Stephen Montague - Slow Dance on a Burial Ground

What's this? Two posts in two weeks? And more coming!
I'm trying to make my posting a bit more regular, rather than the super-infrequent posts of the past. Another post is coming up next Sunday. I can't promise that I'll be able to maintain a once-a-week posting rate, but I'll definitely aim for at least one entry per month. Anyway, on to the music!




Stephen Montague doesn't seem to be a terribly well-known composer. I never see him mentioned in lists of post-minimalist composers, possibly because he's UK-based, though he was born and raised in the US. Maybe he's better-known in Europe, I don't know. I only discovered him because I was checking out every LP on Lovely Records I could find. No real internet presence either, aside from a bio and work list at his publisher's page.

Montague is one of the group of post-minimalist composers who combined elements of minimalism with romantic classical music, like John (Coolidge) Adams, Daniel Lentz, and others. He's got a number of CDs out, of which I have a couple, on ASV and Continuum Records. They're nice albums, some orchestral stuff, some chamber music and some mixed electronic works, and I would recommend them to anyone interested in the more accessible end of the post-minimalists, but this here LP is rather different.

Side A of the LP is taken up by the 24 minute piece which gives the LP its title, "Slow Dance on a Burial Ground", a tape piece constructed from electronic sounds, recordings of log drums, field recordings and folk flutes. It reminds me a little of Alvin Curran's early work, with its mixture of drones, electronics and field recordings, but Montague's piece here has a strong ethnic/folky element, what with the prominent flutes. It's a beautiful piece, static and textural, which sticks with a consistent sound and feel throughout.

"Paramell I" is the next track, for muted trombone and "muted" piano. Fantastic new music trombonist James Fulkerson plays the trombone, while Montague plays the piano, presumably muted with some fabric or something. Much of the piece features the two instruments playing in unison together, very fast staccato notes, sometimes with longer drone notes from the trombone. Surprisingly the sounds of the trombone and piano blend together, and it can be hard to tell which instrument is which, and when they play together it creates a nice combined texture.

"Paramell Va" (meaning Paramell 5, variation a) is a somewhat similar piece for solo piano, here played by Philip Mead. It features very fast staccato playing on the piano, alternating between high and low chords. I could again compare it to Charlemagne Palestine's Strumming Music, but this piece has a very, very different character. It's more melodic rather than textural, and not what I would call droney at all. It's minimalistically repetitive, but with a more natural, free-flowing character than, say, Philip Glass' piano music, with fantastic crescendos caused by the use of the sustain pedal.

This is a really excellent LP from an under-appreciated composer, and certainly the best work of his that I've heard. It was released on LP on the amazing Lovely Records in 1984, and is one of the very few items on that label that has never been re-released. Lovely seems to have been doing some archival releases lately, though, so maybe that'll happen someday.

David Rosenboom & Donald Buchla - Collaboration in Performance

David Rosenboom was an early proponent of minimalism and live electronic music, and a fantastic classical and free-jazz pianist. As a performer he's worked with LaMonte Young, Anthony Braxton, Jon Hassell, Robert Ashley, and others. He taught at the famous Mills College Centre for Contemporary Music in Oakland throughout the 1980s, and since the 1990s has been heading the music department at CalArts. He's got quite a lot of recordings under his belt, as a performer and composer, including CDs on Lovely, Pogus and Centaur, with recent rereleases of 1970s LPs on Mutable Music, New World and Japan's EM records.

Interestingly, this LP is co-credited to Donald Buchla, designer of the famed Buchla Electric Music Box, one of the earliest modular synthesizers, so favored by Pauline Oliveros, Morton Subotnick and others. He performs some of the synth material on "How Much Better if Plymouth Rock Had Landed on the Pilgrims, Section V".

"And Out Come the Night Ears" takes up the first side of the LP, and is an amazing showcase for Rosenboom's improvising and pianistic skills. Rosenboom plays an unending flurry of notes throughout the piece. His playing is incredibly fast and fleet, more textural than anything else. He runs up and down the keyboard at blinding speed.

Throughout this, a nearby Buchla synthesizer is set up to respond to Rosenboom's playing. It seems like it's probably using a pitch follower, and when he strays into certain areas of the keyboard the synthesizer responds with effects or sounds. Some low pitches cause the synth to make a snare-drum type sound, while other regions respond with synthesized bell-like tones or filtering effects or the like. It's an interesting piece, and again, Rosenboom's playing is extremely impressive without being pointlessly virtuosic. Rosenboom periodically employs the sustain pedal to blur the notes, but this is no "Strumming Music" piano drone piece. It's closer at times to a free jazz improvisation, though I can't think of any particular pianists who play like this.

The last four minutes or so feature Rosenboom repeating a short clustery phrase, which causes the synth to process the sound and create a sort of detuned tremolo effect, with occasional snare synth interjections.

"How Much Better if Plymouth Rock Had Landed on the Pilgrims, Section V" is the only only instance I'm aware of of Donald Buchla himself performing on a record. He and Rosenboom together play the then new Buchla Electric Music Box 300 Series, which from my understanding had an exceptional amount of sequencing capabilities for the time as well as live control over the settings.

The piece features several extremely fast repeating synth melodies playing simple modal scales at varying speeds. It has a strongly Indian feel to it, and is quite reminiscent of some of Terry Riley's late '70s organ improvisations. It's a gorgeous piece, a fantastic example of late 1970s electronic minimalism.

"And Out Come the Night Ears" has been released on CD as a bonus track with Rosenboom's "Future Travel" album on the fantastic New World Records. Apparently, however, this LP features a different excerpt from an hour long improvisation than the CD does. I haven't heard the CD so I don't really know how similar the material is.

"How Much Better if Plymouth Rock Had Landed on the Pilgrims" has been recently released in its entirety, in nine sections, on a double CD also on New World Records. That version consists mostly of new recordings, however, though there seem to be excerpts from this version used in some capacity. Again, I don't have the CD so I don't know exactly what the similarities are.

This LP was released in 1978 by the excellent 1750 Arch records, who released a ton of excellent music from the 1970s to the 80s, including lots of 20th century american classical music and some great free jazz stuff, most of which hasn't been rereleased.

Still alive

It's been a very long time since the last posting here, but I swear I haven't forgotten about this blogging thing.. I'm just finishing up with school, and should have lots of time on my hands within a few weeks. I'll try to get some new posts up soon.

Next will probably be "The Music of Loren Rush", some fantastic droney piano compositions from this under-recorded and under-heard composer who did some early work with Terry Riley and Pauline Oliveros.

In the meantime, a link to a post on another blog:



Laurie Spiegel's "The Expanding Universe" is an excellent minimalist computer music LP from the late 70's. I was going to post it up here but then found that it was already on the internets. Anyway, great stuff, get it from Continuo's Weblog here : http://continuo.wordpress.com/2008/04/25/laurie-spiegel-the-expanding-universe/