sign in sign up
<<
Home , John Luther Adams, Metal Machine Music, Tod Machover, Ulrich Krieger

These performances are funded in part by grants from The Aaron Copland Fund for , The James Irvine Foun- dation, LA County Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, BMI Foundation, Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, and the Amphion Foundation. Support for the California E.A.R. Unit has been provided by Chora, a proj- ect of the Metabolic Studio, a direct charitable activity of the Annenberg Foundation under the direction of Artist and Foundation Director Lauren Bon. Chora aims to support the intangibles that precede creativity.

UPCOMING PERFORMANCES AT REDCAT April 22–24 Carl Hancock Rux: Poesia Negra: Race, Sex and the Myth of the American Mytopia April 30–May 1 Les Espaces Acoustiques and Beyond: New Music after Grisey May 5 Party for Betty! : May 9 Idyllwild Arts Academy CALIFORNIA E.A.R. UNIT May 16 SONIC BOOM Ring Festival LA: Considering Wagner featuring Villa Aurora -in-Residence

May 20–23 APRIL 20, 2010 | 8:30 PM Lionel Popkin: There is An Elephant in This Dance June 2–3 Partch: Even Wild Horses

For more information visit www.redcat.org.

presented by REDCAT Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater California Institute of the Arts METAL MACHINE MUSIC (IN FOUR MOVEMENTS) E.A.R. Unit strives to achieve a fl exibility and rapport within contemporary music, and earn an CALIFORNIA E.A.R. UNIT international reputation as one of America’s fi nest contemporary chamber ensembles. The California E.A.R. Unit was founded in 1981. In its twenty-nine year history, the ensemble SONIC BOOM has presented concerts of electroacoustic and live interactive computer music, music theater, dance, and local and world premieres of over 500 chamber works. The E.A.R. Unit seeks to serve TUESDAY, APRIL 20, 2010 its home base of Los Angeles, refl ecting the region’s unique cultural diversity, and to represent Los Angeles and Southern California as its new music ambassadors to the world. For amplifi ed ensemble The ensemble has earned critical acclaim, garnering awards for its contributions to the fi eld of contemporary American music such as the L.A. Weekly’s Best Classical Ensemble 1999 and 2003, as well receiving the prestigious Letter of Distinction from the American Music Center in Lou Reed (Original version 1975) 1999. Arrangement, instrumentation and score: (2002/06/10) The Unit has performed in many main venues such as the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C, Original transcription: Ulrich Krieger/Luca Venitucci (2002) and Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. They have toured throughout the world: Brussels, Aspen, Additional transcription: Ulrich Krieger (2006/10) Kiev, Paris, Cologne, Tanglewood, New York, Boston, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Am- sterdam, Reykjavik, as well as to other domestic and international hotspots for new music. The ensemble has been featured in documentaries for the BBC and Japanese television, American and National Public Radio, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Danish National Radio, and Eric km Clark*, WGBH’s “Art of the States”. Luke Fitzpatrick, violin From 1987 to 2004 the E.A.R. Unit was Ensemble-in-Residence at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Since then, they have been in residence at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Kristin Haraldsdottir, viola Theater (REDCAT) housed in the Walt Disney Hall Complex. The Unit has worked closely with Jennifer Thomas, viola many composers such as , , Morton Feldman, John Luther Adams, Fred Aniela Perry, Frith, Tod Machover, , Louis Andriessen, , , Michael Gordon, James Barry, cello Charles Wuorinen, , and Alison Knowles, among many others. The E.A.R. Unit has recorded for the Nonesuch, New Albion, New World, Tzadik, O.O. Discs, Eric Klerks, bass Bridge, Crystal and Cambria labels. Recent CDs include: GO on the Echograph label, a recording Daren Burns, bass of some of today’s greatest living composers: , James Sellars, Frederic Rzewski, Julia Casey Butler, saxophones Wolfe, and John Bergamo; SETTINGS, chamber works of Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles com- Philippe Brunet, trumpet poser Mel Powell, and Indigenous Music, chamber works of Stephen “Lucky” Mosko. The group is very proud to announce the release of Morton Feldman’s For Christian Wolff on Bridge Records. Luke Storm, tuba Robert Allaire, accordion Luca Venitucci is an Italian musician, who mainly works in the fi eld of improvised and electronic Amy Knoles*, percussion music. He performs on keyboards and accordion. He has worked with Otomo Yoshide, Mike Vicki Ray*, Cooper, Fabrizio Spera, Peter Kowald, Tim Hodgkinson, and many more. Venitucci co-founded the Italian electro-acoustic improv group Ossatura and used to be member of the German zeitkratzer ensemble. *California E.A.R. Unit Krieger has worked with Lou Reed, , , Thomas Köner, , ABOUT THE WORK Michiko Hirayama, Mario Bertoncini, Witold Szalonek, Miriam Marbe, Seth Josel, Zbigniew Karkowski, , zeitkratzer, the Berlin Philharmonic, Ensemble Modern, and many others, in Europe, Metal Machine Music was originally conceived and recorded by Lou Reed in his New York apart- North America, Asia and Australia. ment in 1975. The original recording was made with several retuned , amps, pedals, and He calls his style of playing “acoustic electronics”, using sounds that appear to be electronic, reel-to-reel tape recorders and the manipulation thereof. It generally received a very bad recep- but are produced on acoustic instruments and sometimes electronically treated, blurring the bor- tion from audience and critics alike, and nearly killed Reed’s career. At the same time it is the ders between the fi elds. His main compositional interest over the last decade was also in “instru- historic origin of Industrial and and it now has a world-wide dedicated following. mental electronics”, creating pieces using sounds produced by extended techniques on tradi- The idea of transcribing Metal Machine Music came out of my hearing an “orchestralness” in tional instruments, which are reminiscent of and infl uenced by . This led Krieger to the original, along with the rock-music side of it. Both versions have both aspects to them, the transcribe Lou Reed’s (in)famous Metal Machine Music for chamber ensemble. orchestral and the rock, but the emphasis is different in each case—otherwise an ensemble ar- His working groups, beside various projects, are: Metal Machine Trio (with Lou Reed), Text of rangement wouldn’t have made any sense, if it had been exactly like the original. Light (with Lee Ranaldo), and zerfall–gebiete (with Thomas Köner) in the nirvana between experi- To me the idea of a transcription seemed very natural. Beside , the other side of my mental rock, electronica, ambient and contemporary composition. musical upbringing was what is called “new” or “contemporary” music: from very early on, I was His pieces have been performed by the California E.A.R Unit, zeitkratzer, KontraTrio, Soldier listening to composers like Schoenberg, Xenakis, Nono, and Stockhausen (but not pre-20th-cen- String Quartet, Wandelweiser Ensemble, UnitedBerlin, and many others. Krieger received grants tury ). The same thing interests me in rock, Industrial, No-Wave, and noise music as from the German DAAD program, the Darmstaedter Summer Courses for New Music, the City of in new music: sound, soundscapes and structure, which is rhythm on a large scale. For me, these Berlin and many others, and was -In-Residence at Villa Aurora (Los Angeles), Villa Ser- are the essentials of music—not harmony, and not melody. pentara (Rome), German Research Centre Venice (Italy), University of East Anglia (England), the Music is coming full circle today: archaic ritual music consists mostly of these two parameters, City of Bologna (Italy) and the Music Centre North Queensland (Australia). He has released over sound and rhythm, often extending over long durations, and so does a lot of contemporary music 50 CDs of his original compositions and improvisations, with his groups and as a collaborator with of any style, even dance music like techno. I found all of this in Metal Machine Music: intricate, many musicians. beautiful, complex and daring sound-colors, as in new music; the rough, sheer force of real rock music; and a ritual, archaic, long-duration intensity. Sonic Boom is a CalArts-based student ensemble/band directed and founded by Ulrich Krieger in Lou Reed brought this together from the rock-guitar side of things; I wanted to emphasize 2007. It defi es stylistic and artistic boundaries and is at the forefront of the changing landscape of the orchestral side of it, and the human touch of classical instruments and a ten-piece ensemble. experimental and avant-garde music in the 21st century. Many young composers and performers Also, I wanted to show how Metal Machine Music is a “missing link” between contemporary classi- grew up listening, performing, and studying new music, rock, and electronica. Sonic Boom contin- cal music and advanced rock music. Another motivation was to make it into a live event to be ex- ues the tradition of creative, pioneering musicians and bands like , , perienced by an audience collectively, instead of a studio production to be heard alone at home Lou Reed, Frank Zappa, CAN, Sonic Youth, Throbbing Gristle, , , and others, through headphones—to bring out the social, ritual aspect of it. combining the fi elds and experiences of new and , rock, electronic music, and The problem with most arrangements of rock music for orchestra or string quartet is that the . Sonic Boom puts a special emphasis on recent 21st-century styles like Noise, arrangers don’t have a knowledge of rock music, nor do they actually love it. They transcribe the Ambient, Electronica, and Experimental Metal. The ensemble/band performs “creative cover ver- pitches and the rhythms, and miss the whole point: they don’t transcribe the sound of rock, which sions” of classic new and experimental music compositions, rock and Metal pieces, instrumental for me is the ultimate essential, nor the music’s intensity, nor its social component. If you turn on transcriptions of Electronic, Industrial, Ambient and Noise music, and original pieces by invited the radio in your car, how do you know you’re listening, let’s say, to the Rolling Stones, even when guest artists and its own members. Jagger’s not singing? It’s not the harmonies, it’s not the melodies, and it’s not the rhythms, be- cause these are all used by countless other bands; they are kind of blueprints. What defi nes the The California E.A.R. Unit (core players Eric km Clark, violin; Vicki Ray, piano; and Amy Knoles, Stones’ music is the sound and the way the play it, and play with it. So if you don’t transcribe that, percussion) is a chamber ensemble dedicated to the creation, performance, and promotion of you fail. the music of our time. The ensemble is comprises performers and composers who began with the goal of developing the fi rst true repertory ensemble for new music in Los Angeles. The California Getting the sound of rock music is what we tried to do with our ensemble zeitkratzer (which emphasized by the pickups. So we get a very rich string sound with many overtones clashing, much means “timescraper”). It has a lot to do with the redefi nition of instrumental, acoustic playing like the effects Lou Reed got from guitars leaning against amplifi ers. But the strings use a very through the (re-)infl uence of electronic music. Arrangements of electronic and rock music— refi ned sul ponticello, always changing the distance to the bridge, pressure of the bow, speed of Merzbow, Zbigniew Karkowski, alva noto, Terre Thaemlitz, Lee Ranaldo, Deicide, Throbbing Gris- bowing, etc., so that the overtone clouds move and change and live. To take another example, the tle—were always part of the zeitkratzer repertoire, along with modern composition, silent music, wind instruments often play rather softly, but very close to the microphone or even with the mic and many other contemporary musical styles along the same path. in the bell, so that we get a very sine-tone-like quality, which sounds a lot like feedback. There is no I have never accepted these arbitrary style defi nitions. They are used not so much to identify electronic treatment or processing. The only compromise, if you want to call it that, was that origi- a style, in order to be able to talk about it, as to divide music into easily consumable portions and nally we used guitar distortion on the strings—but that was mainly because we had only four string pretend one style of contemporary artistic musical expression is better than another. This is for players and needed to fi ll up the sound. For the Great Learning Orchestra performance in Stock- companies to sell products. But our world is very complex, and we should embrace the diversity holm I had almost four times as many strings and we could do without the distortion pedals. and the fantastic juxtapositions possible. The three styles I am most interested in are advanced When we fi rst started rehearsing, the musicians needed to get acquainted with the material rock, electronica, and contemporary composition that uses the best of all worlds. and fi nd their positions in the overall structure. In regular classical music, or even new music, the For the task of transcribing Metal Machine Music, I began by listening to the recording and players know from long experience whether they have to be forward, accompanying, or whatever. trying to identify which sounds could be taken over by which of the instruments of our group. With Metal Machine Music it was very different. Though all of that is still relevant, the performers That generated a general draft, or idea, or map of the instrumentation: who—which player, which have to defi ne their roles anew—especially because this is non-ego music. You might not be heard instrument—could do what, and how. Then Luca Venitucci, who was the accordion player of the as an individual player with a part, but you still bring an important aspect to the piece, adding to the group, and I each did a rough transcription of the piece separately: two pairs of ears hear more overall sound and experience. If you don’t play, that will be heard. If you do, the audience might not than one. We compared what we heard and put it together. We did several rounds of listening recognize your playing. This is a very new and different experience for a musician. on different speaker systems (because on any particular system you hear different aspects, for There is no conductor. The score is written in proportional time notation, so there is no time better or worse), always getting more and more into the details. After that, I wrote out the score signature. One page equals a minute, subdivided in seconds. There are several big clocks onstage in proportional time notation with Luca’s assistance. My experience as a composer helped, of that the musicians have to watch and follow; this is a technique that was fi rst used in the early six- course. I know instrumentation and I know how to get strange, unusual sounds out of classical in- ties by John Cage. Everybody reads from the score, because you have to follow what the others struments, and how to notate that. Amplifi cation plays an important role as well. Most of my own are doing as well as watch the clock. (chamber) music is amplifi ed, so I know how to use amplifi cation as a further help in getting weird Lou was blown away when he heard it. After what he went through with the original , sounds out of classical instruments. which could have killed his career, here was this bunch of young musicians taking this music and Of course, we discovered a lot about Metal Machine Music—like that it is not atonal but modal, him seriously—and even going a step further with the music, giving it another kind of life. being based on an open fi fth to which the guitars were tuned, and the overtones thereof. Having —notes by Ulrich Krieger found that out, transcribing became easier, because we knew what we were supposed to listen to and could easily identify pitches that didn’t match the main mode. ABOUT THE ARTISTS Feedback generally consists of a fundamental pitch and its overtones. If you hear feedback and it jumps into higher tones, you can be pretty sure you’re hearing overtones of the main pitch. Ulrich Krieger is a composer, performer, improviser and experimental rock musician. His instru- So feedback can be played by acoustic instruments, if you give them the specifi c pitches and any ments are saxophones, , didjeridu and electronics.Born in Germany, he lived in Berlin deviations. Wind instruments are especially good at mimicking feedback sounds, if they play very from 1983 until 2007, spending most of his time between 1991–97 residing in the USA and Italy with purely: without noise components in the tone and without vibrato, very steadily, nearly emotion- residencies and grants. less. In September 2007 he relocated to California, where he is professor for Composition and Ex- We used playing techniques that are standard in new music, as well as techniques developed perimental Sound Practice at the California Institute for the Arts. He studied classical saxophone, by the musicians of zeitkratzer and others of my own. Also important was the way we work with composition, electronic music and musicology at the Manhattan School of Music (NYC), the Uni- microphones. For instance, the strings are amplifi ed with pickups and microphones. They play a versität der Künste (Berlin) and the Freie Universität (Berlin). He plays and researches the didjeridu lot sul ponticello (at the bridge), in order to bring out more of the overtones, which are strongly and Australian Aboriginal music and culture.