Part five of our six-part series on Butch Morris and Conduction.  We start off this week with an interview recorded for Vermont Public Radio [VPR] in November of 2007 so that listeners can learn more about Morris and the theories behind his concept of Conduction in the composer's own voice.  The interviewer is George Thomas, and also sitting in is Don Glasgo, leader of Dartmouth University's student jazz ensemble "Barbary Coast".  The interview is a bit over 30 minutes in duration. Anyone who missed the interview or would like to hear it again can find it archived at VPR's website: http://www.vpr.net/episode/42045/

Underlying my opening remarks and the VPR interview is an extended excerpt from Morris' Conduction #15

CONDUCTION® No. 15, WHERE MUSIC GOES II (extended excerpt behind interview)
Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris
New York, NY, 15 & 16 November 1989
Ensemble: Arthur Blythe (alto sax), Marion Brandis (flute), Vincent Chancey (French horn), Curtis
Clark (piano), J.A. Deane (trombone/electronics), Janet Grice (bassoon), Brandon Ross (guitar), Bill
Horvitz (electric guitar), Jason Hwang (violin), Thurman Barker, Taylor McLean (percussion), Jemeel
Moondoc (flute), Zeena Parkins (harp), Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris (conductor).

CONDUCTION® No. 50
P3 Art and Environment, Tokyo, Japan, 5 March 1995 <<total time: 76:12>>
Ensemble: Shonosuke Okura (o-tuzumi), Michihiro Sato (tugaru-syamisen), Ayuo Takahashi
(zheng), Yumiko Tanaka (gidayuu), Hikaru Sawai (koto), Dae Hwan Kim (percussion), western
instruments: Yoshihide Otomo (turntable), Haruna Miyake (piano), Asuka Kaneko (violin), Tomomi
Adachi (voice), Keizo Mizoiri, Motoharu Yoshizawa (basses), Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris (conductor).

CONDUCTION® No. 28, CHERRY BLOSSOM (brief excerpt)
P3 Art and Environment, Tokyo, Japan, 28 March 1993
Ensemble: Yukihiro Isso (no-kan), Shonosuke Ookura (tutzumi), Makiko Sakurai (syomyo), Michihiro
Sato (tugaru-syamisen), Kizan Daiyoshi (shakuhachi), western instruments: Haruna Miyake (piano),
Syuichi Chino (computer), Asuka Kaneko, Koihi Makigami (voices), Otomo Yoshihide (turntable),
Kazutoki Umezu (bass clarinet), Sachiko Nagata (percussion), Motoharu Yoshizawa (bass), Kazuo
Oono, Koichi Tamano (Butoh dance), Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris (conductor).

Complete Conduction chronology, more about Butch Morris & videos too, at: http://www.conduction.us/

You can reach me via email: andy@timbuktunes.com

The Music of Otomo Yoshihide

Hosted by Rich L.

Playlist:

Otomo Yoshihide - HK - Sound Factory (1997)
Otomo Yoshihide/Christian Marclay - Sliced and Diced - Moving Parts (2001)
Otomo Yoshihide/Christian Marclay - Derailment - Moving Parts
Otomo Yoshihide - Tracks 1 - 15 - Night Before the Death of the Sampling Virus (1993)
Otomo Yoshihide/Yamatsuko Eye - Last Words - Now's The Time Workshop vol. 2 (1991)
Otomo Yoshihide/Yamatsuko Eye - Terminal 1 - Now's The Time Workshop vol. 2
Otomo Yoshihide/Yamatsuko Eye - Terminal 2 - Now's The Time Workshop vol. 2
Otomo Yoshihide/Yamatsuko Eye - Terminal 3 - Now's The Time Workshop vol. 2
-
Otomo Yoshihide and the New Jazz Orchestra - Out to Lunch - Out to Lunch (2005)
Otomo Yoshihide and the New Jazz Orchestra - Straight Up and Down - Out to Lunch
-
Otomo Yoshihide and the New Jazz Quintet - Serene - Flutter (2001)
Altered States w/Otomo Yoshihide - Motif B - Lithuania and Estonia Live (1994)
Altered States w/Otomo Yoshihide - Chain Reaction - Lithuania and Estonia Live
Altered States w/Otomo Yoshihide - Improvisation #1 - Lithuania and Estonia Live
Altered States w/Otomo Yoshihide - Improvisation #2 - Lithuania and Estonia Live
-
Otomo Yoshihide - 1-2 - We Insist? (2003)
Yoshihide/Laswell/Yashihiro - Seaweed - Soup (2003)
Otomo Yoshihide/Martin Le'trault - Lyon No. 1/Kafe Myszik, 28.04.03 - Grrr (2004)
Otomo Yoshihide/Bob Ostertag - The Power of Success - Twins! (1996)
Otomo Yoshihide - Anode 3 - Anode (2001)

Fourth of six programs devoted to the music of Butch Morris.  

CONDUCTION® No. 58, HOLY SEA, MARBLE DUST / CONDUCTION® No. 59, HOLY SEA, THE DEVIL'S MUSIC recorded near Florence, Italy. February, 1996  [total time 73:10]

Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris conducting the Orchestra della Toscana: Andrea Tacchi, Giorgio Ballini, Paolo Gaiani, Maria Elena Runza (violins), Riccardo Masi, Alessandro Franconi, Dimitri Mattu (violas), Giovanni Bacchelli, Filippo Burchietti (cello), Raffaello Majoni, Gianpietro Zampella (basses), Michele Marasco (flute), Umberto Codeca (bassoon), Gianfranco Dini (horn), Donato De Sena, Claudio Quintavalla (trumpets), Renzo Brocculi (trombone), Riccardo Tarlini (tuba), Morgan M. Torelli (timpani), Jonathan Faralli (percussion), Cinzia Conte (harp). With J.A. Deane (trombone/electronics), Otomo Yoshihide (turntables/sampling/electronics), RiccardoFassi (piano).

------------------------------

CONDUCTION® No. 23, QUINZAINE DE MONTREAL
The Spectrum, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 11 April 1992 (time 43:25)
Ensemble: Tristan Honsinger, Martin Schutz, Eric Longsworth (cello), Michelle Kinney, Ken Butler (hybrid broom-cello), Helmut Lipsky (violin), J.A. Deane (trombone/electronics/sampling), Guillaume
Dostaler (piano), Mike Milligan (bass), Pierre Dubé (vibraphone).  Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris conducting.

------------------------

Tune in to A Different Nature next week, for a special program commemorating the 100th
anniversary of the birth of the prolific American composer Alan Hovhaness,
whose music explored his Armenian heritage, as well as Japanese and Korean
musical forms, modal composition, love of nature, etc.

FRED FRITH - 2 WORKS (mainly)  --  hosted by daniel flessas

Focusing on Frith's early guitar masterpiece, 1974's "Guitar Solos" and 1995's "Pacifica", (though we opened tonight's show with the atmospheric "Kick The Can" from the 1980 album, "Speechless").

GUITAR SOLOS  (from about 8:05 pm til around 9:15 pm)

1. Hello Music 

2. Glass c/w Steel

3. Ghosts

4. Out of Their Heads (on locoweed)

5. Not  Forgotten

6. Hollow Music

7. Heat c/w Moment

8. PART 5 from "Rivers and Tides" (music for the amazing film about Andy Goldsworthy) this is NOT on Guitar Solos, btw..

9. No Birds   (The longest track on the album, "No Birds", Frith played on two prepared guitars simultaneously, creating the timbre and range of an orchestra. He laid the two guitars flat on a table, neck to neck with the bodies of the guitars at opposite ends and the necks parallel to each other. He then tuned the strings on both guitars to one note, and because they were stereo guitars with nut pickups, he had six separate sound sources coming from each guitar. Using volume pedals on some of the sound sources, Frith filtered sounds in and out of the mix without doing anything on the guitars.

10. Only Reflect

11. Water / Struggle / The North

12. Alienated Industrial Seagulls

Guitar Solos was voted one of the best albums of 1974 by NME critics. Allmusic called it a landmark album because of its innovative and experimental approach to guitar playing. It also attracted the attention of Brian Eno, resulting in Frith's playing guitar on two of Eno's albums, and spawned two follow-up albums, Guitar Solos 2 (1976) and Guitar Solos 3 (1979). Guitar Solos was remastered and released on CD on Frith's own record label, Fred Records in 2002.

Frith recorded the album at David Vorhaus's Kaleidophon Studios in London on 11–13 and 15 July 1974, where he played a modified 1936 Gibson K-11. He added an extra pickup over the strings at the nut, enabling him to amplify sound from both sides of the fretted note. He then split the fretboard in two with a capo, effectively giving him two guitars, each amplified separately that he could play independently with each hand. To split the sounds further he attached alligator clips at various positions on the strings. The net result was a guitar with multiple sound sources that could be channelled to a mixer and distributed across the stereo soundscape.^[3]

The album was recorded in four days without any overdubbing. All the pieces were improvised, some completely, some to a roughly preconceived idea, and sound as they were played, except for "No Birds", which was recorded in two parts, and "Not Forgotten", from which two notes were removed. The only sounds not produced 'naturally' by guitar are those of a fuzzbox used on "Out of Their Heads (On Locoweed)", "Heat c/w Moment" and "No Birds", an echo delay used on "No Birds", and ambient noise from Frith's breath and feet on "Heat c/w Moment".^[5]

^PACIFICA  (from about 9:15 pm til almost 10:00 pm)

Pacifica was composed by Frith in 1994 as "a meditation for 21 musicians with texts by Pablo Neruda", and was performed, under the direction of Frith, by the Eva Kant ensemble in 1995 in Modena, Italy. Texts taken from the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's works Soneto IX and Cien sonetos de amor, were recorded by Sergio Meza in September 1997 in Santiago, Chile and were added to the music in 1998. The album was released on Tzadik Records' Composer Series in 1998.

Frith does not perform on this album.

Pacifica was composed by Frith at Big Sur, California in a cabin overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It is "a slow meditation on life and death" and reflects a series of events that occurred in Frith's life at the time, namely the death of two close friends and the birth of his daughter.

Pacifica was composed for an ensemble that included prepared guitars, wind instruments, percussion, a vocalist and a performer on records, CDs and tapes. The 19 member Eva Kant ensemble (named after a 1960s comic strip heroine, Eva Kant) performed the piece, with fragments of recited text from the Death Song of the Cupeño tribe of California and the tribal names of all the original inhabitants of California.