Harold Carr

Other Minds Festival of New Music

On Thursday (3/4) I attended the opening night of the Other Minds Festival of New Music in San Francisco (with Andrew).

The first piece was Jurg Frey's Steichquartett II (1998-2000) performed by the Quatuor Bozzini string quartet. A very minimal, quiet, spacious work with a touch of danger. Basically it's the quartet playing one chord after another for a little over twenty minutes. Here is an excerpt of the first two minutes:

If you like that you can get the CD of that piece and four others from Edition Wandelweiser Records.

The next piece was Chou Wen-chung's Twilight Colors

At intermission Andrew and I talked to members of the ROVA saxophone quartet, Andrew's old band. They will be premiering a piece at Other Minds later in the week.

The next piece was a short solo piano work, also by Wen-chung: The Willow Are New. It was a quasi polytonal minor pentatonic piece.

The final piece of the evening was Lisa Bielawa's Kafka Songs (2001-2003) performed by Carla Kihlstedt on voice and violin. It was composed of about five or six shorter pieces, each based on a sentence or two of Kafka's more introspect Meditation (1912). Sentences such as: "And this time I only recognized these old games after being with them for such a long time. I rubbed my fingertips against each other to erase the shame."

Carla, after saying the sentence, would then proceed to sing the words while simultaneously playing violin. A seemingly simple, sparse, but powerful presentation.

My favorite work of the evening was Frey's string quartet (I purchased the CD), with Bielawa's Kafka Songs a close second.

Cyrus Chestnut Trio at Yoshi's in San Francisco

Cyrus Chestnut

On Wednesday (3/3) I heard the Cyrus Chestnut Trio at Yoshi's (the San Francisco location).

Personnel:

Cyrus Chestnut, piano
Dezron Douglas, bass
Neal Smith, drums

Set list:

some Elvis tune (in G)
N? Blues (in Eb)
New Light (latin)
Goliath (3/4 in F)
Autumn Leaves (in G-, i.e., two flats)
solo piano
ballad (sounded like Little Town of Bethlehem)
pop tune
medium up swing tune
Stripes (latin)
It Is What It Is

Music with Andrew Voigt

Andrew Voigt

On Tuesday night (3/2) I got together with my longtime friend, woodwind player and composer Andrew Voigt and played music at his place in Oakland, California. We drank tea and then played a piece where Andrew mostly used bass flute.

We took a break and listened to some music recorded by Cookie Marenco of OTR Studios and Blue Coast Records. Cookie recorded our first "album" in the 80s and also recorded Trio-Tri-National with Flavia Cervino-Wood, Marilyn Lerner and myself in the 90s.

Then we did another piece where Andrew mostly played tenor sax.

It was great to make music with Andrew again. It's been a little too long since the last time. Plus it was great to play my San Francisco bass. I'm sure it's been lonely.

Oh yeah, I did not have a tuner nor a tuning fork so had to tune my strings up by ear (and they were completely loosened for storage). I used the high-G tinnitus as a guide. I guess, if I have to have that problem, I might as well get some use out of it!

Luigi Nono in San Francisco

Chrisopher Burns, Graeme Jennings play Nono

After spending the weekend in Portland with my granddaughter, Gwyneth, her mom and my daughter, Jasmine, and her husband, Bruce, I flew to San Francisco. On Monday night (3/1) I went with my friend, Andrew Voigt, to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and heard La lontananza nostalgica upopica futura (1988) by Luigi Nono.

Luigi Nono (1924-1990) was an Italian serialist composer and Italian Communist Party activist. The piece was performed by Graeme Jennings, violin and Christopher Burns, sound diffusion (i.e., controlling when and which of the 8 tape tracks to send to one or more of the 8 speakers surrounding the room.

Graeme started playing on a second floor ramp then slowly made his through the audience to various music stands around the main floor. With his motion and the tape sound coming from 8 different speakers the music was highly spatial.