6. Now available for free listening on radiOM.org

We're very pleased to make available on radiOM recordings from the 1981 New Music America Festival, presented at San Francisco's Japan Center Theater (now a part of Sundance Kabuki Cinemas). These are three recordings from one special evening, but you'll find much more by searching "New Music America" on radiOM.

Selections from United States by Laurie Anderson
Laurie Anderson (OM 3) performs selections from her epic work United States. Anderson was born in 1947 in Chicago and received her MFA in sculpture from Columbia University. As a performance and recording artist, she has worked with film-sound-talking pieces for many years, performing at the La Jolla Museum, the Berlin Festival, and various other places in the U. S. and Europe. In this concert she performs a number of pieces including versions of songs that were later included on her famous "rock" album Big Science. The atmosphere was electric, the appreciative audience was eclectic, and the resulting concert was nothing short of extremely effective entertainment.

Studies for Player Piano by Conlon Nancarrow
This concert is particularly noteworthy because Nancarrow (OM 1) was in the audience, on his first trip back to the United States after over 30 years of living in Mexico City, where he had moved after facing persecution for his communist sympathies and involvement in the Spanish Civil War in the early 1930s. Due to the fact that Nancarrow composed for his own player piano, which he had modified in order to get a crisper sound, this concert presented tapes of his studies played over loudspeakers.

A Concert by Ustad Ali Akbar Khan
This recital was led by the renowned sarod player and founder of the Ali Akbar College of Music, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. As with any North Indian classical concert, the music played depended on the time of day as well as the mood and inspiration of the artist. Therefore, the raga and tala of this concert was chosen accordingly, to match the mood of the evening, and was decided upon just prior to the performance.

Also now available on radiOM.org:

An Interview With Luciano Berio (1962)
Recorded in July of 1962, this is a fascinating interview between composer, music professor, and KPFA presenter, Glenn Glasow, and the Italian avant-garde composer Luciano Berio, who had just joined the faculty at Mills College. Glasow quizzes, and often disagrees, with Berio's assertions that a composer's "attitude" or "conception" about life and society can be discerned from hearing their music, and that the ability to shock audiences may be required in certain societies. The conversaton also includes discussion of Berio's Circles and Tempi Concertati.

Morning Concert: Interview with Philip Corner (1979)
From January 4, 1979, Charles Amirkhanian interviews composer Phil Corner. Born April 10, 1933 in New York, Corner studied briefly with Olivier Messiaen in Paris in 1955, and in 1958, at the New School for Social Research, he attended John Cage's class which also included such distinguished budding artists as Allan Kaprow, George Brecht, Dick Higgins, and others who would make their marks in the lively East Village scene of the 1960s. As a member of the faculty of Livingston College (Rutgers University, New Jersey), Corner continued his provocative, improvisation-oriented music making based on highly original open-ended hand calligraphed performance notations which have become a trademark of his style. In this program he discusses his interest in gamelan and gong music and other aspects of his prodigious output, as well as giving a live performance of part of his Metal Meditations. (from KPFA Folio)

An Interview with Earle Brown and his Modules 1-2 (1974)
Guus Feist of Radio Nederland talks with the American avant-garde composer Earle Brown, who in February 1974 began a six week series of lectures and workshops sponsored by the Rotterdam Conservatory of Music. Brown describes his lectures which were about the interplay between modern music, visual art, and literature, as well as his workshops, in which he taught about improvisational techniques, varying forms of musical notation, and the incorporation of multimedia elements into musical compositions. The interview is followed by a performance of Modules 1-2 by Earle Brown, and played by the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Edo de Waart and the composer.

For fans and scholars of Earle Brown: Beyond Notation, a symposium at Northeastern University, has recently been announced.