Twittering Machines

Lou Harrison
3 Pieces for Gamelan with Soloists, String Quartet

Lou Harrison studied under Henry Cowell, Schoenberg and Virgil Thomson who introduced him to Harry Partch’s “Genesis of a Music” and just intonation. Harrison was also largely responsible for the premier of Charles Ives’ Symphony No. 3 which he conducted. He also championed the works of Edgar Varese, Carl Ruggles and Alan Hovhannes, was music critic for the Herald Tribune (along with Virgil Thomson) in the 1940s and taught at the Black Mountain College. Following a nervous breakdown in NYC in 1947, Harrison moved back to his native California where he immersed himself in the “timbre” of the Gamelon ensemble – “It was the sound itself that attracted me.”

These compositions from 1978/9 feature the Gamelon Sekar Kembar of West Java paired with french horn, violin and suling (flute) as well as a string quartet performed by the Kronos Quartet. South Sea breezes and Turkish delights infuse these works with light and sparkle.

Careful. They’re listening.

More from the Museum “Waalsdorp”…
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That’s Franz on the right

The last person I’d imagine with sand between their toes.  This pic may have helped inspire this…

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Necropolis, Amphibians & Reptiles
The Music of Adolph Wolfli

Performed by Graeme Revell (SPK), Nurse with Wound and Deficit Des Annees Anterieures this tribute to the mad scribbler of Switzerland is one of 2(?) recordings made of the “music” of Adolph Wolfli. Interned at the Waldau Asylum for the last 20 years of his life, Wolfli produced a mind boggling amount of very very intense drawings (over 2000) and collages (1560). The music here is really “inspired by” since Wolfli never had formal training as a composer and his scores are as much art as notation.

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Bill Dixon
Bill Dixon in Italy Volume One

From an interview with Dixon included with the LP as a 2-page booklet:

“The idea of pulse and meter as a driving force; a spiritual force; a cosmic – whether logically definable or not – force; a gravitational pull and also a force capable of dislodging one from the force of the earth’s gravity.”

Slow brooding music from 1980s Dixon and Co. A favorite painting teacher from Bennington College, Guy Goodwin once described Brice Marden as Jackson Pollock slowed down. You could say Bill Dixon is every jazz trumpeter (or black musician as Dixon would say) slowed down to the point where anything can creep in. Dixon taught at Bennington while I was there and I saw him perform a number of times. So I have a soft spot but I think he’s another very under-appreciated artist.

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Reverend Gary Davis
When I Die I’ll Live Again

Aural Chimay. The one LP to have when you’re havin more than one. A true-blues, ragtime and gospel jambalaya. If you can’t get into this music you are most certainly a souless devil.

“Little” Jimmy Scott
Very Truly Yours

Where do you start with Jimmy Scott? He had a big hit with the Lionel Hampton band in the 1940s ” Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool” but wasn’t given credit. His vocal for Charlie Parker’s “Embraceable You” from One Night in Birdland was credited to Chubby Newsome (a woman). Then in 1963 he recorded what has been called “one of the great jazz vocals of all time” for Ray Charles’ Tangerine label only to have it pulled from the shelves over a contract dispute with a former manager. Between roughly 1964 and 1985 Scott worked outside the music industry reportedly as a bellman and shipping clerk. Since ’85 he’s been performing again, released a few new albums, sang with Lou Reed and in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks.

Ray Charles said “He defined what ‘soul’ is all about in singing long before anyone was using that word.”

Scott had Kallman’s syndrome which was responsible for his stunted growth (he was under 5′) and soprano voice. Very Truly Yours is the only LP I’ve come across so far and it was his first ever for Savoy from 1955. Charles Mingus plays bass on this one but it’s all Jimmy and his amazing voice.

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Man Ray
Le Violin d’Ingres

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