WILLIAMDUCKWORTH

Bruce Brubaker's recording of The Time Curve Preludes will be featured
on the MUSIC FROM OTHER MINDS broadcast in the San Francisco Bay area on
Friday, March 12, 2010 | KALW-FM 91.7 | 11pm Pacific Time and streamed live on kalw.org
.
After the broadcast it will be archived for on-demand streaming at
http://otherminds.org/mfom


Nora and I have been back in Australia for a week now. It was a strange trip flying straight from the blizzards of New York to the monsoons of the South Pacific. Even though Queensland is known as the Sunshine State, it has rained almost continually since we arrived, not to mention the two weeks before. And more rain is forecast for at least another week. All in all, however, the warmth of a southern hemisphere summer trumps the cold of a northern hemisphere winter, but, as Nora says, under these conditions, not by much. What's really strange is that during our last trip (May-Nov.

Hope Mohr Dance
World premiere of Far From Perfect with music from The Time Curve Preludes
Theater Artaud, 450 Florida Street, San Francisco, CA
Thursday-Saturday, March 4-6, 2010, 8 pm
Tickets: $18

I've known Ben Johnston for 45 years, first as a teacher, then as a friend. We stayed in touch from my student days at Illinois in the 60's through his retirement to Rocky Mount, NC in 1986 and a more recent move to Madison, WI. It's safe to say that the majority of things I know and care about music had their beginnings with Ben. A student of both Harry Partch and John Cage, plus a time studying with Darius Milhaud between the two, Ben taught his students not just the “facts”, but how the facts fit together to create ideas.

I've noticed that renewed interest in my Time Curve Preludes runs in 10-year cycles. They were finished in 1978, and premiered and recorded by Neely Bruce shortly after that. A decade later, in 1988, Oscar Pizzo played them in Italy and Beatriz Roman in Brazil. Ten years after that, Judith Gordon played them at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston and also in New York's Merkin Hall. Now, ten years later, Bruce Brubaker's recording of Book I for Arabesque Records, called Time Curve, is out.

The Time Curve Variations
Ritsu Katsumata, electric violin
The Stone, Corner of Avenue C and 2nd St., New York City
Saturday, October 24, 2009, 8:00 pm, $10

Since in my last post I swung the pendulum all the way over to 12-tone music and my love of Anton Webern, I thought it might be a good idea to let it swing back in the opposite direction toward jazz, another of my loves since childhood. And thanks to Twitter, I've begun following a fabulous bass player named Jon Burr, so I thought I'd shine the spotlight on him for a moment. I actually met Jon once in the mid 90's at Birdland when he was playing a gig with my friend, pianist Jim Balagurchik. But that was only a chance meeting and he would have no reason to remember it.

Given the type of music I've written most of my life you'd never think I was ever interested in serialism. But I was. And of all the serialists, the one who spoke most clearly and directly to me was Anton Webern. His short, highly crafted, miniatures contain the essence of controlled chromaticism, in much the same way that Bach's chorales contain the essence of all harmonic motion. Both composers were perfect at what they set out to do. In graduate school I even wrote a highly detailed 32-page analysis of the second movement of Webern's Opus 27 Piano Variations, a one-page piece.

Sonic Babylon's Noosa Sound Garden opening at the Noosa Regional Gallery
Special guests Delany Delaney - voice, Leah Barclay – world percussion
and Steve Weis - percussion / metal sculpture will be performing live
with the sounds of the garden. The Gallery is located beside the Noosa River
on Pelican St. in Tewantin, QLD, Australia. The sound garden is part of a day
of activities that includes the opening of the Flora exhibition and a family day.
Sunday, 13 September 2009, 2:00—4:30 p.m.