DRAM News

This month, in addition to reissues of Morton Feldman's A Viola in My Life and a long-awaited CRI CD of the classic 1750 Arch LP New Music For Electronic And Recorded Media Women In Electronic Music—1977, New World releases Zummo with an X , (NW 80656), featuring music of composer and trombonist Peter Zummo.

With accuracy and humor, Peter Zummo (b 1948) often describes his unique music as "minimalism plus a whole lot more." He is an important exponent of the American contemporary classical tradition whose compositions explore the methodologies of not just minimalism, but also jazz, world music, and rock, while seeking to create freedom in ensemble situations. Zummo's realization of the contemporary urge to make music that behaves like "Nature in its manner of operation" (John Cage) is to encourage spontaneous, individual decisions within a self-structuring, self-negotiating group of performers. His scores provide unique strategies (such as a "matrix of overlapping systems," freely modulating repetition rates, etc.) and materials for achieving that aim.

Zummo has always felt impelled to make music that engenders a social situation reflecting modern society and not nineteenth-century German society. He feels that his job as composer is to provide material for the musicians and sufficient instructions, so they don't make arbitrary but rather logical or heartfelt decisions.

Song IV (1985), a trio version of the final song from the four-song suite composed for the Trisha Brown Dance Company's Lateral Pass, is a continuous tabla-and-amplified-cello groove with trombone (with voice multiphonics) and vocal (Russell) melodies and harmonies.

Instruments (1980) is a composition in seven movements for duet, trio and quartet. Short phrases based on intervallic jumps are repeated at individual repetition rates; the ensemble listens for a unison playing of the phrase, and reverses the phrase at that moment. Different notes sound together in unplanned ways, resulting in combination (bass) tones.

The complete version of Lateral Pass (1985) makes its first appearance on disc and features a previously unissued performance of Song IV for quintet.

Zummo with an X is an essential document for anyone interested in the multifaceted evolution of American experimental music, especially in the vibrant downtown New York scene of the 1970s and '80s.

Zummo's music can also be heard on DRAM in the XI Records release Experimenting with Household Chemicals.