Johnny Reinhard's concert

This is a very short note on Johnny Reinhard's AFMM concert this
evening. Nobody expects much of a "critical" report from me, being a
board member in, hopefully, good standing, but I do have a couple of
observations.

1. Tristan Murail's _Winter Fragments_ was excellent, and I found
Murail to be a very affable and interesting individual. More on that
piece follows.

2. Johnny's "intoning" of the Harry Partch _Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po_
has, to my ear, taken a different twist from his earlier Partch
presentations. It seems he is emphasizing less the "eccentric"
aspects of Partch and going right for the *musical* value which is
considerable in these songs. In fact, there were some purely musical
moments that were truly transcendent. I wish we could get a .mp3 of
some of these sections up on the Web. Johnny's always an excellent
performer, and this, without a doubt is the best and most serious
Partch presentation I have seen by him. Not that one always has to
be serious, but so many people associate Partch = kook, that it's
refreshing to take a bit more "musical" view.

3. The Brandenburg #4 in Werckmeister III was SUPERB. It was really
well played by the ensemble. This wonderful work belies all those
doubters running around who say "these modern music xenharmonicists
just play *anything...*" etc. This was precision work with some of
the best performers in the city, and it shows that these performers,
although many of them specialize in contemporary music, have their
traditional "chops" together as well. Johnny should get a special
commendation for the recorder part in the Brandenburg. Very well
done; a truly professional job!

Doubters: beware of the AFMM!!!

4. Well, this was a point that came in a discussion with Tristan
Murail after the performance. It seems that he really uses only
QUARTERTONES to emulate spectral work in his electronic part.
Actually, I *had* heard that the so-called "spectral" composers did
this, but I rather forgot about it.

It seems really not so *precise* to me. I mentioned the Ezra Sims 72-
tET system to Murail, and he had never heard of the notation. Of
course, he really isn't a native to this country, but I was a little
surprised.

It seems quartertones are maybe a little "gross" (in every sense) for
this kind of work, but Murail was saying that it was even difficult
to get some of his players to do THAT MUCH. This rather concurs with
some of my *own* statements about performers, so I am happy to see my
own estimations reinforced by others' perceptions.

That's no reason to despair... just a realization that more work
needs to be done in training performers.

Personally, though, I think the addition of the two additional
microtones: the 12th of a whole tone and the 6th of a whole tone,
would lend a *far* greater precision to these spectral efforts...
without an *extreme* difficulty on the part of the performer.

Anyway, Murail was a pleasant person to converse with, and it was
nice to know that he had a really great piece too, with some nice
sounds that he had sampled and spectrally modified and integrated
with "tuning" in the orchestra.

He pointed out to me, though, that "tuning" really isn't a correct
term for "spectral" music. Since there is really no *fixed* gamut,
and things are changing all the time, according to Murail there
really is no "tuning..."; it's strictly a *continuum...*

Maybe instead of the "Tuning List" we should call this the "Frequency
continuum" list... :) dunno.

Great concert, Johnny! One of the best I have yet heard in the 21
years of attending them!!!!

Joseph