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MONITORED FELDMAN sleeve notes
~ Thoughts on playing Monitored Feldman ~
I’m playing Feldman as I remember it, but during this performance I gradually become encircled by the electronics over me, around me, below me. My piano floats somewhere between a past, present and future resonance: sounds that are being played, sounds in decay, and new potential sounds that are being created.
The composition "Triadic Memories" unfolds, like slow waves moving across deep water over a vast duration of time. The three staves of the "Triadic" pitch material are draped over this organically evolving structure. On the piano my hands sometimes come together, exploring pitch that meanders so closely together that the listener hears a blur of microtones with no pitch center. At other times my hands play at the furthest ends of the keyboard. These slow, almost minimalist moments that move forward, rewind and then replay, are perhaps the essence of Feldman's "Triadic Memories". One's body in performance is absorbed into the notation and the listening. I like to embody the piece like a dance, so the music can breathe, creating its own momentum that transcends beyond the counting of measures.
Tania Caroline Chen, 2020
~ Thoughts on Monitoring Feldman ~
One might very well ask why? The rules are very clear with this piece -- it was written for solo piano. As a friend of his put it once, permission granted, but not to do whatever you want, so what exactly are we asking you to listen to?
There are only two Feldman pieces that show an interest in electronics. With John Cage, David Tudor, Christian Wolff and Earle Brown, he was a mainstay of the marathon splicing and quilting parties that took place at Louis & Bebe Barron's Greenwich Village electronic music studio that were necessary to bring about Cage's 'Williams Mix' in 1952, and several of that crew certainly felt within rights to make their own compositions out of the overflow of fragments that resulted: Feldman's was 'Intersections (for magnetic tape)'. There's another piece from 1951 called 'Marginal Intersection’ which involves pre- recordings of a construction site & a sine wave generator, but after 1952, he left the whole business alone, contenting himself with traditional instrumentation and his own modern intervals.
Even on these strictly acoustic grounds, there are many reasons why Feldman is constantly being rediscovered by fans of ambient and electronic music. Beyond his many late period works of immersive, extended duration, there's 'Piece For Four Pianos', a single score of
chords to be played simultaneously by four pianists, which in its own way foreshadowed the later tape delay & process music pieces that seemed bound to the recording studio. There’s always been something about Feldman's use of half-steps that move the instruments away from simple renderers of melody, and into the world of abstract sound.
So this is a recording of one of Feldman's most frequently recorded pieces, his breakthrough work for extended duration solo piano. For some reason, here performed by a trio who had played together many times separately as duos, but only once before as a trio. Fans of improvised of music will probably already spot those as good odds. But this is not exactly improvised music.
Dimuzio has been, for decades, a master of live sampling. He frequently brings no 'original' material to a group improvising situation, only microphones, and a varied series of processing techniques which renders, extends and transforms his partners' sounds into logically related, yet entirely unexpected new textures - both connected or independent from their acoustic source. It can be kind of a miracle to hear everything you're used to hearing as 'studio' or 'composed' production in a concert; to hear clarinets multiplied into orchestras or menageries. Seeing him play with Chis Cutler in 2001, I remember seeing that percussionist lift his bow from a gently resonating cymbal, and his expression change once the intended sustain in fact doubled an octave below itself and grow loud enough to begin resonating the rest of his kit. Dimuzio's a true live electronic musician that requires a profound amount of trust from his partners, in that sounds that begin with them will not necessarily end with them or stay under their control.
My initial work with samples was more dependent on pre-recorded collage, but after years of improvising with Tom, as well as of listening to improvisors working with electronics that listen (David Tudor, Gordon Mumma, David Behrman and George Lewis), I edged into the use of pitch tracking as a method of improvising. It's almost too easy; the machines recognize the notes within 30 milliseconds, and drive synthesizers you can then interact with -- voices attempting unison lines in real time response to an acoustic player, signifies as a form of intelligence, regardless of how you'd strictly define it.
Tania has been playing Feldman for years; the shifting time-signatures that require so much in the way of internal counting, that any attempt at precision gives way to meditation. This was Chen & Leidecker's second interpretation of 'Triadic Memories', the first being an in- studio broadcast performance on KPFA Berkeley's program 'Over The Edge'. They were eager to do it in front of an audience. Dimuzio had never heard the piece before being invited to play it; perfect.
All the notes in this performance are Feldman's. Well, no they aren't; Dimuzio helps himself to the occasional fifth while live-sampling Chen's piano. And while Leidecker's pitch-tracking is ostensibly a MIDI-converted mirror of Feldman's score, tracing Chen's performance, the trackers frequently make wide errors and introduce their own half-steps into the mix. The electronics admittedly make some of their own choices outside of Feldman's, but somehow it's still mostly idiomatic. And definitely live; there was no way to tell what it was going to sound like before either performers, or audience, heard it.
The audience in attendance had come through a considerable storm; at points you can hear the rain and the wind at the windows near the back of the room. Everyone present must have really wanted to be there. This recording is largely what they heard, but it's also been tampered with, boosting or cutting the amount of room sound at times. This recording raises its own questions, to which the only answer is -- to find out that it was going to sound like this.
Wobbly / Jon Leidecker, 2020
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MONITORED FELDMAN sleeve notes
~ Thoughts on playing Monitored Feldman ~
I’m playing Feldman as I remember it, but during this performance I gradually become encircled by the electronics over me, around me, below me. My piano floats somewhere between a past, present and future resonance: sounds that are being played, sounds in decay, and new potential sounds that are being created.
The composition "Triadic Memories" unfolds, like slow waves moving across deep water over a vast duration of time. The three staves of the "Triadic" pitch material are draped over this organically evolving structure. On the piano my hands sometimes come together, exploring pitch that meanders so closely together that the listener hears a blur of microtones with no pitch center. At other times my hands play at the furthest ends of the keyboard. These slow, almost minimalist moments that move forward, rewind and then replay, are perhaps the essence of Feldman's "Triadic Memories". One's body in performance is absorbed into the notation and the listening. I like to embody the piece like a dance, so the music can breathe, creating its own momentum that transcends beyond the counting of measures.
Tania Caroline Chen, 2020
~ Thoughts on Monitoring Feldman ~
One might very well ask why? The rules are very clear with this piece -- it was written for solo piano. As a friend of his put it once, permission granted, but not to do whatever you want, so what exactly are we asking you to listen to?
There are only two Feldman pieces that show an interest in electronics. With John Cage, David Tudor, Christian Wolff and Earle Brown, he was a mainstay of the marathon splicing and quilting parties that took place at Louis & Bebe Barron's Greenwich Village electronic music studio that were necessary to bring about Cage's 'Williams Mix' in 1952, and several of that crew certainly felt within rights to make their own compositions out of the overflow of fragments that resulted: Feldman's was 'Intersections (for magnetic tape)'. There's another piece from 1951 called 'Marginal Intersection’ which involves pre- recordings of a construction site & a sine wave generator, but after 1952, he left the whole business alone, contenting himself with traditional instrumentation and his own modern intervals.
Even on these strictly acoustic grounds, there are many reasons why Feldman is constantly being rediscovered by fans of ambient and electronic music. Beyond his many late period works of immersive, extended duration, there's 'Piece For Four Pianos', a single score of
chords to be played simultaneously by four pianists, which in its own way foreshadowed the later tape delay & process music pieces that seemed bound to the recording studio. There’s always been something about Feldman's use of half-steps that move the instruments away from simple renderers of melody, and into the world of abstract sound.
So this is a recording of one of Feldman's most frequently recorded pieces, his breakthrough work for extended duration solo piano. For some reason, here performed by a trio who had played together many times separately as duos, but only once before as a trio. Fans of improvised of music will probably already spot those as good odds. But this is not exactly improvised music.
Dimuzio has been, for decades, a master of live sampling. He frequently brings no 'original' material to a group improvising situation, only microphones, and a varied series of processing techniques which renders, extends and transforms his partners' sounds into logically related, yet entirely unexpected new textures - both connected or independent from their acoustic source. It can be kind of a miracle to hear everything you're used to hearing as 'studio' or 'composed' production in a concert; to hear clarinets multiplied into orchestras or menageries. Seeing him play with Chis Cutler in 2001, I remember seeing that percussionist lift his bow from a gently resonating cymbal, and his expression change once the intended sustain in fact doubled an octave below itself and grow loud enough to begin resonating the rest of his kit. Dimuzio's a true live electronic musician that requires a profound amount of trust from his partners, in that sounds that begin with them will not necessarily end with them or stay under their control.
My initial work with samples was more dependent on pre-recorded collage, but after years of improvising with Tom, as well as of listening to improvisors working with electronics that listen (David Tudor, Gordon Mumma, David Behrman and George Lewis), I edged into the use of pitch tracking as a method of improvising. It's almost too easy; the machines recognize the notes within 30 milliseconds, and drive synthesizers you can then interact with -- voices attempting unison lines in real time response to an acoustic player, signifies as a form of intelligence, regardless of how you'd strictly define it.
Tania has been playing Feldman for years; the shifting time-signatures that require so much in the way of internal counting, that any attempt at precision gives way to meditation. This was Chen & Leidecker's second interpretation of 'Triadic Memories', the first being an in- studio broadcast performance on KPFA Berkeley's program 'Over The Edge'. They were eager to do it in front of an audience. Dimuzio had never heard the piece before being invited to play it; perfect.
All the notes in this performance are Feldman's. Well, no they aren't; Dimuzio helps himself to the occasional fifth while live-sampling Chen's piano. And while Leidecker's pitch-tracking is ostensibly a MIDI-converted mirror of Feldman's score, tracing Chen's performance, the trackers frequently make wide errors and introduce their own half-steps into the mix. The electronics admittedly make some of their own choices outside of Feldman's, but somehow it's still mostly idiomatic. And definitely live; there was no way to tell what it was going to sound like before either performers, or audience, heard it.
The audience in attendance had come through a considerable storm; at points you can hear the rain and the wind at the windows near the back of the room. Everyone present must have really wanted to be there. This recording is largely what they heard, but it's also been tampered with, boosting or cutting the amount of room sound at times. This recording raises its own questions, to which the only answer is -- to find out that it was going to sound like this.
Wobbly / Jon Leidecker, 2020
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3. |
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MONITORED FELDMAN sleeve notes
~ Thoughts on playing Monitored Feldman ~
I’m playing Feldman as I remember it, but during this performance I gradually become encircled by the electronics over me, around me, below me. My piano floats somewhere between a past, present and future resonance: sounds that are being played, sounds in decay, and new potential sounds that are being created.
The composition "Triadic Memories" unfolds, like slow waves moving across deep water over a vast duration of time. The three staves of the "Triadic" pitch material are draped over this organically evolving structure. On the piano my hands sometimes come together, exploring pitch that meanders so closely together that the listener hears a blur of microtones with no pitch center. At other times my hands play at the furthest ends of the keyboard. These slow, almost minimalist moments that move forward, rewind and then replay, are perhaps the essence of Feldman's "Triadic Memories". One's body in performance is absorbed into the notation and the listening. I like to embody the piece like a dance, so the music can breathe, creating its own momentum that transcends beyond the counting of measures.
Tania Caroline Chen, 2020
~ Thoughts on Monitoring Feldman ~
One might very well ask why? The rules are very clear with this piece -- it was written for solo piano. As a friend of his put it once, permission granted, but not to do whatever you want, so what exactly are we asking you to listen to?
There are only two Feldman pieces that show an interest in electronics. With John Cage, David Tudor, Christian Wolff and Earle Brown, he was a mainstay of the marathon splicing and quilting parties that took place at Louis & Bebe Barron's Greenwich Village electronic music studio that were necessary to bring about Cage's 'Williams Mix' in 1952, and several of that crew certainly felt within rights to make their own compositions out of the overflow of fragments that resulted: Feldman's was 'Intersections (for magnetic tape)'. There's another piece from 1951 called 'Marginal Intersection’ which involves pre- recordings of a construction site & a sine wave generator, but after 1952, he left the whole business alone, contenting himself with traditional instrumentation and his own modern intervals.
Even on these strictly acoustic grounds, there are many reasons why Feldman is constantly being rediscovered by fans of ambient and electronic music. Beyond his many late period works of immersive, extended duration, there's 'Piece For Four Pianos', a single score of
chords to be played simultaneously by four pianists, which in its own way foreshadowed the later tape delay & process music pieces that seemed bound to the recording studio. There’s always been something about Feldman's use of half-steps that move the instruments away from simple renderers of melody, and into the world of abstract sound.
So this is a recording of one of Feldman's most frequently recorded pieces, his breakthrough work for extended duration solo piano. For some reason, here performed by a trio who had played together many times separately as duos, but only once before as a trio. Fans of improvised of music will probably already spot those as good odds. But this is not exactly improvised music.
Dimuzio has been, for decades, a master of live sampling. He frequently brings no 'original' material to a group improvising situation, only microphones, and a varied series of processing techniques which renders, extends and transforms his partners' sounds into logically related, yet entirely unexpected new textures - both connected or independent from their acoustic source. It can be kind of a miracle to hear everything you're used to hearing as 'studio' or 'composed' production in a concert; to hear clarinets multiplied into orchestras or menageries. Seeing him play with Chis Cutler in 2001, I remember seeing that percussionist lift his bow from a gently resonating cymbal, and his expression change once the intended sustain in fact doubled an octave below itself and grow loud enough to begin resonating the rest of his kit. Dimuzio's a true live electronic musician that requires a profound amount of trust from his partners, in that sounds that begin with them will not necessarily end with them or stay under their control.
My initial work with samples was more dependent on pre-recorded collage, but after years of improvising with Tom, as well as of listening to improvisors working with electronics that listen (David Tudor, Gordon Mumma, David Behrman and George Lewis), I edged into the use of pitch tracking as a method of improvising. It's almost too easy; the machines recognize the notes within 30 milliseconds, and drive synthesizers you can then interact with -- voices attempting unison lines in real time response to an acoustic player, signifies as a form of intelligence, regardless of how you'd strictly define it.
Tania has been playing Feldman for years; the shifting time-signatures that require so much in the way of internal counting, that any attempt at precision gives way to meditation. This was Chen & Leidecker's second interpretation of 'Triadic Memories', the first being an in- studio broadcast performance on KPFA Berkeley's program 'Over The Edge'. They were eager to do it in front of an audience. Dimuzio had never heard the piece before being invited to play it; perfect.
All the notes in this performance are Feldman's. Well, no they aren't; Dimuzio helps himself to the occasional fifth while live-sampling Chen's piano. And while Leidecker's pitch-tracking is ostensibly a MIDI-converted mirror of Feldman's score, tracing Chen's performance, the trackers frequently make wide errors and introduce their own half-steps into the mix. The electronics admittedly make some of their own choices outside of Feldman's, but somehow it's still mostly idiomatic. And definitely live; there was no way to tell what it was going to sound like before either performers, or audience, heard it.
The audience in attendance had come through a considerable storm; at points you can hear the rain and the wind at the windows near the back of the room. Everyone present must have really wanted to be there. This recording is largely what they heard, but it's also been tampered with, boosting or cutting the amount of room sound at times. This recording raises its own questions, to which the only answer is -- to find out that it was going to sound like this.
Wobbly / Jon Leidecker, 2020
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"Monitored Feldman" is a new realization of Morton Feldman's monumental "Triadic Memories" for solo piano monitored by live processed electronics.
"Monitored Feldman" is a spectral and ambient soundscape of luscious hovering sounds.
Part 1: 00:00-35:00 mins
Part 2: 35:00-66:00 mins
Part 3: 66:00-86:00 mins
Total album duration: 86:00 mins
Original score by Morton Feldman: "Triadic Memories" for solo piano
Tania Caroline Chen - piano
Thomas Dimuzio - electronics
Wobbly - electronics
MONITORED FELDMAN SLEEVE NOTES
~ thoughts on playing Feldman ~
I'm playing Feldman as I remember it, but during this performance I gradually become encircled by the electronics over me, around me, below me. My piano floats somewhere between a past, present and future resonance: sounds that are being played, sounds in decay, and new potential sounds that are being created.
The composition "Triadic Memories" unfolds, like slow waves moving across deep water over a vast duration of time. The three staves of the "Triadic" pitch material are draped over this organically evolving structure. On the piano my hands sometimes come together, exploring pitch that meanders so closely together that the listener hears a blur of microtones with no pitch center. At other times my hands play at the furthest ends of the keyboard. These slow, almost minimalist moments that move forward, rewind and then replay, are perhaps the essence of Feldman's "Triadic Memories". One's body in performance is absorbed into the notation and the listening. I like to embody the piece like a dance, so the music can breathe, creating its own momentum that transcends beyond the counting of measures.
Tania Caroline Chen, 2020
~ Thoughts on Monitoring Feldman ~
One might very well ask why? The rules are very clear with this piece -- it was written for solo piano. As a friend of his put it once, permission granted, but not to do whatever you want, so what exactly are we asking you to listen to?
There are only two Feldman pieces that show an interest in electronics. With John Cage, David Tudor, Christian Wolff and Earle Brown, he was a mainstay of the marathon splicing and quilting parties that took place at Louis & Bebe Barron's Greenwich Village electronic music studio that were necessary to bring about Cage's 'Williams Mix' in 1952, and several of that crew certainly felt within rights to make their own compositions out of the overflow of fragments that resulted: Feldman's was 'Intersections (for magnetic tape)'. There's another piece from 1951 called 'Marginal Intersection’ which involves pre- recordings of a construction site & a sine wave generator, but after 1952, he left the whole business alone, contenting himself with traditional instrumentation and his own modern intervals.
Even on these strictly acoustic grounds, there are many reasons why Feldman is constantly being rediscovered by fans of ambient and electronic music. Beyond his many late period works of immersive, extended duration, there's 'Piece For Four Pianos', a single score of
chords to be played simultaneously by four pianists, which in its own way foreshadowed the later tape delay & process music pieces that seemed bound to the recording studio. There’s always been something about Feldman's use of half-steps that move the instruments away from simple renderers of melody, and into the world of abstract sound.
So this is a recording of one of Feldman's most frequently recorded pieces, his breakthrough work for extended duration solo piano. For some reason, here performed by a trio who had played together many times separately as duos, but only once before as a trio. Fans of improvised of music will probably already spot those as good odds. But this is not exactly improvised music.
Dimuzio has been, for decades, a master of live sampling. He frequently brings no 'original' material to a group improvising situation, only microphones, and a varied series of processing techniques which renders, extends and transforms his partners' sounds into logically related, yet entirely unexpected new textures - both connected or independent from their acoustic source. It can be kind of a miracle to hear everything you're used to hearing as 'studio' or 'composed' production in a concert; to hear clarinets multiplied into orchestras or menageries. Seeing him play with Chis Cutler in 2001, I remember seeing that percussionist lift his bow from a gently resonating cymbal, and his expression change once the intended sustain in fact doubled an octave below itself and grow loud enough to begin resonating the rest of his kit. Dimuzio's a true live electronic musician that requires a profound amount of trust from his partners, in that sounds that begin with them will not necessarily end with them or stay under their control.
My initial work with samples was more dependent on pre-recorded collage, but after years of improvising with Tom, as well as of listening to improvisors working with electronics that listen (David Tudor, Gordon Mumma, David Behrman and George Lewis), I edged into the use of pitch tracking as a method of improvising. It's almost too easy; the machines recognize the notes within 30 milliseconds, and drive synthesizers you can then interact with -- voices attempting unison lines in real time response to an acoustic player, signifies as a form of intelligence, regardless of how you'd strictly define it.
Tania has been playing Feldman for years; the shifting time-signatures that require so much in the way of internal counting, that any attempt at precision gives way to meditation. This was Chen & Leidecker's second interpretation of 'Triadic Memories', the first being an in- studio broadcast performance on KPFA Berkeley's program 'Over The Edge'. They were eager to do it in front of an audience. Dimuzio had never heard the piece before being invited to play it; perfect.
All the notes in this performance are Feldman's. Well, no they aren't; Dimuzio helps himself to the occasional fifth while live-sampling Chen's piano. And while Leidecker's pitch-tracking is ostensibly a MIDI-converted mirror of Feldman's score, tracing Chen's performance, the trackers frequently make wide errors and introduce their own half-steps into the mix. The electronics admittedly make some of their own choices outside of Feldman's, but somehow it's still mostly idiomatic. And definitely live; there was no way to tell what it was going to sound like before either performers, or audience, heard it.
The audience in attendance had come through a considerable storm; at points you can hear the rain and the wind at the windows near the back of the room. Everyone present must have really wanted to be there. This recording is largely what they heard, but it's also been tampered with, boosting or cutting the amount of room sound at times. This recording raises its own questions, to which the only answer is -- to find out that it was going to sound like this.
Wobbly / Jon Leidecker, 2020
released December 4, 2020
Recording & MIxing by John Karr
Mastered by Thomas Dimuzio
