jessica Stearns (University of North Texas) The brain at work: Indeterminacy, cognitive Iterative processes: Composing and labor, and the posthuman brain in Alvin performing as journey forms Lucier’s Music for Solo Performer Lauren Redhead G. Douglas Barrett (Independent Scholar) (Canterbury Christ Church University) Stockhausen as CEO: The executive model (Non-)indeterminacy in music and dance of interpretive labor collaborations Kirsten L. Speyer Carithers Tomke Kossen-Veenhuis (Northwestern University) (University of Edinburgh) 10:30– Tea/coffee break 11:00 11:00– John Cage’s Lecture on Commitment 12:00 Laura Kuhn (John Cage Trust) [Chair: Emily Payne] 12:00– Lunch 13:00 Performance Scott Mc Laughlin (University of Leeds) Cartographies of Sheet Metal (2017) for multiple bowed-cymbal players 13:00– Session 3A (LT1) Session 3B (LT4) 15:00 David Tudor and the Solo for Piano Technology and mediation I [Chair: Martin Iddon] [Chair: James Mooney] The Cage Concert Project Solo for Piano web ‘Sounds and gestures cannot be notated in a app conventional way’: Indeterminacy and Caroline Chris Melen Shaw’s Partita for 8 Voices (University of Huddersfield) Sara Haefeli (Ithaca College) Imaginary exactitude. Indeterminacy and the Recording the indeterminate performer- critical edition composer John Holzaepfel (Independent Scholar) Úna Monaghan (University of Cambridge) David Tudor’s first realization of Solo for Ways of not knowing: The cybernetic influence Piano by John Cage. A work in progress in post-1960s experimentalism [Lecture recital] Christopher Haworth Nicasio Gradaille (University of Birmingham) (Conservatorio Superior de Música de Vigo, Spain) Performing indeterminacy: John Cage’s 1954 realisation of Morton Feldman’s Intersection for Magnetic Tape Tom Hall (Anglia Ruskin University) 2 15:00– Tea/coffee break 15:30 Installation Sophie Stone (Canterbury Christ Church University) “As Sure as Time…” (2016) 15:30– The afterlives of indeterminacy 16:30 Invited speaker: Benjamin Piekut (Cornell University) [Chair: Emily Payne] 16:30– Session 4A (LT1) Session 4B (LT4) 18:00 (Re)examining indeterminacy Socialities [Chair: Ryan Dohoney] [Chair: Robert Adlington] What has indeterminacy to do with In re: Experimental politics experimentalism? William Brooks Lawrence Dunn (University of Huddersfield) (University of York / Orpheus Institute) Freedom and flux in Brian Ferneyhough’s Notation cultures: Toward an ethnomusicology 1970s creative practice of music notation Roddy Hawkins (University of Manchester) Floris Schuiling (Utrecht University) On material indeterminacy Dieter Schnebel’s experimental music and its Scott McLaughlin (University of Leeds) pedagogical approach Nadine Scharfetter (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz) 18:00– Roundtable discussion: Performing Cage’s art works 18:30 Sam Belinfante (University of Leeds) Laura Kuhn (John Cage Trust) Jeremy Millar (Royal College of Art) [Chair: Martin Iddon] 18:30– Conference dinner (University House) 19:30 20:00 Apartment House concert (CCCH) 3 Day 3: Sunday 2 July 09:00– Session 5A (LT1) Session 5B (LT4) 10:30 Openness Extending indeterminacy [Chair: Lauren Redhead] [Chair: Roddy Hawkins] Icare apprenti: Henri Pousseur, Serialism and Performing Womens Work: Investigating the the open work ‘feminist performance score’ [Lecture recital] Irene Revell André Brégégère and Mirna Lekić (CRiSAP, London College of Communication) (Queensborough Community College, City University of New York) The role of indeterminacy in improvised formal structure: Cecil Taylor’s ‘Tree of Life’ Michelle Yom Indeterminacy reclaimed: re-evaluating and responding to aspects of Cardew's Brethren unite! Shouts, whistles, and experimental music of the 1960s improvisations as indeterminate elements in [Lecture recital] Frederic Rzewski’s Piano Variations on ‘¡El Michael Parsons pueblo unido, jamás será vencido!’ Omri Shimron (California State University, East Bay (Hayward)) 10:30– Tea/coffee break 11:00 11:00– Performance Studies Network sponsored session 11:45 Q&A with Apartment House musicians and Amanda Bayley (Bath Spa University) 11:45– Session 6A (LT1) Session 6B (LT3) 13:00 Panel presentation Technology and mediation II [Chair: Bryn Harrison] [Chair: James Saunders] Performing Hugh Davies’s live electronic Performing Cat Hope’s Tone Being for tam- music tam and sub-woofer using an electronic Owen Green (University of Edinburgh), James graphic score Mooney (University of Leeds) and Sean [Lecture recital] Williams (Open University) Louise Devenish (University of Western Australia) Improvisation and indeterminacy in Pauline Oliveros’ expanded instrument system Ted Gordon (University of Chicago) 13:00– Lunch 14:00 14:00– Performing concerts 15:00 Invited speaker: Christian Wolff (Composer / Dartmouth College) [Chair: Philip Thomas] END OF CONFERENCE