KYLE GANN CyberAngel Plays Pianos -as the Platitudes Fly The Poetry ofTechnology is objecavity and neutrality:" ever they burned out their brains on "Immensity is within our- way back when, the hippie conceptu- selves-vast." And so on. alists (with the singular exception of Wow-like, cosinic, dude, Robert Ashley, who opted out into a but that's an awfully flat,con- radically different narrative paradigm) versational surface for the were notvery good at making concrete audience to geta toehold on. comments about the world. Their Artists like Samuel Beckett focus -,vas too enormous. Subotnick Computerized in Molloy and Thornton called this work a "media poem" to Butterflies Wilder in Our Town (just to avoid calling it an opera, but aren't ab- list two examples that spring stract generalization and poetry virtu- to mind) made grand uni- ally antonymous' The lighter side ofMorton versal statements by cOucen- I found Intimate Immensitv more Subotnick's imagination is trating on the minute details enjoyable than Jacob's 1Zoom (whose filled with hummingbirds and ofdaily existence. But Sub- New York premiere I reviewed several butterflies . He may never again otnick's strategy is just the years ago), largely thanks to the write anything 1 love as much opposite, to focus on un- smoother continuity ofthe pianos rip- as his MIDI-controlled ensem imaginably grand generali- pling in minorkeyswith Lisztian grace. -tile piece The Key to Songs, but ties. And the results were, Subomick's musical habits are not in- the titlepiece to his newest disc, well, mundane. Impersonal. herently untheatrical, even though as a AndtheButterflies Begin To Itwoulo be easier to identify conceptualist his music is more oriented Sing(New World), a 1988 with CEOs at Philip Morris toward process than content. (When he composition, is aclose second . (oops-one ofthe sponsors) needs composed nnusical material lie Both works flow from Subot- than with these drugged- sometimes borrows it, as in his use of nick's love for Max Ernst's out, passionless zombies. Schubert's "Erlkonig" in Key to Sords.) surrealist novel The Hundred But that was the bland Interestingly, IntimateImmensity relied Headless Woman (La Femme w foreground, and in the back- on textural paradigms thit go back to 100 T6tes, which also inspired hap-ground amazing things SilverAppks and Touch, alternating thin, a huge 1933 piano piece by pened. Between Buckner and noncontrapuntal textures with occa- Ceorge Antheil). In And the LaBarbara-the first charac- sional dancelike passages, Butterflies :of,swirling . theAmernet Sorcerer's apprentice interrupts airy generalities : ter to appear, in fact-danced ostinatos that act as a sustained climax. String Quartet playspropul- Balinese dancer I Nyoman Wenten and soprano Joan La Barbara. a "Cyber-Angel; the Balinese Here the ostinatos consisted ofLaBar- sive tonal melodieswhich are dancer I Nyoman Wenten. barachirping herinimitablescat singing modified bythe computer, as contemporaries-Oliveros, David Behr- As Wenten moved his elegant hands and Buckner crooning light, angular keyboardist Intimate Immensity lames Tocco Morton Subotnick man, Alvin Lucier-have pretty much across a light beann, two MIDI pianos lines, techniques that suitedeachsinger - Micits prickly synth timbres. Locuardia Theater July1s continued making fairly meditative at opposite ends of the stage begin to perfectly. Though tonal, the music is music focused on sound and various stir. Just a note or two at first, then a The singers were also called upon tense, skirting hairpin turns in n order to understand whyMor- processes for producing it. Their music flourish, as this sorceror's apprentice a to perform, in alternation withWenten, repeated-note idiomthat ton Subotnick's high-tech "me- does not lack cosmic implications, but called the pianos to fife via telekinesis. thequick "chaka-chaka" syllables ofthe keeps you on seat's edge, and dia poem" Intimate Immensity those are generally left to be read in by Itwas a moment ofgorgeous poetry. It Balinese Monkey Chant; the,~ectwas the quartetgetscomputer- made such an ambivalent im- the listener. Subotnick, however, has could have continued for half an hour smoothly integrated magnified until it even though it sounds like pression at Lincoln Center Fes- greater ambitions . He's gone in the and I xvcndd have i-'cen entranced., but contrasted oddly with the work's im- layers and layers of quartets. tival'97, let's go backto tine beginning. direction oftheater, and wants to make instead it was very brief. The pianos I wish theliner personal tone. One of the most suc- noteswere Subotnick started out in the late '50s explicit the big, metaphysical statements then continued on their own, and cessful threads .of the production specific about the techniques was making music with junkyard percus- about the Oneness ofReality thatthese every time they played, the musical the laser-disc video by Woody and involved, but I like Subotnick sion for the Ann Halprin Dance Com- hippies-now-turned-sexagenarians in- interest quadrupled. Though Subot- best in this Steina Vasulka, images of whirling furious melodic pany in San Francisco. In 1962 he herited from the druggy'60s. nick didn't indulge the kind of idio- globes and infinitely mode. receding hallways helped found the San Francisco Tape And so we get firstJacob's Room matic player-piano tricks he couldhave that offered precisely the detailed, tac- The disc's "flip side," again Music Center with Pauline Oliveros, (1986), an angst-ridden opera about learned from Conlon Nancarrow, the tile, basedon Ernst, IsAll earthy quality that was missing in My Ramon Sender, Terry Riley, and Phil the Holocaust, and nowIntimate im pianos frequently sent quick echoes the text. Technologically impressive, Hummingbirds Have Alibis, Winsor, giving-in Haight-Ashbury's mensity, acomputer-driven meditation back and forth across stage and played by the traded often musically engaging, but theatri- California E.A.R. heyday-concerts in which performers in which humans use technology to melodies as if reading each other's cally misguided, Intimate Unit . Sparser, morepointillis- Immensity sprayed the audience with perfume and transcend the limitations oftime and minds. Delightfully, the pianos (up- made a rather low climax for a Lincoln tic, and notas attractive to my in which tropical fish, swimming in space. Like manyofSubotnick's works rights) had their lids removed, so that Center ears, this is thework Festival that looks to have near- Subotnick tanks lined with musical staves, acted as (FourButterflies, based on the tripartite you could watch the hammers flip, like ly bailed out ofthe new music business wrote for CD-ROM, but its livingnotes. It was a generation offree- symmetryofabutterfly's body; Return, neurons in the two chamber halves of an ex- after a stellar summer last year. Coming idiom is rather con- wheeling conceptualists . Centrally in- based on the cyclic arrival ofHalley's posed brain. after the ventional, and it worksjust wildly overpriced flop ofTod as volved in the hippie origins of West Comet), this new piece sprang from a So Intimate Immensity fused these Machover'sBrain Opera last summer, it well on audio alone.Whatthe Coast new music, Subotnick came to basic metaphor: a fist opening up into two simultaneous layers, bland CD-ROM one suggests that Lincoln Center should (Voyager) gives you is NewYork to provide music for thepsy- a hand, first seen on a giant video and off-putting, the other lively and stop counting ;_ Thestill pictures by Ernst that more on high-tech toys chedelic Electric Circus nightclub, and screen. On opposite sides of the stage seductive, because while Subotnick to bring audiences in than musical qual- inspired the piece, plus you can in 1966 was commissioned forthe first sat soprano Joan La Barbara and bari- doesn't know the poetry oftheater, follow the score, which he ity. Peopledon't applaud machines. makes electronic workever made specially for tone Thomas Buckner on raised plat- does understand better than almost it clearer how thecomputer a record, SilverApples oftbeMoon. forms, staring into computers . Their anyone the modifications poetry of technology. To few elucidating lines got arbi- work. (At least on Now zip ahead 30 years. In on the dialogue, written by Subotnick with my ears, his least ambitious, most my Mac, however, the music trarilycut from my article on Vir- ground floor ofthe musical use ofelec- quotations from Gaston Bachelard, equipment-focused works, such as Sil- Agil Thomson. I supply them stops at each page turn.) here, be- Music tronics, Subotnick has kept up a reputa- Kafka, and others, constituted an airy verApples oftheMoon, TheKey to Songs, ginning with a _ tpneeived for interactive CD- quote from a memo tion as being the first to do practically flow of abstract generalities . "I am and the fabulous And the Butterflies sent to Thomson by his editor Geof- ROM performanceremains to g; most recently, heputoutthe aware of a transforming immensity Begin To Sing (just be written, released on a New frey Parsons: "Incidentally, if I see the and Subotnickwill first new-music CD-ROM, All My within me, La Barbara declared. "Im- World disc) achieve more depth probably getaround than word `amateurish' in your column to it. First. Hummingbirds HaveAlibis. Being first mensity is the movement ofemotion- his head-scratching attempts at philos- again, I shall -Y-G. scream. I haven't the has become, in fact, his most habitual less man," countered Buckner after ophy. When he operates on the same faintest idea ofwhat you mean by the aesthetic strategy, more central to his awhile. "We can alter the blind direc- level as Behrman, Lucier, et al., he can word, and I don't believe you have." output than any specific characteristic tion of the senseless forces that sur- concoct amazing things to do with Even critics as great as Thomson are t; * ir.