{"product_id":"v1-earle-brown-life-in-music","title":"V1: EARLE BROWN LIFE IN MUSIC","description":"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12bi\"\u003eEARLE BROWN\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12biU\"\u003e—A LIFE IN MUSIC—VOL. I \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"BULLET12b\"\u003e•\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12\"\u003e Paul Price, cond;\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"SUPER12\"\u003e1–3,5\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12\"\u003e John Cage, cond;\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"SUPER12\"\u003e4,7\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12\"\u003e Manhattan Percussion Ens;\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"SUPER12\"\u003e1–8\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12\"\u003e Christoph Caskel (perc);\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"SUPER12\"\u003e9–11\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12\"\u003e Aloys Kontarsky (pn, wood blocks);\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"SUPER12\"\u003e10\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12\"\u003e Bernhard Kontarsky (cel, cymbals);\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"SUPER12\"\u003e10\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12\"\u003e David Tudor (pn);\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"SUPER12\"\u003e11\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12\"\u003e AMM;\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"SUPER12\"\u003e12\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12\"\u003e Musica Elettronica Viva\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"SUPER12\"\u003e13 \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"BULLET12b\"\u003e•\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12\"\u003e WERGO 6928 (3 CDs: 116:15) \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cspan class=\"COMPOSER12\"\u003eROLDÁN \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12bi\"\u003eRitmicas: \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12b\"\u003eNo. 6;\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"SUPER12\"\u003e1 \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12b\"\u003eNo. 5.\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"SUPER12\"\u003e2 \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"COMPOSER12\"\u003eHARRISON \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12bi\"\u003eCanticle No. 1.\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"SUPER12\"\u003e3 \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"COMPOSER12\"\u003eRUSSELL \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12bi\"\u003e3 Dance Movements.\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"SUPER12\"\u003e4 \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12bi\"\u003e3 Cuban Pieces.\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"SUPER12\"\u003e5 \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"COMPOSER12\"\u003eCOWELL \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12bi\"\u003eOstinato pianissimo.\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"SUPER12\"\u003e6 \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"COMPOSER12\"\u003eCAGE\/HARRISON \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12bi\"\u003eDouble Music.\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"SUPER12\"\u003e7 \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"COMPOSER12\"\u003eCAGE \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12bi\"\u003eAmore\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12b\"\u003es.\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"SUPER12\"\u003e8 \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"COMPOSER12\"\u003eSTOCKHAUSEN \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12bi\"\u003eZyklus.\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"SUPER12\"\u003e9 \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12bi\"\u003eRefrain.\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"SUPER12\"\u003e10 \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"COMPOSER12\"\u003eKAGEL \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12bi\"\u003eTransición II.\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"SUPER12\"\u003e11 \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"COMPOSER12\"\u003eAMM \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12bi\"\u003eAMM.\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"SUPER12\"\u003e12 \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"COMPOSER12\"\u003eMEV \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"ARIAL12bi\"\u003eSpacecraft\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan class=\"SUPER12\"\u003e13 \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cspan\u003eThough born in Massachusetts, Earle Brown was a young composer living in Denver in 1950 when Merce Cunningham and John Cage came to perform and lecture at the McLean School. His wife at that time, Carolyn Rice Brown, was a dancer who attended Cunningham’s master class. Almost immediately, the four realized they had much in common, and Cage persuaded the Browns to move to New York in 1951—Carolyn was one of the founding members of Merce Cunningham’s dance company (where she was to remain for 20 years as a featured performer) and Earle eventually collaborated with Cage at the Project for Music for Magnetic Tape. This experience with electronic equipment allowed Brown to work as a recording engineer—recording and editing pop, jazz, and classical music—for Capitol Records from 1955–1960. In 1960 he began producing records for Bob Shad’s Time label, having convinced the well-established jazz and pop maven to allow him to record a series of avant-garde compositions. The first of these remarkable documents was issued on Time, but after that label folded in 1966, Brown continued to produce the series for Shad’s larger Mainstream imprint. All 18 of these recordings were reissued on LP in the 1970s, but have not appeared on CD until now. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cspan\u003eBrown’s broad knowledge of new music, along with his professional connections, resulted in a groundbreaking collection of music that had been largely unheard—indeed, in some cases, all but unknown—at the time. Represented, of course, were Brown himself and his friends in the “New York School”—Cage, Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff, and their foremost interpreter, pianist David Tudor. But Brown also included what was for the most part the first American documentation of composers from Europe like Nono, Berio, Maderna, Scelsi, and Boulez; Maxwell Davies and Birtwistle from London; an album devoted to South American composers; and one featuring the next, post-Cage generation of American radicals, Ashley, Mumma, Lucier, and Behrman. Equally important, however, was Brown’s understanding that this unfamiliar, often shocking new music needed the best possible performances in order to convince listeners of its merits, as well as the best possible sound quality to capture its tonal subtleties and extravagances. By recording performers like Tudor and pianist Yuji Takahashi, flutist Severino Gazzelloni, violinist Paul Zukofsky, vocalist Cathy Berberian, and experienced ensembles often under the direction of the composers themselves, Brown helped to establish a tradition of new-music performance styles and techniques that would stand as a model for subsequent generations of interpreters. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cspan\u003eThis long-awaited release (collectors have been paying big bucks for the precious Time and Mainstream LPs) initiates Wergo’s two-year schedule of the reissue of all 18 albums, in six three-CD sets. Eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that the total playing time listed above averages out to less than 40 minutes per CD. Wergo has decided to maintain the integrity of the original releases’ production by reproducing the cover art, reprinting the original liner notes, and yes, limiting each CD to a single LP’s worth of music. Their digitalization of the original sound quality, which was excellent to begin with, has been handled with care (although some lingering tape hiss is inevitable)—the proof is the first CD, where the percussion timbres are clean, crisp, and vivid. I did notice one new production error in this CD release—on disc 3, the two pieces have been mislabeled; \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eAMM\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e is the first piece on the disc, and \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eSpacecraft \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003ethe second, not the other way around, as listed on the CD cover and in the booklet. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cspan\u003eWhat about the music, then? The first disc, “Concert Percussion for Orchestra,” reminds us that adventurous composers, looking for new sounds and timbres in the days before electronics, turned to percussion in order to expand the available palette of colors, and with them began to explore the rhythmic intricacies of other, non-classical, ethnic musics. Cuban composer Amadeo Roldán’s works for percussion ensemble date from 1930, William Russell’s \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eThree Dance Movements\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e and \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eThree Cuban Pieces\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e from later that same decade. Henry Cowell’s \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eOstinato pianissimo\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e (1934) has become one of the repertoire’s classics. John Cage plays the prepared piano solos in his \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eAmores\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e (1943). Though for the most part concise exercises in unusual rhythms and timbres, many of which sound commonplace and simplified today, these pieces nevertheless were highly influential for their time, and display a charming sense of exploration, atmosphere, and, yes, even swing. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cspan\u003eThe Stockhausen and Kagel works on the second disc were hot off the press in 1960, and they receive gripping readings. The solo percussion score \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eZyklus\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e, once so jolting, now has an almost meditative feel to it, and this version of \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eRefrain\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e emphasizes its delicacy and spontaneity, offering a constellation of Webernesque detail. Mauricio Kagel’s \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eTransición II \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003esurveys a wider range of attacks and rhythms, with previously recorded and live taped components increasing the complexity of tonal relationships. Tudor and percussionist Caskel (who works directly inside the piano) pay sharp attention to the task at hand, briskly aligning the aleatoric elements of the score. (Alternate versions may be heard from the ensemble L’Art pour L’Art on the cpo label and Aldo Orvieto, Dmitri Fiorin, and Alvise Vidolin on Mode.) \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cspan\u003eFinally, we have what is probably the most unusual album released in the series, recordings of group improvisations by the British band AMM (which at this time included composer Cornelius Cardew) and the Rome-based group of American expatriates including Frederic Rzewski, Alvin Curran, and Richard Teitelbaum (and one Hungarian, Ivan Vandor), Musica Elettronica Viva. Both ensembles featured live electronics as a major part of their instrumental arsenal, and both gleefully embraced noise as a confrontational device and a link to the ritualistic musical activities that, without benefit of a predetermined compositional design, produced their truly spontaneous structures. Drones—frictional, layered, and ambient—are the source for much of their aural environment, and acoustic instruments—pianos, saxophones, even cello—are played with pseudo-electronic timbres or mixed into the fray so as to be all but unrecognizable. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cspan\u003eAMM’s contribution is an edited excerpt from a longer, live performance (which may be heard in its entirety on “The Crypt—12 June 1968: The Complete Session” on the Matchless label). In addition, silences of various lengths were edited into the performance after the fact, interrupting the music according to some unexplained, Cagean provocation. Interestingly, these silences still contain several small tics and pops, suggesting that rather than edit in fresh, totally silent digital silence, Wergo decided to use the analog silence taken from an LP (the master tapes may have been unavailable), thus once again maintaining the integrity (albeit flawed) of the original release. MEV’s live activity, \u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan style=\"font-style:italic\"\u003eSpacecraft\u003c\/span\u003e \u003cspan\u003e, was an open improvisation that they performed a number of times in their early years—other versions may be found on the Alga Marghen label, and in the valuable four-CD set “MEV 40” on New World. The AMM and MEV improvisations have less-than-optimal sound, and are difficult to listen to without flinching, but as examples of controlled chaos they project a raw, immediate catharsis unmatched by any other music of their time. Earle Brown’s decision to include them as representation of the cutting-edge of new music’s new repertoire, giving improvisation a platform equal with composition, was gutsy and prophetic. The remaining releases in this most welcome series will afford further examples of the breadth of Brown’s vision. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cspan style=\"font-weight:bold\"\u003eFANFARE: Art Lange \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Wergo","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":49606594461976,"sku":"4010228692822","price":37.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0687\/4346\/3192\/files\/1554779_1783b17d-6baa-43cd-8dd4-36433e9c3e72.jpg?v=1777630251","url":"https:\/\/hbdirect.com\/products\/v1-earle-brown-life-in-music","provider":"HBDirect","version":"1.0","type":"link"}