Martian Gardens for 10/18/2009

WMUA FM 91.1
Amherst, Mass. 01003
wmua.org
live webcast

MARTIAN GARDENS
Sundays 21:00--24:00 EDT
Host: Max Shea
online playlists: Martian Gardens blog
email: maxtshea@gmail.com

Program for October 18, 2009
Extended edition 19:00--24:00

SINGLE PLAY
Ursula Mamlok: Woodwind Quintet
a. Molto vivo
b. Andante tranquillo
c. Allegro molto
Music of Ursula Mamlok Volume 1
Bridge Records/2009
Windscape: flute/piccolo: Tara Helen O'Connor; oboe: Randall Ellis; clarinet: Alan R. Kay; bassoon: Frank Morrelli; horn: David Jolley

SINGLE PLAY
James Tenney: Spectrum 3 -- for chamber Orchestra
Spectrum Pieces
New World Records/2009
The Barton Workshop; recorded in Het Bethianklooster, Amsterdam, c. 2008-2009

SINGLE PLAY
Alvin Lucier: Small Waves (excerpt, 15 min.)
Navigations for Strings/Small Waves
Mode Records/2003
piano: Hildegard Kleeb; trombone: Roland Dahinden; The Arditti Quartet; interactive amplified vessels of water; recorded June 2001 at Sendesaal Hessicher Rundfunk, Frankfurt

SET ONE
Scott Locke: Atanos I (K.H. Burns)
Celestial Dreamscape: A Century of Music for Clarinet
Everglade/2008
b-flat clarinet; Disklavier: S. Locke; recorded at the Weeks Center at the U. of Florida, Miami

Margaret Lancaster: Piker (L. Polansky)
Io
New World Records/2009
electric guitar: Larry Polansky; percussion: Matthew Gold; piccolo: M. Lancaster;
recorded July 2008 at the American Academy of Arts and Letters

Giacinto Scelsi: Rucke di Guck, part 1
Music for High Winds
Mode Records/2002
piccolo: Clara Novakova; oboe: Cathy Milliken; recorded in Chatillon, France

SET TWO
Stuart Saunders Smith: Links
The Links Series of Vibraphone Essays
New World Records/2009
vibraphone: Masaoka Kunimoto; recorded at Studio 508, UMBC, Feburary 2009

Adam Rudolph/Go: Organic Orchestra: Mirrors
Thought Forms
Meta Records/2009
recorded June 2006, Electric Lodge, Venice, California

John Luther Adams: In the Rain
The Place We Began
Cold Blue Music/2009
recorded at Adams' cabin-studio, Fairbanks, Alaska

John Cage: 28 Seconds on Takehisa Kosugi (from "19 Questions")
From Zero (DVD)
Mode Records/2004 (orig. 1995)
director: Frank Scheffer; text, voice, stopwatch: J. Cage

David Tudor: Rainforest Version I, for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (excerpt)
Rainforest
Mode Records/1998
live electronics: Takehisa Kosugi; D. Tudor; recorded in New Delhi, 1990

SET THREE
The Beatles: Revolution 9*
The Beatles
EMI/1968

Eric Lyon: Liberation #1 ^
Ex Cathedra
Centaur Records/2004

SET FOUR
Artemiy Artemiev & Christopher DeLaurenti: Solar Speech
57 Minutes to Silence
Electroshock Records/2002

Christopher DeLaurenti: Before Petrushka
Favorite Intermissions
GD Stereo/2009

Noah Creshevsky: Favorite Encores
Favorite Encores
Pogus Productions/2008

SET FIVE
Natasha Barrett: Racing Through, Racing Unseen
Miniatures Concretes #
empreintes DIGITALes/1999

Vivian Adelberg Rudow:
a. Racing Inside the Milkyway
b. The Majesty of it All
I Didn't Want To Say Goodbye CD-R (compiled 2004)
Hollins & Park Music Company

Severed Heads: Wonder of All the World
Cuisine (with Piscatorial)
Nettwerk/1991

SINGLE PLAY
John Young: from Ricordiamo Forli
a. Forli -- November 1944
b. Family Story
c. Once in Malmissole
d. The Bomb
e. Epilogue
Lieu-temps DVD
empreintes DIGITALes/2007

SET SIX
Derek Jarman: "The side effects of DHPG...I am going to sign it."
Blue
Elektra--Nonesuch/1994
voice, text: D. Jarman; music, sounds: Simon Fisher Turner

Coklacoma: The Discovery of Christian Science
Co Klo Pop
Decibel Records/1996

Mike Silverton/Tom Hamilton/Al Margolis:**
a. Asbestos Abatement, that closer to health
b. Fire and ice and a reliable chronometer
Analogue Smoque
Pogus Productions/2003
voice, text: M. Silverton; electronics, sound processing: T. Hamilton, A. Margolis

Scott Smallwood:**
a. Renulife
b. Parco
c. Re'juvin
d. Energex
Electrotherapy
Deep Listening/2004
all sounds produced by antiquated electrotherapy devices

SET SEVEN
Liam O'Gallagher: Border Dissolve in Audiospace
10+12:12--American Text Sound Pieces #
Other Minds, Inc./2003 (orig. 1975)
sounds: obsolete telephony; voices: L. O'Gallagher, numerous unknown telephone operators throughout North America

Negativland: Home Cable T.V. Repair Corner
The Willsaphone Stupid Show
Seeland/1993

Negativland: Weather Reports, the Weather Hotline
ibid.
edited from "The Willsaphone Stupid Show" originally broadcast in 1991 for Negativland's "Over the Edge" program on KPFA, Berkeley; voices: David Wills, Don Joyce, Buzzy Linhart, Chris Grigg, Richard Lyons.

^ Regarding "Liberation # 1: A big thank you to Dr. Eric Lyon for sending me some information on the voice samples for "Liberation #1," which facilitated my own research, in which I discovered the recordings are from a panel session at the Ronald Reagan Institute for Public Policy on 11/12/99, entitled , including snippets from a lecture by Paul Wolfowitz ("This is a strategy that would make the United States the enemy of the whole world..." (etc.), who would later be President George W. Bush's Deputy Secretary of Defense. Wolfowitz had served as Undersecretary of Defense Policy for George H.W. Bush's administration. At the time of the panel discussion, he was dean of Johns Hopkins University's Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. The panel host was former Reagan Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and the other voice, from what I can surmise ("On a personal note, I would like to thank Elliott Abrams for all he has done to make this conference so successful," etc.). Lyon composed this piece in February, 2003, one month before the U.S. invaded Iraq. Furthermore, Dr. Lyon commented in his email: "The number 1 might suggest that I had discounted the earlier Afghan liberation, but computer scientists count starting from 0. The duration of Liberation #1 is 9 minutes, 11 seconds, in reference to the 9/11 rhetoric that surrounded the march to war." Other samples come from a Christian radio host in Florida ("And that's the thing you have to realize") and the New York City rapper Necro ("look for me all over the world.")

** The selections from Silverton and Smallwood run somewhat concurrently.

*The Beatles' "Revolution 9" is rogrammed here in protest of know-it-all "rock historian" Ed Ward stating on NPR's "Fresh Air" program on September 18: "The really bad stuff like the White Album's Revolution number 9 is there for all to hear; the emperor standing naked." The remark was part of Ward's review of the remastered Beatles series released in September by Apple Corps, Ltd. via EMI. Not only was Ward's derision of "Revolution 9" a revelation of his own ignorance of the compositional beauty and historical significance of the recording, but it was a dismissal of the best-known composition in the genre of tape music/musique concrete. Certainly, the average NPR-listener will not buy a Pierre Schaeffer album this fall, but she might buy The Beatles remasters. It does the goals of Martian Gardens a disservice for a philistine such as Ed Ward to write off "Revolution 9" as "really bad stuff" rather than mention the origins of the piece and how it came to be. Absent the prejudice Mr. Ward introduces, perhaps the listener might be more open to the wonders of adventurous musics such as one hears on Martian Gardens. Well, that's my two cents, and I do not have the new Beatles remasters because I haven't got much more than two cents in this economy. -- Max
p.s. The origins of the texts and sounds of "Revolution 9" are obscure and subject to dispute among Beatle-ologists, but here is a link to a fairly good transcription.

One more note, a very special thanks to both Vickie Rudow (music broadcast this week) and to Dean Rosenthal (music broadcast last week) for inquiring after my well-being during a recent personal crisis.

--fin--