American Mavericks

Here's an interesting bit from a sonicnet.com interview with Michael
Tilson Thomas regarding his American Mavericks series...

<http://www.sonicnet.com/classical/features/Thomas,_Tilson/060500/>

"I've always loved dissonant, very rhythmic, aggressive, mold-breaking
music, from the time I was a small child. I've asked music teachers of
mine about that, who've said that in their whole experience, I was
unique. Most kids start out liking Mozart and Haydn and Bach and
Schubert, and then gradually they like more advanced 20th-century
composers. But right from the beginning I loved Stravinsky,
Schoenberg."

While it would be misleading for me to say exactly the same of myself,
as it took me a while to even find whatever wasn't easily available to
me through the usual blue-collar, middleclass kid in a small-town
channels, I did take to dissonance right off the bat through my own
initial fumblings at the guitar. In fact, I vividly remember getting
one of those simple open-chord charts and thinking to myself, 'boy,
all these seem to sound much better if I slide the fretted notes up or
down a fret...' And indeed they did!, though it would take me an
awfully long time to find anybody else who seemed to think so...

Tilson Thomas goes on to say...

"The kind of people who will be coming to this festival are people who
are much more associated with a lot of alternative music, whether
coming from funk, blues, jazz, fusion, or electronic music. They're
the people who enjoyed the Metallica concerts that they did with the
symphony, people who are fans of the Grateful Dead and Phish, and
groups that pushed the limit of that sort of jam, free-zone kind of
thing. These are all people who will love this festival, and we want
to get the word out to them."

You can just tell that he's thinking something along the lines of 'I
just know this music can excite those kids just the way it did for me
if we can just get it out there to them...' And in a way I think he's
right, as I've often thought the very same sorta things myself, but
many years of banging my head against a similar wall tell me that it
would appear to be a much bigger leap than it necessarily appears on
the surface of it... as I have to believe that the vast majority of
folks seem to follow the surface or ephemera of a given thing then
they do the bedrock fundamental oomph of it; in other words if one
thing ain't another thing at face value, don't bet the farm on any
mass revelations!

Anyway, interesting stuff...

straight from the meting pot,

--Dan Stearns

BTW, I think most here will probably look at the short list of
"mavericks" and say something like I did, "what!, no Partch?" But
Tilson Thomas addresses this pretty quickly in the interview, and I'm
wondering if anyone here knows if any serious attempt was actually
made to get the Partch instruments for a performance (etc.), or is
what he says just the common word on the street so to speak...
anybody?

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "D.Stearns" <STEARNS@C...> wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/16881

> Here's an interesting bit from a sonicnet.com interview with Michael
> Tilson Thomas regarding his American Mavericks series...
>
> <http://www.sonicnet.com/classical/features/Thomas,_Tilson/060500/>
>
> "I've always loved dissonant, very rhythmic, aggressive,
mold-breaking music, from the time I was a small child. I've asked
music teachers
of mine about that, who've said that in their whole experience, I was
> unique. Most kids start out liking Mozart and Haydn and Bach and
> Schubert, and then gradually they like more advanced 20th-century
> composers. But right from the beginning I loved Stravinsky,
> Schoenberg."
>

My guess is that, although Michael Tilson Thomas might like to think
of himself as a lot different from everybody else, most probably many
young people, at least nowadays, like loud, noisy,
fragmented-juxtaposed things... Certainly the culture is like that
today, but I would wager many were similar to Thomas in *his* day as
well. For myself, I was always criticized for "banging on the
piano..." something I've continued with joy to this day...

>
> BTW, I think most here will probably look at the short list of
> "mavericks" and say something like I did, "what!, no Partch?" But
> Tilson Thomas addresses this pretty quickly in the interview, and
I'm wondering if anyone here knows if any serious attempt was actually
> made to get the Partch instruments for a performance (etc.), or is
> what he says just the common word on the street so to speak...
> anybody?

Well, of course, getting the Partch instruments means also getting
Dean Drummond and, most probably, his music. While I, personally,
might think this is a good idea (I do), perhaps Thomas thought
otherwise...

_______ _____ _ ___
Joseph Pehrson

Joseph Pehrson wrote:

> > BTW, I think most here will probably look at the short list of
> > "mavericks" and say something like I did, "what!, no Partch?" But
> > Tilson Thomas addresses this pretty quickly in the interview, and
> I'm wondering if anyone here knows if any serious attempt was actually
> > made to get the Partch instruments for a performance (etc.), or is
> > what he says just the common word on the street so to speak...
> > anybody?
>
> Well, of course, getting the Partch instruments means also getting
> Dean Drummond and, most probably, his music. While I, personally,
> might think this is a good idea (I do), perhaps Thomas thought
> otherwise...

This already happened. It happened, probably 2 or 3 years ago.

--
* D a v i d B e a r d s l e y
* 49/32 R a d i o "all microtonal, all the time"
* http://www.virtulink.com/immp/lookhere.htm

>> BTW, I think most here will probably look at the short list of
>> "mavericks" and say something like I did, "what!, no Partch?"
>
>Well, of course, getting the Partch instruments means also getting
>Dean Drummond and, most probably, his music. While I, personally,
>might think this is a good idea (I do), perhaps Thomas thought
>otherwise...

On the American Mavericks concert a year and a half ago (?) Ben Johnston
performed his arrangement of Partch's Barstow with the Kronos Quartet. That
was around the time that controversy was beaten to death here on the list
-- perhaps it even precipitated the discussion, I don't recall. Anyway, on
the same concert were pieces of Antheil, Cowell, Harrison, Meredith Monk,
Steve Reich, and others. It ended up with MTT jamming with the Grateful
Dead on themes of Cowell. It was a 3-hour show played to a packed house.
(To be fair, a sizable fraction of the audience were tie-dyed Deadheads,
but their response to the rest of the program was no less enthusiastic.)

Bill

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