new site: erstwords

[jon abbey]

so, as I announced a few days ago on the AMPLIFY 2008 thread, we've launched a new site:

http://erstwords.blogspot.com

initially inspired by the 'Critics' thread here and following somewhat in the specific journalistic tradition of IMJ magazine, the site will feature texts related to EAI and the tangential areas (I hope to at least slightly broaden the scope over time). many of these will be musicians writing on other musicians, some of the unheard or underheard (in print form) voices in this music. the pieces will also possibly be in flux after being initially published, so the writers can add, elaborate, delete, whatever, if and when they want, and the idea is to eventually hit enough of a critical mass of quality content so that we have a book.

I've asked 10 or 12 people to do pieces so far, and have quite a few more I plan to ask. while they're working on those, Yuko and I will hopefully be adding some translations of already written pieces from Japanese musicians and critics. the first one is up now, and hopefully more will follow before too long.

the site itself is bare bones right now, I chose that template as it was the only one I saw which allowed wider pictures, but I don't really like it. we may move from blogspot to a real site at some point if we build up enough content. I'm also open to a better name, with or without the erst prefix.

so, questions, suggestions, feedback, thanks, are all welcome. as I wrote in the other thread, the Japanese translations take Yuko a lot of time and energy, so if she knows people out there care, she'll be more inclined to keep going.

[Kyrre Laastad]

Great work, Yuko and Jon!

Really looking forward to reading more.

[howsthatsound]

i posted in the amplify thread, but i'll reitterate my comments here in short. this is really great, thanks to all involved for doing this. the review that has been posted thus far, is from such a different perspective from much of the writing i have read about this event and others. it's really refressing, and gives me a good amount to think about, which is great. i'm very interested in seeing what comes next.

[jon abbey]

well, believe it or not, we are trying to have a wider range of content here, but in the meantime, Keith Rowe has written notes to accompany ErstLive 007. he told me a few days ago that so many people have asked him about this CD, that he wanted to just write down his thoughts in depth, for all to see.

http://erstwords.blogspot.com/2009/01/el007.html

hopefully there will be more content before too long. it can't be too high of a priority for me, but I do plan to keep it going, stay on top of people who've agreed to write pieces, commission new pieces, etc.

comments and feedback are welcome!

[hatta]

That was great Jon, thanks to you and Keith for putting that together. As I've mentioned on a number of occasions before, this is why I find Keith's music so compelling and with a lot more longevity then most: there is huge amount of thought and depth in his performances.

Nice work on including the referenced art as well, that was quite nice. Since you didn't include Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon I googled it and found this great image:

[William Hutson]

i've read through this twice now since i was alerted to its presence at 6:00 this morning. i have a ton of questions. since it is a blog post, with the comments option left open, will mr. rowe consider responding to questions, or is this article , for him, pretty much a done deal?

oh and: still looking forward to his notes on THE ROOM.

[jon abbey]

thanks, Robert! that etch-a-sketch is hilarious and impressive. I thought about putting in the Picasso too, but I thought the Matisse in that context was a better fit, since the Picasso is still somewhat shocking today despite being iconic. I also felt a bit odd about adding images towards the second half of the essay as things build and get more intense, so I kept that more towards just text.

Bill, you can certainly ask questions there, I'd guess Keith would answer them via me when he has a chance. he is still working on The Room notes, he sent me them once a while back, but they were pretty tough to understand to anyone but him, very boiled down with some necessary intermediate jumps missing. so he's been working sporadically on them since then and still plans to get them out when he can, but he wanted to do this while it was fresh. he's also going to be writing a piece on John Tilbury for erstwords, not sure which of those will come next.

[jon abbey]

thinking about it more, I wanted to clarify something from the previous post...

I'm speaking only for myself here, not Keith. but for Keith, The Room was a real struggle to produce. it was something so deeply fundamental inside of him that he had quite a bit of trouble expressing it the way he wanted to for others (and this is echoed in the issues he's having with the notes for it). a reasonable comparison is if he was asked to explain his perspective on a particularly striking or beautiful stretch of Treatise (EL007) as compared to being asked to explain his perspective on the center line which runs through all 193 pages (The Room).

I also think that once this struggle ended and the project had been completed, it was quite liberating for him, maybe akin to having finally worked his way through the entire score of Treatise over a 40+ year span and now feeling free to go off the page (from a macro career perspective). I'm not sure if he'd fully agree with my take here, but from my perspective, I think this is evident in a piece like EL007 and will be even more clear after the double CD with Sachiko is released (aiming for June as of now).

[Keith Rowe]

Hello all
Thanks Jon for posting the 007 notes. and sorting out the mess I submitted,
I've registered, ( to save Jon from bearing the role of messenger, I know you would carry on without complaint, but I should shoulder responsibility for the ventilator of my brain (my mouth))
I'm happy to respond to questions .....
KR

[Jesse]

Keith,
Glad you are visiting, welcome.
Here is my initial note re:EL007, my second listen through was just last week:

Following only my second listen through, this is a strong, quite moving, piece of music.
I cannot specify why, at this point, but hearing this performance after what is captured on The Room makes me think Rowe is working simultaneously in new areas and in a kind of summa. I use summa in the sense that the scope and shape of Rowe's explorations on these two releases is the sound of regathering, then jettisoning certain elements associated with him. ErstLive007 shares with The Room a feeling of a very compressed sonic history, abstract, sure, but narrative as well. Maybe his more explicit referencing of Rothko in the earlier work planted this seed in my head, but I hear the structuring of the Baroque pieces as being both lovingly glanced at, then almost annihilated here. Anyway, it clearly sounds like music made by someone in a mature, comprehensive phase of their personal history. Granted, I know Rowe's age and career going into this, but still.
This is as engaging as I've found Rowe to be since ErstLive005. Imo, the solo work is pulling ideas and feelings out of depths equal to the collaborative settings.

Anyway, there's not a question in there, but an intuition I found followed up on in your ErstNotes reflections. That is, the strong sense of backward glance conveyed in the performance, as well as a melancholia common, I think, to our age (I am 54).
Were you mindful of the horror of Gaza in the concluding moments of the performance? I read you were recalling the London air strikes, but didn't get if Gaza was in your conciousness in performance, or later, penning the notes.
Upon more listens, I would amend my initial phrasing of "annihilated" to "released".

Thanks for the extraordinary run of music on Erstwhile, it's been essential listening for me for 5 years now.

[snailed]

Thanks for joining us here, Keith.

The point you made about innovations like Rameau's having been absorbed into mass culture is something I think about often. Another great example is Mozart's "Dissonance Quartet" - K. 465 I believe. The opening section's tonality was so vague that people thought there were errors in the printing of the score; however if you played that for any person on the street today I doubt they'd bat an eye, or find it offensive or particularly groundbreaking.

I too wonder about how this stuff will sit in history - if it will sit alongside Haydn as you put it, or if it will be something else entirely. The fact that you approach a brillo pad with the same sensitivity as an oboeist would with her insturment is something I think any of us who love this/your music have tacitly understood for a long while; but having it in your words is important as well (especially to people first hearing this music). I think once people understand that, it's a lot easier to listen to with the same ears as Haydn or Rameau.

Obviously just a small area of what you covered. The notes are quite dense. It's fascinating on how many levels your art works. I look forward to returning to these often. Thanks.

[Keith Rowe]

Hi
Sorry to have taken my time responding, in part its due to ...... the nearest large city to us is Nantes, and towards the end of January each year they have la Folle Journee, incredibly a promoter Rene Martin puts on 230 concerts, with 1700 musicians, in one venue (Cite des Congres) sells 123,700 tickets, all of this happens over a 4 day period!! each edition is themed, this year Schutz and Bach, so a major distraction!!!
OK 007... thanks for the observations, ..... Jesse your point about how one might well bring
to a performance everything one knows thinks believes etc. has been something we in AMM
right from the beginning adopted, a conscious participation with the space, that the space (any space) would contain everything that ever existed, all history, all knowledge etc.
I attempt a version of describing this in the Duos for Doris notes, I refer to the idea that "listening/hearing will be only a very small part of my comprehension of that complex room",
I also in those notes I refer to "the threat of an imminent and illegal war" as determining the way the room was perceived, and then of course how the room is perceived determines what sounds/music emerges.
Clearly the problem is how do you "tap" into what the room contains, and this is where I've got stuck vis a vie the Room notes, because I don't have to skill to put into words, things which are beyond words,
Perhaps one might see a theme running through "Harsh" which was about the invisibility of harshness, (sewn into our jeans trainers t-shirts etc TV quiz show colours ...) "the Room" (Traces and whispers of process are overtaken by blankness and silence, In these spaces important transactions take place, absorption of a single mood, a contemplative aura.)
For my part I don't make too much of a distinction between the music we make (improvised?) and the classical world, this idea of "the Room" I recall feeling in the mid '08's at a Borodin SQ, concert Shostakovich 15th, the communication between them, the way they sucked into the space everything that was ever known, and then weaved it into the given material, incredible.
Of course showing the templates in the Tokyo solo (007) was only to display what I would normally keep hidden, those concerns are always present, ( I have a long list of elements)
these are normally contained in the sounds, My inspiration for disguise is of course along with Duchamp, is Rothko, to what extent do the Seagram Murals leak information about the Laurentian library in Florence and Michelangelo?
Best
Keith

[Jesse]

Jesse your point about how one might well bring
to a performance everything one knows thinks believes etc. has been something we in AMM
right from the beginning adopted, a conscious participation with the space, that the space (any space) would contain everything that ever existed, all history, all knowledge etc.

Thanks for responding, Keith. Still processing your points. The reference to "the space would contain everything..." resonates with me and how I approach, among other things, music.
I hope there is more participation here.

[Jesse]

I'm a little puzzled at the absence of posts here, 800 looks in; people generally say they want musicians' input on this forum. Not bitching, just puzzled.

[jon abbey]

yeah, I'm also a bit bummed about the lack of feedback on both posts on erstwords so far. I know they're both long and dense, but it's good to know that people are interested (or not).

[jkudler]

i have to confess, i feel pretty ambivalent about these notes. i agree with hatta that "this is why I find Keith's music so compelling and with a lot more longevity then most: there is huge amount of thought and depth in his performances," but i find that the rendering of that into the literal, and particularly the use of a sort of "code" is a bit off-putting to me. one thing i enjoy in a lot of so-called "abstract" music is ambiguity and mystery, material that is on some level difficult to put into words. a one-to-one correspondence of sounds to literal real-world referent i have to say takes something away for me, reduces it to a single interpretation. while i am more curious to hear this recording now, on one level, i also wonder if it will excite me less over repeated listens than "the room," which has a lot of curiosity and mystery to me still. i don't know if i find the process behind the piece problematic (i might. . .) or just the text.

hmm. . . having read this again after writing the above, i have to say. . . i find the notes really interesting, and very illuminating in many ways. but i do still feel a bit of a reservation about the kind of direct symbology at play. keith - you talk a little about this in the notes, but what do you expect the audience will hear? is it important that these notions be brought directly to the service? is it ok to hear the music with none of this background? is it better? and what about performance? was this a good or a bad realization of the piece as outlined? neither? is there such as thing as good and bad take?

thanks,
jessse

[jon abbey]

not to preempt keith's answer at all, but I will say that this is one reason why neither of us wanted the notes for 'the room' to come out for at least a year or so after its release (although we've overshot that now). this is also why I almost totally avoid talking specifics about the music for ersts before they come out, as well as in the PR (one sentence about the music in each, no more).

in this case, there was about 6-7 weeks lag time after the CD was released, so hopefully a fair amount of people got to spend time with the music to form their own perspective on it before reading the notes. I'd personally never read notes like these about a CD I planned to listen to before spending time with it myself, just like I try to totally ignore all film reviews of films I know I'm interested in seeing before I see them, but I know everyone's not like that.

[jkudler]

yeah, try as i might, i tend to read a ton of film reviews before i see a movie (except in certain cases when i know it will really ruin it or i exert unusual discipline) and i often read a lot of music reviews, too. in this case, you partially answered my question, in saying that you and keith wanted to have people hear it without having seen the notes, but i also was getting at something hopefully a little deeper: how does the music stand completely apart from the representation weight. does it? is it supposed to? obviously, the use of recorded fragments already implies a greater use of direct reference than much of keith's work (yes, i know there is radio, but it's not, to my knowledge, predetermined).

-j.

[Jesse]

one thing i enjoy in a lot of so-called "abstract" music is ambiguity and mystery...

I've read Keith's notes several times, and listened again to EL007, and am assured ambiguity and mystery remain.

[kcorcoran]

(only posting a note of reference to the comments made re: musicians posting here and commenting on erstwords, as i have yet to bring a copy of EL007 through my mailbox i have not read the post made by keith, though it is very enticing to know it is there to be considered after my first real listen. equally so with the comments made here there is much to consider before responding. i attempted an immediate (less than 8 hours after experiencing) response to keith's solo section of the tiger's mind as heard live at mills, and would like to take more time thinking about the room or the newer tokyo disc, given the difference of the performer's input provided. the other excuse would be: i am occupied with papers which disinterest me but are dependent on college marks when i would rather be listening and writing here).