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Music continues to fill the gaps as it replaces chewing gum, cell phones and sex. As digital
and pre-digital life become more integrated we seem, musically speaking, to be entering a
period of a “new common practice” where electronic and acoustic, composed and
improvised, bourgeois and lumpen are obsolete. Musicians will at last assume the
prodigious but quite natural task [of] forging a new vocabulary from every sound ever heard
or imagined—Cage will never stop laughing.
—Alvin Curran, published in The Wire, Jan. 2006, p. 49
The electric guitar, undoubtedly THE iconic instrument of the twentieth century, sits in a strange holding
pattern between what it was and what it will become. As hip-hop replaces rock in the mainstream of global
popular expression, the instrument has lost some of its potency as the knife-edge vanguard of youth and
populism. As America recedes from its position of global dominance, so too does its musical avatar recede
from the pride of place it once held in the world’s jukebox. The symbolic power of the guitar was always
founded on a partnership between the instrument itself—loud, portable, space-age sculpture that it is, and
the musical styles associated with it. As those styles become less contemporary and more historical, the
guitar’s role as a political and inspirational tool is diminished. This decoupling of instrument from style
provides a new opportunity to explore the instrument on more abstract terms.
Over the past twenty-plus years, Seth Josel has established himself as a leader in helping to shape the
electric guitar’s burgeoning future as a “classical” instrument. This album is a statement not only of his
artistry as a performer, but also as a curator of new music for the guitar. The six pieces on this recording
demonstrate a variety of means and approaches spanning the reified electric flamenco of David Dramm to
the sound-art abstractions of Gustavo Matamoros.
Two of the composers featured on the album, Michael Fiday and David Dramm, have each written works
that deal directly with the guitar’s popular identity: a stylistic choice that the composers’ biographical
similarities—including periods of tutelage under the Dutch composer and guru Louis Andriessen—may or
may not account for. Andriessen, who Stewart Mason describes as a “spiritual mentor” to recent American
music, is an important figure, in part, for the ways that his music and thought have helped build a
rapprochement between European and American streams of composition. Andriessen has helped to make
American minimalism and the incorporation of vernacular influence (particularly rock) acceptable to the
European new-music mainstream in much the same way as English rock musicians of the 1960s reshaped
African-American blues and exposed it back to white America. Without him, it would have been much
more difficult to reach the point where a CD of “classical” electric guitar music could be received as much
more than a novelty.
Raised in San Diego and currently residing in The Netherlands, David Dramm (born 1961) studied
under Robert Erickson at the University of California at San Diego and, later, with Andriessen at Yale. His
work The Stroke That Kills for three guitars (all played on this recording by Seth Josel) was written in 1993
for the Amsterdam Guitar Trio. The Stroke That Kills is rooted in the fierce rhythmic strumming of the
flamenco style, but its translation to the electric guitar propels the music to a harder, more vicious place. To
quote the composer:
I’ve always loved rhythm guitar more than guitar solos. Freddie Green, who played for fifty
years with Count Basie, sounded like a drummer playing chords. That’s my idea of a guitar
player. When the Amsterdam Guitar Trio asked me for a piece, I looked for a way of
approaching classical guitar through a rhythm guitar model without giving up its richly
detailed palette or making the players sound like they were trying to play rock or swing.
That’s when I hit upon the idea of using flamenco technique for “Stroke.” The basic
texture of the piece is neat and simple, taking the three main “strokes” of flamenco and
placing them on top of each other. This, combined with many open strings in the chords,
creates various quick drumroll-like patterns and slower, floating resonances. In later
sections, I leave out the fast notes, creating a clearer interplay of flamenco-based cross
accents.
Also born in 1961, fellow American Michael Fiday studied with George Crumb at the University of
Pennsylvania before winning a Fulbright to work with Andriessen in Amsterdam. The self-described
“diehard rock fan” directly addresses the gestural literature of the rock style in his work Slapback for guitar
and delay unit. The composition is inspired by a live recording of The Who in which the guitarist Pete
Townsend plays a duet with himself as his sound echoes off the arena wall. In Slapback, the guitar
performance—heard in the right stereo channel—is repeated, by means of an electronic delay unit, one
eighth-note later in the left stereo channel. While this conceit of exact repetition at a fixed temporal distance
may initially strike one as being (merely?) a canon, it is actually quite different. In most live performances of
canons, the rules of meter supersede those of the repetition. That is, a note that, when repeated, falls on a
weak beat or an off beat will likely be performed as a weak beat or an off beat even if that note fell on a
strong beat in its original statement. Because electronic repetition leaves such musical features as volume
and articulation unchanged, the short distance between statement and restatement create an intricate web of
shifting accents and rhythms, especially as the piece veers off into more complicated and uneven metric
structures. Slapback was composed in 1997 as a commission for the American Composers Forum. Seth
Josel gave the premiere performance in 2000 at Berlin’s Ultraschall Festival.
Given that Dramm and Fiday spent their formative years in the time of rock guitar’s cultural ascendancy, it
might seem a bit surprising that the work of the similarly aged and similarly American Eve Beglarian
(born in 1958) shows none of these influences, particularly in light of the keen pop sensibilities she
demonstrates in such projects as The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (available on the album Tell the Birds)
and her performance duo twisted tutu. No mystery here, however, as Until It Blazes is written to be
performable not just on guitar, but on any melodic instrument whose timbral characteristic comprises a
sharp attack followed by a steady decay, such as piano, harp, or marimba. Like Slapback, Until It Blazes
utilizes an electronic delay to augment the guitarist’s performance, but unlike in the Fiday, Beglarian’s use of
echo does not create a separate contrapuntal line. Rather, it helps create a soundspace in which the delay
effect promotes a sense of ambient depth and a more subtle sense of syncopation. This effect is achieved in
part because Beglarian’s echoes are significantly softer than the live music instead of an exact sonic
repetition as in Slapback. To get a sense for the delay’s contribution to the music, keep in mind that the
opening forty seconds or so of the work are performed as a steady pulse and compare that to the result.
It is an important detail of Until It Blazes that the delays do not impose too much of a rhythmic sense onto
the musical surface so as not to interfere with the rhythmic development of the main cellular material. To
quote the work’s program note:
The overall idea of the piece is to set up various repeating patterns and then gradually
group the notes so that new melodies grow out of the accents. For example, when you are
playing a three note pattern, if you accent every fourth event, you will get one melody; if
you accent every fifth event, you will get a different melody.
It is up to the performer to determine the accent patterns that will produce the cross-melodies, thereby
making this recording not only a unique version of the work, but also, in a real sense, marking the music as
a collaboration between performer and composer.
As in the case of Fiday and Dramm, it is interesting to speculate on the extent to which the biographical
similarities of expatriate composers Tom Johnson and Alvin Curran may be responsible for certain parallels
in the way their pieces approach the guitar. Born in Providence, Rhode Island, on December 13, 1938,
Curran studied under Elliott Carter—a student of Charles Ives and one of the giants of twentieth-century
American music—at Yale as part of an extraordinary class that included not just Tom Johnson, but also
many significant composers such as Joel Chadabe and Richard Teitelbaum. In 1964, Curran was awarded a
Ford Foundation fellowship to Berlin in order to continue his studies with Carter. Soon after arriving in
Europe, he and Chadabe set off for Rome where, in 1966, Curran formed the seminal group Musica
Elettronica Viva. By combining advances in music technology with a working methodology distilled equally
from jazz, academic modernism, and Cage, MEV helped set the stage for the breakdown in aesthetic and
cultural distinctions Curran discusses at the top of this essay.
Tom Johnson, born in 1939, grew up in Greeley, Colorado, and studied at Yale before expatriating
himself to Paris in 1983, where he has lived ever since. From 1972 to 1982, he served as music critic for
The Village Voice, which may help account for the extremely sharp self-awareness that seems to be present
in most of his compositional output (his essays from that period are available for free on his Web site).
Often considered as part of the Minimalist tradition, his career-long focus on the precise application of
rigorous logical and numeric constructs wedded to simple forms and scales make him, like his mentor
Morton Feldman, the type of individual voice whose work is relevant to a variety of traditions and concerns
and whose influence can move future generations of composers beyond the technical and intellectual
divisions of the past. Johnson’s more well-known compositions, such as The Chord Catalogue and Rational
Melodies, apply his logical proclivities toward pitch construction, and in doing so demonstrate a vision that
is in at least partial sympathy with the typical high-Modernist concerns of American serialists such as
Babbitt. On the other hand, his most famous composition Failing: A Very Difficult Piece for String Bass
turns its attention to the logic of the performance act itself, turning the music into a work of conceptual
theater that is very much at home in the post-Modern, post-Cageian landscape of the Downtown scene and,
through that, finds congress with composers such as Dramm, Fiday, and Beglarian. His Canon for Six
Guitars (1998) inhabits an intertwined middle ground between these two approaches—a process piece where
rigorous adherence to its initial conditions of pitch and rhythm ultimately produces something of a
commentary on itself. The work’s five-measure theme is composed of only six pitches, which are stated
linearly/melodically during the theme’s first four measures, and vertically/harmonically during the final one.
Details such as the arpeggiation in the second measure and the outlining of the theme’s registral extremities
in the fourth help create an overall affect of transformation within the theme, thereby allowing the
concluding chords to be understood as the culmination of a musical progression from melody to harmony.
As the piece builds, the canonic entrances become more closely spaced, resulting in textures of increasing
density. Through this density, the thematic process of transformation is played out on a large scale.
Ultimately, the guitar parts are stating so many notes that each of the music’s six pitches is always present.
Globally then, since every pitch is being continually stated, the aggregate of these overlapping thematic
statements has become a single giant chord, thereby making the whole piece a presentation of the same
process of melodic-to-harmonic transformation as the opening theme.
The idea of building a composition around a formalized exploration of the guitar as a harmonic medium is
also taken up by Alvin Curran in 1999’s Strum City. As you likely know, strumming is a performance
technique where the guitarist strokes multiple strings in quick succession to produce a chord. The first
movement is relatively straightforward and presents a long series of chords, not unlike a chorale, through
the aural gauze of the strum.
One of this work’s most interesting facets is the way it highlights a peculiar paradox of strumming technique
and perception. Usually, the intent of the strum is to produce a chord that is generally understood as a
single, simultaneous harmonic unit. However, in producing a strum the guitarist is really performing an
arpeggio, since the strings are not struck simultaneously, but in rapid sequence. While Strum City’s first
movement is uncritically and unabashedly strum-centric, the second and third movements break apart the
strum’s dual temporal nature, each focusing on one of the strum’s dual aspects. In the second movement,
the chords are heard as slow arpeggiations, while in the third, the performance eschews the plectrum for the
naked fingernail, which allows for true simultaneity of attack, since each finger can pluck an individual
string.
As in Johnson’s Canon, Strum City’s opening gestures adumbrate this large-scale compositional concern
and provides an in toto overview of the work. This opening gesture is the key to understanding the later
movements not just as contrast, but as commentary. The opening chords (eighth notes at quarter equals
forty-four beats per minute) are each heard as individual events. As the tempo accelerates over the next
several measures (to eighth notes at quarter equals two-hundred-and-seventy beats per minute), the eighth-
note attacks lose their sense of individuality (there are approximately nine chords per second by the fifth
harmony) and become a unified sound mass of chords analogous to how the strum itself is understood as a
unified sound mass of notes. From the work’s opening moments, therefore, the piece demonstrates an
understanding of the strum technique as one whose affect is highly dependent on the speed with which it is
realized.
Like Johnson and Curran, Gustavo Matamoros (born 1957) also mines the post-Cageian soundscape in
search of new musical experiences. Matamoros, a native of Caracas, Venezuela, studied music in Florida at
the University of Miami and was later mentored by Earle Brown, a close associate of Cage and a pioneer in
the development of open-form music. He says “the most significant lessons [I’ve] learned have resulted
from countless moments of interaction with colleagues, musician friends, and artists in other disciplines, and
from a personal quest for a deeper understanding of the relationship between composer and community.”
This personal focus on musical community finds an outlet in his role as Artistic Director of the Subtropics
Experimental Music and Sound Art Festival in Miami and in works such as Stoned Guitar (2005), which
was composed and premiered in the summer of 2005 to help raise funds for the Dorsch Gallery of
Contemporary Fine Art in Miami, Florida.
As heard here, Stoned Guitar (2005) comprises two separate sub-pieces: Stoned Guitar and TIG Welder.
TIG Welder is a recording of the eponymous device that is played simultaneously with the performance of
the Stoned Guitar score. The balance between guitar and recording is determined by means of external
electronics as stipulated by the composer. Even more so than Until It Blazes, Stoned Guitar depends on a
true collaborative relationship with the performer for its success. The entire score to the work reads as
follows: “With a stone, trace the strings of the guitar slowly from bridge to nut.”
—Alan Tormey
Alan Tormey is a composer and erstwhile guitarist. He is presently Assistant Professor of Music at Grinnell
College and would very much like to buy the world a Coke.
Seth Josel has become one of the leading instrumental pioneers of his generation. After acquiring his
Bachelor of Music degree at the Manhattan School of Music, Josel enrolled at Yale University and earned
the Master of Music, the Master of Musical Arts, and the Doctor of Musical Art degrees. His teachers
included Manuel Barrueco and Eliot Fisk. He is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes, including a
Fulbright-Hays grant from the United States government and the Artists Stipend from the Akademie Schloß
Solitude, Stuttgart. As an ensemble player and soloist he has been involved in the first performances of
more than one hundred works. He has concertized throughout Europe as well as the U.S., Canada, Israel,
and Japan, and he has been a guest performer with leading orchestras and ensembles, including the BBC
Symphony Orchestra, the Southwest German Radio Orchestra, the South German Radio Choir, the DSO
Berlin, and the Schönberg/ASKO Ensemble of Amsterdam. From 1991–2000 he was a permanent
member of the Ensemble Musikfabrik NRW, a state-subsidized ensemble devoted to the performance of
contemporary music. In recent seasons he has been appearing as a regular guest with KNM Berlin,
Ensemble SurPlus of Freiburg, as well as with the Basel Sinfonietta. He is a member of the Amsterdam-
based electric guitar quartet Catch. During the period 2002–2005 Josel appeared as a soloist at several
major European festivals including Salzburger Festpiele, Donaueschingen, Huddersfield, and MaerzMusik,
musikprotokoll Graz. In addition to his solo CDs featuring American music (CRI, O.O. Discs), he has
recorded with Ensemble Musikfabrik NRW, the DSO Berlin, Rundfunksinfonie-Orchester Berlin,
Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbrücken, Schönberg Ensemble Amsterdam, and Champ d’Action
Antwerpen. He also recorded Berio’s Sequenza XI for the complete Sequenza cycle released on Mode
Records in 2006. He is the co-founder of www.sheerpluck.de, a Web site database dedicated to the
contemporary guitar literature and is currently working on a performance technique handbook.
Eve Beglarian’s concert music has been commissioned and performed by the Los Angeles Master
Chorale, the American Composers Orchestra, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, the Chamber Music Society of
Lincoln Center, the California EAR Unit, and the St. Luke’s Chamber Orchestra, among many other
groups and individuals. Highlights of her work in music theater include Mabou Mines’s Obie-winning
Dollhouse, Animal Magnetism, Ecco Porco, and Choephorai, directed by Lee Breuer; Forgiveness, a
collaboration with Chen Shi-Zheng and Noh master Akira Matsui; and the China National Beijing Opera
Theater’s production of The Bacchae, also directed by Chen Shi-Zheng. She has collaborated with
choreographers including Victoria Marks, Ann Carlson, Susan Marshall, and David Neumann, and with
visual and video artists including Shirin Neshat, Cory Arcangel, Barbara Hammer, and Anne Bray.
Performance projects include Songs from a Book of Days, The Story of B, Open Secrets, Hildegurls’ Ordo
Virtutum, twisted tutu, and typOpera. Her music can be heard on recordings from Koch, New World,
Cantaloupe, Innova, CRI Emergency Music, OO Discs, Open Space, Accurate Distortion, Atavistic, and
Kill Rock Stars.
Democratic, irreverent, and traditionally experimental, Alvin Curran (b. 1938) travels in a computerized
covered wagon between the Golden Gate and the Tiber River, and makes music for every occasion with any
sounding phenomena—a volatile mix of lyricism and chaos, structure and indeterminacy, fog horns, fiddles
and fiddle heads. He is dedicated to the restoration of dignity to the profession of making non-commercial
music as part of a personal search for future social, political, and spiritual forms. Curran’s music-making
embraces all the contradictions (composed/improvised, tonal/atonal, maximal/minimal . . .) in a serene
dialectical encounter. His more than 150 works feature taped/sampled natural sounds, piano, synthesizers,
computers, violin, percussion, shofar, ship horns, accordion, and chorus. Whether in the intimate form of
his well-known solo performances or pure chamber music, experimental radio works or large-scale site-
specific sound environments and installations, all forge a very personal language from all the languages
through dedicated research and recombinant invention.
David Dramm (b. 1961) was born in Illinois, growing up in San Diego, California. His composition
studies began with Robert Erickson at the University of California, San Diego and, later, at Yale University
with Louis Andriessen and Earle Brown. His music is performed regularly in concert halls and rock clubs
as well as being used by choreographers, theater groups, and filmmakers throughout Europe. Major festivals
who have commissioned and programmed his music include the Holland Festival, Moers Festival, New
Music Days in Tallinn, Estonia, November Music, New Music Days in Bratislava, Time of Music Festival,
and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Recent commissions have included works for the Albany
Symphony, ASKO-Schoenberg Ensemble, Frances-Marie Uitti, Netherlands Wind Ensemble, Orkest de
Volharding, Aurelia Saxophone Quartet, Scapino Ballet, and choreographer Kristzina de Châtel. His
Master Bop Blaster (1992) for rapper and saxophone quartet has become an unlikely standard work,
performed at nearly every saxophone festival in the world. The Warsaw Autumn Festival commissioned his
electric guitar concerto Zero Roll. Recordings of Dramm’s music are available on BVHaast, Vanguard
Classics, Einstein, Attacca, Composer’s Voice, X-OR, and NBE Live. Dramm’s music is published by
Donemus/MCN and voLsap Music. Dramm has lived and worked in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, since
1989.
Michael Fiday’s music has been commissioned and performed extensively throughout the United States
and Europe by a diverse range of performers such as the Atlanta Symphony, Oakland East Bay Symphony,
Percussion Ensemble of The Hague, pianist Marc-André Hamelin, and electric guitarist Seth Josel. Born in
1961, Michael Fiday began his musical training as a violinist at age eleven, turning his attention to
composing only a few years later. He studied music and philosophy at the University of Colorado before
pursuing graduate studies in music at the University of Pennsylvania. His principal teachers in composition
have included Richard Toensing, George Crumb, and Louis Andriessen, with whom he studied in
Amsterdam under the auspices of a Fulbright Grant. Mr. Fiday is the recipient of numerous awards, grants,
and residencies from, among others, BMI, ASCAP, American Composers Forum, Virginia Center for the
Creative Arts, The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Ohio Arts Council.
He is currently Assistant Professor of Composition at the College-Conservatory of Music at the University
of Cincinnati.
Tom Johnson, born in Colorado in 1939, received B.A. and M.Mus. degrees from Yale University, and
studied composition privately with Morton Feldman. After fifteen years in New York, he moved to Paris,
where he has lived since 1983. Johnson is well known for his operas: The Four-Note Opera (1972)
continues to be presented in many countries; Riemannoper has been staged more than thirty times in
German-speaking countries since its premier in Bremen in 1988. His largest composition, the Bonhoeffer
Oratorium, a two-hour work for orchestra, chorus, and soloists, was premiered in Maastricht in 1996, and
has since been presented in Berlin and New York. Johnson has also written numerous radio pieces, such as
J’entends un choeur (Radio France), Music and Questions, and Die Melodiemaschinen (WDR).
Recordings of his music are currently available on XI, Lovely Music, Ants, and Pogus. The Voice of New
Music, a collection of articles written 1971–1982 for The Village Voice, is now in the public domain and
can be downloaded on Johnson’s Web site (http://www.editions75.com). Johnson received the French
national prize in the Victoires de la musique in 2001 for Kientzy Loops. His latest orchestra piece, 360
Chords, was premiered in July 2008 by the Bayrischer Rundfunk Orchester.
Gustavo Matamoros (b. 1957) is a composer and media artist who often works with simple materials and
forms to create perceptually complex installations, musical compositions, and performance works at various
scales. Matamoros is also the founder and director of the Subtropics Experimental Music Festival, an
annual event in Miami with a 20-year history.
WEB SITES
Eve Beglarian: www.evbvd.com
Alvin Curran: www.alvincurran.com
David Dramm: www.daviddramm.com
Michael Fiday: www.michaelfiday.com
Gustavo Matamoros: www.subtropics.org
Tom Johnson: www.editions75.com
SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY
Eve Beglarian
Overstepping. Eve Beglarian, vocals; Kathleen Supové, keyboards; Margaret Lancaster, flute. OO Discs
OO33.
Play Nice. twisted tutu: Eve Beglarian, vocals; Kathleen Supové, keyboards. OO Discs OO66.
Tell The Birds. Lisa Bielawa, voice; MATA Ensemble; Roger Rees, voice; Jessica Gould, soprano; Paul
Dresher Ensemble Electro-Acoustic Band; Corey Dargel, voice; Margaret Lancaster, piccolo; Eve
Beglarian, voice and electronics; Bill Ware, vibes solo; FlamingO Ensemble, Brad Lubman, conductor.
New World Records 80630-2.
Wolf Chaser. Robin Lorentz, violin. On Lesbian American Composers, New World Records/CRI NWCR
CD 780.
Alvin Curran
Animal Behavior. Alvin Curran, sampler, piano; Annie Sprinkle, voice; Roy Malan, violin; Donald Haas,
accordion; Peter Wahrhaftig, tuba; William Winant, percussion. Tzadik TZ 7001.
Canti Illuminati. Fringes Archives 02.
Crystal Psalms. New Albion NA 067.
Electric Rags II. ROVA Saxophone Quartet. New Albion NA 027.
For Cornelius, The Last Acts of Julian Beck, Shtetl Variations. Yvar Mikhashoff, piano. Mode 49.
Inner Cities. Daan Vandewalle, piano. Long Distance Records 560304 (4CDs).
Maritime Rites. Featuring the foghorns and other maritime sounds of the U.S. Eastern Seaboard and solo
improvisations by John Cage, Joseph Celli, Clark Coolidge, Alvin Curran, Jon Gibson, Malcolm Goldstein,
Steve Lacy, George Lewis, Pauline Oliveros, and Leo Smith. New World Records 80625-2 (2CDs).
Schtyx. Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio. New World Records/CRI NWCR 668.
Songs and Views from the Magnetic Garden. Catalyst 09026-61823-2.
David Dramm
Blow! Aurelia Saxophone Quartet. Challenge Classics CC 72005.
Body O’ Graphic. Analecta. X-OR CD 06.
Hello Pop Tart. Tomoko Mukaiyama, piano. BVHAAST CD 9801.
Michael Fiday
9 Haiku. Eleonore Pameijer, flute; Marcel Worms, piano. Included on Spanning the Globe: Automotive
Passacaglia. Oakland East Bay Symphony, Michael Morgan, conductor. Included on
Music from Six Continents. Future Classics 061.
New Music for a New Century. JDA (Johnson Digital Audio). Available at www.oebs.org.
same rivers different. Carla Kihlstedt, violin; Graeme Jennings, violin; Bart Feller, flute; James Tocco,
piano. Innova Recordings 716.
Tom Johnson
An Hour for Piano. Frederic Rzewski, piano. Lovely Music LCD 1081.
The Chord Catalogue. Tom Johnson, piano. Experimental Intermedia XI 123.
Failing, a very difficult piece for string bass. Robert Black, double bass. Included on Bang on a Can,
Volume 1. New World Records/CRI NWCR 628.
Kientzy Plays Johnson. Daniel Kientzy, saxophone. Pogus 21033.
Music for 88. Tom Johnson, piano. Experimental Intermedia XI 106.
Organ and Silence. Wesley Roberts, organ. Pogus AG 05.
Rational Melodies. Eberhard Blum, flute. Hat ART CD 6133.
Gustavo Matamoros
Re: David. David Manson, trombone. Included on Beast. iso 4205.
Re: Elizabeth. Elizabeth Panzer, harp. Included on Dancing in Place. O.O. Discs OO56.
PUBLISHERS:
Dramm: voLsap Music (Amsterdam), registered with BUMA/STEMRA.
Beglarian: EVBVD Music
Johnson: Editions 75
Curran: ms
Fiday: ms
Matamoros: ms
Produced by Seth Josel and Robert Poss
Recorded and mixed on November 2007, February 2008, and August 2008 by Robert Poss at Trace
Elements Records, New York City.
Edited by Tom Hamilton (Curran), Tom Haines (Fiday), Alexander Klein (Johnson), David Dramm, Eve
Beglarian, and Gustavo Matamoros.
TIG Welder recording: Gustavo Matamoros
Digital mastering: Paul Zinman, SoundByte Productions, Inc., NYC
Design: Bob Defrin Design, Inc., NYC
This recording was made possible by grants from The Aaron Copland Fund for Music,
Inc., the Friends of CCM Projects Pool, and the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trust.
Special thanks to Eve, Mike, Tom, David, Alvin, and Gustavo for their timeless contributions to the
repertoire, their patience as well as their post-production efforts! To Alan Tormey for the brilliant program
notes. To Louis Andriessen: I would never have taken up the electric guitar after a 12-year hiatus without
his prodding. To “Catch” (Mark, Patricio, Wiek) for the continued inspiration, and for sharing their love of
the instrument and of music with me. To Alex from Zachary Guitars for his awesome creation: the Z2-T.
To Robert Poss whose sonic imprimatur is left unmistakably herewith; I couldn’t have done this without
him. To Paul Tai for his patiently guiding hand. To mom and dad for their love and support. To dear
Kirsten, who arrived at just the right moment. . . .
FOR NEW WORLD RECORDS:
Herman E. Krawitz, President; Lisa Kahlden, Vice-President; Paul M. Tai, Director of Artists and
Repertory; Mojisola Oké, Bookkeeper; Anthony DiGregorio, Production Associate.
ANTHOLOGY OF RECORDED MUSIC, INC., BOARD OF TRUSTEES:
Richard Aspinwall; Milton Babbitt; Jean Bowen; Thomas Teige Carroll; Emanuel Gerard; David Hamilton;
Rita Hauser; Lisa Kahlden; Herman E. Krawitz; Fred Lerdahl; Robert Marx; Arthur Moorhead; Elizabeth
Ostrow; Cynthia Parker; Larry Polansky; Don Roberts; Marilyn Shapiro; Patrick Smith; Paul M. Tai; Blair
Weille.
Francis Goelet (1926–1998), Chairman
For a complete catalog, including liner notes, visit our Web site: www.newworldrecords.org.
New World Records, 75 Broad Street, Suite 2400, New York, NY 10004-2415
Tel (212) 290-1680 Fax (212) 290-1685
E-mail: info@newworldrecords.org
P & © 2008 Anthology of Recorded Music, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A.
THE STROKE THAT KILLS
SETH JOSEL, ELECTRIC GUITAR, ELECTRIC BASS
80661-2
1. Eve Beglarian (b. 1958)
Until It Blazes (2001) 10:33
electric guitar solo with stereo delay unit
Alvin Curran (b. 1938)
Strum City I, II, III (1999) 12:23
5 electric guitars, 2 electric basses
2. I
3. II
4. III
5. Michael Fiday (b. 1961)
Slapback (1997) 12:18
electric guitar and delay unit
6. David Dramm (b. 1961)
The Stroke That Kills (1993) 11:34
(3 guitars), version for electric guitar by Seth Josel
7. Gustavo Matamoros (b. 1957)
Stoned Guitar/TIG Welder (2005) 9:20
8. Tom Johnson (b. 1939)
Canon for Six Guitars (1998) 4:53
TT: 62:00
New World Records, 75 Broad Street, Suite 2400, New York, NY 10004-2415
Tel (212) 290-1680 Fax (212) 290-1685
info@newworldrecords.org
www.newworldrecords.org
P & © 2008 Anthology of Recorded Music, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A.
NO PART OF THIS RECORDING MAY BE COPIED OR REPRODUCED
WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION OF A.R.M., INC.
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