UCSD "New Musics of the Pacific Rim" events

To all San Diego area tuning folk:

I reported here on Wednesday night's SONOR concert at UCSD.
Little did I know that it was merely the beginning of a fantastic
conference that's still going on.

I missed yesterday's events, because I didn't know about them
and I was busy anyway.

But I spent the *entire* day today on campus at a conference
called "Blurring Boundaries: Confluences in New Musics of the
Pacific Rim". I was delighted to find much microtonality
in both the lectures and the musical examples.

The three presentations most relevant to this list were:

"Poetics of Intercultural Synthesis: Gagaku in Postwar Art Music"
Yayoi Uno Everett, Emory University (Atlanta)

"Shakuhachi and the American Composer"
Ralph Samuelson, Asian Cultural Council (New York)

"Living Tones: Realization of Korean Musical Concept
for Western Instruments"
Jin Hi Kim (New York composer)

Yayoi presented a chart of the development of "new music" in
Japan since 1900, and I was very interested to find that at
the beginning of the last century, the most prominent influences
on Japanese music (deliberately, by government decree) were
from France and Germany. This helped to explain my curiosity
as to why Tanaka was studying with Helmholtz in Germany during
the 1880s. Yayoi was fascinated with this info when I mentioned
it to her, and I'm sure she will be doing research on it. I'll
post a follow up next time I hear from her.

Ralph gave a demonstration of meditative zen shakuhachi music
(the first prominent use of shakuhachi, c. 900 AD) that was
simply amazing. I've never heard a recording of shakuhachi
playing that had anywhere near the impact of Ralph's live
performance. A real mind-blower.

(More on Jin below.)

There will be a half-hour concert tomorrow (Saturday, April 21)
at Studio A in Warren Hall, UCSD:

Henry Cowell, _The Universal Flute_
Ralph Samuelson, shakuhachi

Chinary Ung, _Khse Buon_ (short version)
Hugh Livingston, cello

Jin Hi Kim, _Portrait_
Jin Hi Kim, komungo

Christopher Adler, _Three Body Problem_
Christopher Adler, khaen; Hugh Livingston, cello

Edgard Varèse, _Density 21.5_
John Fonville, flute

I know for sure that the first three will be microtonal.
I'm especially looking forward to Jin's piece - she played
excerpts of it at her presentation today. The komungo is
a Korean instrument vaguely similar to the koto.

The concert will be followed by a nearly two-hour talk by
Chou Wen-chung, a terrific composer (as well as extraordinarily
interesting personality) whom I've only just discovered at
these events, and who is apparently the keynote speaker of
this conference.

AFAIK, this is the last day of events.
(I could be wrong: contact UCSD to be sure.)

I encourage everyone within reasonable distance to attend!

-monz
http://www.ixpres.com
"All roads lead to n^0"

--- In tuning@y..., "monz" <MONZ@J...> wrote:

/tuning/topicId_21361.html#21361

> "Living Tones: Realization of Korean Musical Concept
> for Western Instruments"
> Jin Hi Kim (New York composer)

Oops... my bad. Jin is actually a Connecticut composer.

The concert was great, but the real stand-out was the
2-hour talk by Chou Wen-Cung, who dazzled us with his
unbelievably comprehensive vision of how to bring together
various different world cultures while retaining ancient
legacies in the onslaught of the world-wide adoption of
modern Western culture.

But enough of that... it's off-topic. Too bad none of you
made it - it was really great.

-monz
http://www.ixpres.com
"All roads lead to n^0"

--- In tuning@y..., "monz" <MONZ@J...> wrote:

/tuning/topicId_21361.html#21380

>
> The concert was great, but the real stand-out was the
> 2-hour talk by Chou Wen-Cung, who dazzled us with his
> unbelievably comprehensive vision of how to bring together
> various different world cultures while retaining ancient
> legacies in the onslaught of the world-wide adoption of
> modern Western culture.
>

Of course, Monz, Chou Wen-chung has been the big "star" and
"authority figure" at Columbia University for MANY years now...

_______ ______ _____
Joseph Pehrson

--- In tuning@y..., jpehrson@r... wrote:

/tuning/topicId_21361.html#21412

> Of course, Monz, Chou Wen-chung has been the big "star" and
> "authority figure" at Columbia University for MANY years now...

Thanks, Joe. I know that now, but having been totally out
of touch with the New York academic world for nearly 20 years,
I'd never heard of him until this week. A big loss for me.

-monz

I had 2 semesters of study on Chinese music with Chow Wen-Chung. I had known
that he was a supporter of Harry Partch, and that he was the heir to the
Varese collection. He was a great professor, one of the few. He would
steadfastly translate between Chinese and English for each student and guest.
He would take himself out of the conversation totally.

Unfortunately, though he was (and is?) the head of the composition department
of Columbia, he was controlled heavily by the Historical Musicology
department...so no microtones. Gosh, it's been a long time since we've had
occasion to talk.

Johnny Reinhard

--- In tuning@y..., Afmmjr@a... wrote:

/tuning/topicId_20929.html#21428

> I had 2 semesters of study on Chinese music with Chow Wen-Chung.
> I had known that he was a supporter of Harry Partch, and that he
> was the heir to the Varese collection. He was a great professor,
> one of the few. He would steadfastly translate between Chinese
> and English for each student and guest. He would take himself
> out of the conversation totally.
>
> Unfortunately, though he was (and is?) the head of the
> composition department of Columbia, he was controlled heavily
> by the Historical Musicology department...so no microtones.
> Gosh, it's been a long time since we've had occasion to talk.

Chou told me that during the 1950s he *was* interested in tuning
(this would have been during his time at with Partch at U. of
Illinois, no?), but that it hasn't been a focus for him since
then. I'm sure that the strictures of academia play a role
in his loss of interest, as you point out. He's already
accomplished more than enough for *two* lifetimes... *something*
was bound to be dropped by the wayside...

-monz

--- In tuning@y..., "monz" <MONZ@J...> wrote:

/tuning/topicId_21361.html#21425

>
> --- In tuning@y..., jpehrson@r... wrote:
>
> /tuning/topicId_21361.html#21412
>
> > Of course, Monz, Chou Wen-chung has been the big "star" and
> > "authority figure" at Columbia University for MANY years now...
>
>
> Thanks, Joe. I know that now, but having been totally out
> of touch with the New York academic world for nearly 20 years,
> I'd never heard of him until this week. A big loss for me.
>
>
> -monz

Well, I only say "authority figure" because I've heard lots of
stories about his composition classes... one couldn't use octaves,
etc., etc... Most probably all of that has changed by now...

_______ ____ _____ ____
Joseph Pehrson