MicroFest West 2000 Review

Along with Joe Monzo, Jonathan Glasier, and Brian McLaren, I attended
the May 5th concert of the "MicroFest West 2000" festival of microtonal
music that was held in various venues in the Los Angeles area this past
Spring. This particular event was organized by Bill Alves and held at
Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. It was supported in part by the
Garrett Fund of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences of
Harvey Mudd College and was presented in association with Pierce
College, the North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island and the Pomona
College Department of Music.

The first half of the concert featured solo performances by John
Schneider, Kraig Grady, and Joe Monzo. Schneider performed two pieces
this evening. The first was his transcription for justly-tuned guitar
of the "Palace Music" from Lou Harrison's puppet opera "Young Caesar,"
about an affair young Julius had with the King of Bithynia early in his
political and military career. The piece was originally for solo harp
and sounds very good in this arrangement.

I had attended a work-in-progress performance of Young Caesar performed
on the late Bill Colvig's home-built instruments, puppets, and a
scrolling background in the early 70's. I have wondered how it might
sound rewritten for other media when I heard that it had been rescored
for live actors and conventional instruments in 12. I can say
conclusively that this selection succeeds admirably when transcribed for
JI guitar.

It has always been a pleasure to hear John Schneider play and the second
piece, his own composition, "Lament," in extended Pythagorean intonation
was fully up to my expectations. Tense major thirds are prominent
intervals in this piece, but personally, I enjoyed them.

Kraig Grady presented "Three Themes" condensed from the music that
accompanies the shadow play "Black Eye Meru," which is part of the
continuing stream of music from Anaphoria Island that Kraig has been
performing in recent years. Although not in Anaphorian costume this
time, Kraig gave a virtuoso solo performance on a vibraphone in the
tuning described by Ervin Wilson as "meta-slendro." This tuning is
based on cycles of approximately 487 cents and is congenial to
pentatonic scalar patterns. Anaphorian music also employs unusual
rhythms in scale-like patterns the details of which I refer you to the
Anaphoria Island web pages.

The final performer in the first half was Joe Monzo with whose music I
was mostly unfamiliar, although I have known Joe for several years and
had driven up from San Diego with him, Brian and Joe's friend Linda. It
was a very pleasant experience to discover that he is an engaging
performer and a skilled and imaginative composer. His performance piece
was a setting of Walt Whitman's poem, "A Noiseless, Patient Spider," for
intoning voice and electronics that was premiered in 1999 in New York at
Johnny Reinhard's "American Festival of Microtonal Music." The
electronic passages employ a variety of intervals both in 5-limit just
and 12-tone equal temperament. The vocal and electronic episodes are
accompanied by images of tonal lattices that invoked visions of a spider
diligently weaving her web. My only suggestion would be that the images
would be more effective if enlarged and projected rather than being
presented as graphics on large sheets of paper.

After a brief intermission, the concert resumed with films and videos
with microtonal scores. The first item was a compilation of short
excerpts from four films with scores by Stephen James Taylor. Taylor is
an amazingly talented and versatile composer whose credits include
orchestral music for the opening ceremonies at the 1996 Olympics and the
scores to the films "Why Do Fools Fall In Love?" and "The Giving," the
latter a searing film about homeless people in Los Angeles that used
authentically homeless people as actors. Taylor has also scored a
number of animated features and TV series, including the "Timon and
Pumbaa" cartoon, one of whose scores was nominated for a Daytime Emmy
award. In his film and video work, he has used African tunings from
Mozambique, Wilson's 1.3.5.7.9.11.13.15 Hebdomekontany, a 17-tone
Pythagorean cycle, and a 23-tone scale based on a cycle of intervals
that are successive approximations to the Golden Section. This
compilation was a tantalizing aural glimpse into Taylor's microtonal
oeuvre, and I would hope that longer sections or complete works could be
presented at later MicroFests.

Excerpts from three short films by James Broughton with scores by Lou
Harrison were shown next. James Broughton was a San Francisco filmmaker,
poet and playwright and a longtime friend of Harrison. The films were
"Nuptiae," on the theme of marriage; "Devotions," about gay love; and
"Scattered Remains," an autobiographical sketch about the filmmaker.
Harrison's music is scored for a mixture of European and Asian
instruments and exhibits his characteristic and wonderful talent for
melody. Lou later reworked the score to "Scattered Remains" as a
separate composition and published it as "Air for the Poet."

I had not seen "Windsong," nor any of the other films with Harry
Partch's music for many years, so I was eager to see it again.
The story line is the myth of Daphne and Apollo as translated by Partch
to the shores of Lake Michigan in 1957-8. I must admit that the music
has held up somewhat better than the film, which seems to me to reflect
the artistic style and taste of the 1950's too strongly. However, the
film definitely merits viewing. Its rather spare score was later revised
and performed with dancers at UCSD as "Daphne of the Dunes." The UCSD
performance, which I attended, was videotaped and, I believe, is now
available.

Ptolemy's Equable Diatonic tetrachord appears prominently in one of the
harmonic canon parts, though many other 11-limit ratios are used on
Partch's unique orchestra of specially constructed microtonal acoustic
instruments. The filmmaker and star of Windsong, Madeleine Tourtelot,
also filmed Partch in his studio playing and recording all the parts to
the score. This film, "Music Studio" is a unique document of Partch's
working methods and musical creativity. It also deserves showing more often.

In fact, I think a Harry Partch Film Festival is long overdue. I tried
to organize one myself in Houston some years ago, but after the films
had arrived, the venue, Diverse Works, informed us that there was
scheduling conflict and we had to cancel the event. There is also a
film portrait of Lou Harrison by the filmmaker Eric Marin with the title
"Cherish, Conserve, Consider, " a concise summation of Lou's personal
philosophy. It would make an interesting contrast and accompaniment to
the Partch films.

The concert ended with "Static Cling," a superb computer video by Bill
Alves with a score in "free style" just intonation. This work is based
on sounds and images taken from local nightly news broadcasts and
transmogrified with Csound and the POVRAY animation language. The
influence of computer animation pioneer John Whitney Sr. (author of
"Digital Music") was evident in the abstract animation. "Free Style" is
a technique invented by Lou Harrison in which the melodic movement is by
simple JI ratios although a global tonic or (pre)defined scale may not
be present. It works excellently in the track for this video, which, by
the way, is available along with "Hiway 70" and "Collateral Damage" from
the Just Intonation Network.

After the concert, there was a reception for the performers and
attendees. One of the major benefits of this kind of event is the
opportunity to meet and interact with old friends and new internet
acquaintances. It was a pleasure for me to see David Canright again and
to meet Mark Nowitsky, without whose efforts this List would not exist.
I can't resist adding that the food and drink were excellent and far
above the usual college standard. All of us took advantage of the buffet
table before heading back to San Diego, Los Angeles, etc.

Bill Alves deserves great credit for organizing this event and I hope
others can be held at this site. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend
the other three concerts in the series this year and cannot comment on
them beyond reporting that Kraig Grady said they went well.