Finally posting again

After a month of not posting, here I am, back on the air. I've been doing shows all September, but haven't really bothered to put them up online. Mostly, I've been running on a theme: In C and Robert Ashley's Private Lives. I have many many versions of In C, so why not play one per week? This all came because of the minimalism conference which happened earlier this month in Kansas City. I've been reading various things about the conference and playing music by those artists as well. Charlemagne Palestine, John Luther Adams, a recording of Dennis Johnson's November (as recreated by Kyle Gann), and so on.

So, today I've got SMCQ's version of In C playing, and I have a plan to play "The Bar (Differences)" from Robert Ashley's Private Lives, and otherwise, I haven't decided what I really want to be doing with my time. I'll post this for now, and add updates as the music flows around me.

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An hour later, and damn, I'm having a great time with the music. "What can an old fart like you do with all this money?" Robert Ashley is goddamn hilarious, and the rhythm of his language is just great (in his post 1980 phase of composing, I guess - I don't really like the earlier stuff all that much...). How many great ways are there to say "AND!" as a multi-syllabic word? He covers a lot of the bases in "The Bar (Differences)." Great piece.

The last hour had the long version of In C, followed by the Karlheinz Miklin Trio doing "Echoes of Illyria." One of the "Illyria" themes sounds an awful like one of the 53 motifs of Riley's In C, so it seemed like a natural fit to me. I don't know if I'm right or not (I really should study music more, and learn to train my ear, rather than winging it and going with what intuitively feels right), but it was a nice transition. From there, I moved on to Betsy Bobenhouse and Christy Banks doing a flute and clarinet piece, "Elaphe." The shift from "Illyria's" bass clarinet to the clarinet in "Elaphe" was pretty slick. Then a John Luther Adams piece, a remix of some of his tape loops from the 70s. I do like my weird tape loop pieces.

But still, right now, I'm caught up in the wacky piano playing by Blue Gene behind Robert Ashley's rant-mumbles (seriously, that's what it feels like). Awesome stuff. I think I have some Kyle Gann to play later on, and I don't have anything picked for the last half hour of the show. But I'm having a blast.

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Okay, I moved from the Robert Ashley through a Kyle Gann piece that really didn't grab me and was faded out into a long drone piece. God, I love a good drone. This is Ancient Bridge Part 2, by Tange. This takes the FM3 Buddha Box and samples it into something totally amazingly different and beautiful. What a gorgeous piece. And it was a free download , woo hoo! Gotta love free downloads.