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OPENSPACE 19
J. K. Randall
shouldn’t we talk?
performed by
the composer
Benjamin Boretz
UN(-)
La Jolla Symphony Orchestra
Harvey Sollberger, conductor
Program note for shouldn’t we talk ? :
Forget Weirdnesses ( : amazing multiphonics, sonic matches,
extended resources, & all that ) .
What I’m after, needs Ordinary; needs, as between percussion
and saxophones, the bald incommensurability that estranges them
right there in their most routine, everyday, doings — like banging
on stuff vs. playing tunes.
Roughly, here’s how my 4 mvmts go : {*Your Attention Please*}
I.
Carnybark [BARI+PERC] hawks the World’s Tallest Midget (Or
Somesuch), whose brief Strut [PERC] Gets Nowhere
[A puzzled SILENCE ensues.] Δ ??Start Over?? ®1
Yo! [BARI] Go! PERC assents.
& Solos Sententially.
ALTO unbuttons a jazzy, Practiceroom voice; whose licks PERC
registers, then Waxes Sentential Again (giving carnybark the grand
go-by), and stumbles into A Sludgy Groove. where SOPR infiltrates,
Gabbles (flustering PERC), Narcissistically takes over, Pirouettes
Out Of Orbit, and earns #the gong#.
— whereupon PERC solicits, & delivers, a Forceful Anti-war
Speech — Sentential — Mostly On Drums.
Encouraged (or is it heckled) by PERC, TENOR (a beginner with
a halting investment in rhythm) Huffs Manfully to embrace phrase 2
of The Sheetmusic Version of Body & Soul.
II.
A Grandfatherly Rumination Pathetique [BARI] leads to A Cheap
[+PERC] Funeral, which peters out in A Blaze Of Damped [SOPR+
PERC] Ascension.
III.
Revamping Failures Familiar From Mvmt I, TENOR and PERC
re-emerge in A Partnership Of Convenience; in which “fft, CaCa”
supports Some Honky Hotcha, whose Addlecrotched Unraveling
earns a {tasteful} gong.
Aping the sustained SILENCE surrounding the gong,
A Sustained Blast by TENOR kicks off A Supercautious Game
Of Virtual Checkers — in which You Can’t Tell whether they’re
playing each other, or Against Us. Whichever, a Rigorously
Plausible Upshot earns the gong and an embarrassed SILENCE.
(Silence, here, is always realworld silence: never GaGaLand, as in
GAP5, where time floats as space.)
Thus It Is, that in The Doldrums Of Nothing-To-Do — abruptly,
some honky hotcha resuscitates; but its even feebler unraveling again
earns the gong. Which heralds Some More (or is it more) Of The
Same virtual checkers. Which is — (in turn) — (again) — gonged.
Yet These Guys Won’t Quit; and this time contrive to simulate
A Consequential Consummation, which seems, for a hopeful
moment, to spring us into the clear; — but : — {gong} — we are
abandoned, in thrall to a Resigned, Drained, SILENCE.
Now that any imaginable remnant of energy has dispersed, PERC
ushers in the only genuine patch of The Real Thing to be found here:
namely, a ripoff of a Gerry Mulligan [+BARI] countermelody to
Love Me Or Leave Me; which is rowdily squelched by carnybark,
re-appearing In Cameo.
However, enough PERC-energy leaks across the subsequent
SILENCE to incite Supranatural Inversions Of Race & Gender, as
ALTO lolls on the concluding lick from Lonely Woman —
a reverse from which mvmt III won’t recover. ALTO turns out to be a
Quite
Persuasive, if histrionic, diva, who enacts for us A Comprehensive
Madscene with which we cannot help but Empathize!! PERC
attends closely, and works its way thru a responsive, Noticeably
Hypersentential, interior monologue, which blossoms into a running
Explanatory Aside To Us, and Outlasts The Outsneaking Diva.
IV.
Sensible of, nor intimidated by, a Jagged Landscape of PERC
splatts, SOPR rises, by Steps Admittedly Logical, up into the
stratosphere, where The Saints Go Marching In on their 1st 4 notes,
in augmentation — outfoxing the stars.
{*Continuity, consecution, in this precis, is, of course, surreal.*}
{*as music is.*}
—JKR
Shouldn’t We Talk?
(jkr)
The subjects are obvious.
(Just listen.)
Lots of opinions too.
(You may not agree.)
(Don’t have to.)
It’s pure temporality,
in 4 mvts..
(But not any temporal evolution ever anywhere anytime.)
(The indensity takes a big lot of getting used to.)
(If you listen.)
(So listen.)
—BAB, february 2003
UN(-) for orchestra (1999)
(score for a Korean court music)
A five mile long
dragon
moves through
a winding course,
all its parts,
organically connected,
following its head
around each corner at
inconceivably remote
distances, but always,
unimaginably,
inexorably, performing
the precise maneuver
predestined over a
humanly
unencompassable
space, from head to
inconceivably distant
tail.
Time
stretches
transcendently,
beyond any
measurable
flow,
by the
overwhelming
magnitude
of each
dragon-move
event.
—BAB (from (whose time, what space) 1986)
AND (also heard):
“a friend came to our house with a gift of a mango fruit....”
a bird caged inside the globe crushed pulp gave off a sweet
heart pounding against the soft fire like a yellow bird set free, skin cut, stone out
an opening inside opening not like something else an incision not like itself not
like hearing not hearing like being pierced only always mine yours but other too
“...the following evening he returned demanding my body and soul to pay off the
debt...”
nobody can get past himself without listening to their own a place a dream you
think what you think before moving forward time perched on the sound, grammar
years undone
“....I am a green locust in charge of our ship an outlaw a fugitive, gliding from roof
to roof, carrying messages and light....”
past himself un-noticed, dressed in language to go ashore, woven unravelled
then put back in the shiny pod, to be called again only to save nomadic images
traversed by rivers of memory, dotted with oases, a blue waterfall flowing up
and the music, emptying the reality of miracle, against the unwillingness, I can
hear
four steps below myself
singing, “now by night my body turns into an insect, and we fly together on a
vessel made from the bark of a mango tree”
(the texts between quotation marks are freely based on an oral report from an
eight year old Kinshasa boy accused of witchcraft)
—Dorota Czerner, August 2004
track contents
[1-4] shouldn’t we talk? 36:00
[1] SWT I
[2] SWT II
[3] SWT III
[4] SWT IV
[5] UN(-) for orchestra 12:20
shouldn’t we talk? recorded 2003 by J. K. Randall
UN(-) recorded 2002 by Joseph Kucera
Produced 2004 by Mary lee Roberts
O P E N S P A C E
29 sycamore drive red hook ny 12571
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