The Standing Room

Caturday Met Broadcast

Bert on the set of Doctor Atomic

Cuz you're the best mom I'll ever know

Precious Auntie, Amy Tan, Crazy Mom

We're your Daughters
Boys, off with your pee-pee

We're your Daughters
Boys, we fly through air

We're your Daughters
"Dragon breathe fog from nostril"

All you gotta wear's a wig, "Lootie"...

And Amy's there!

BONUS TRACKS
Inspired by the Tattler:

What would an Assmaster aria for Margaret Cho be like, set atop a Chinatown restaurant lazy susan? Mommy so curious!

Ancient Chinese Stuff, huh?

4

I'm marking the fourth anniversary of The Standing Room with (what else) standing room tickets to Billy Budd and Kaija Saariaho's Adriana Mater at Santa Fe Opera*. Thanks, as always, for reading and following along. And extra thanks to the guy who handed me a second-row orchestra seat for Adriana Mater ten minutes to curtain (just moments after I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. & Mr. OutWestArts).

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* Not verbatim, but close enough:

SFO:  Hello, Santa Fe Opera box office.
M. C—:  Hi, I'd like to buy two standing room tickets.
SFO:  Sure, I can help you with that. For which operas, sir?
M. C—:  Billy Budd and Adriana Mater.
Pause.
SFO:  Are you an opera fan?
M. C—:  Uhhhh...... I dunno, I guess some people might say so... Why?
SFO:  Because those two operas aren't most people's top choices. The guy who called before you is going to Marriage of Figaro three times.

Photo from Santa Fe Opera parking lot

Silver Apples of the Meem

...And, in fact, [Herb Blau] made the first season so uncompromisingly difficult from a social standpoint that he was fired after the first year.

BERNSTEIN: Oh, I didn't know that.

SUBOTNICK: We started with Danton's Death, which is almost impossible to do anyway.

A couple months ago, I was tagged by both Devin Hurd at HurdAudio and Peter Matthews at Feast of Music for the book meme that's been floating around for some time. In essence, pick up a book close at hand, open to page 123, find the fifth sentence, and post the subsequent three sentences. Appropriately enough, given the proclivities of the two gentlemen who tagged me, the book sitting at the top of the pile right now is The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-Garde, edited by David W. Bernstein. (If you're unfamiliar with the history of the SF Tape Music Center, click here for a PDF of the Cliffs Notes version.)

The book release event two weeks ago couldn't have been more fitting. It was held in the basement of a public library a block off of Haight. I showed up about a half hour early, and nearly all the seats were already filled. I chose to stand (naturally) off to the side, and for the next 30 minutes watched the room fill beyond capacity. Every seat was taken, and all the space around the seats was occupied. There were even people standing outside the room in the entryway, standing on their tiptoes and craning their necks. They were of all ages, and it felt like we were all there to pay homage to these legends who had such a profound impact on the cultural legacy of San Francisco in the second half of the 20th century.

Stuart Dempster—whose Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel completely blew my mind when I first heard it about 10 years ago—opened the event by didjeriduing the room. (I myself have never before used "to didjeridu" as a transitive verb, but it was in the promo language for the event, so I'm not neologizing here.)

After we had been didjeridone (didjeridid?), the panel was about get underway when a very commanding, uniformed woman strode into the room and spoke to the event organizer. The fire marshal demanded that the room be cleared of most of the people who were standing, or else the entire event would be shut down. Honestly, all I could do was laugh, because how wonderful that the Tape Music Center folks, who are now in their 70s, can still bring out the fire marshals more than four decades after the premiere of In C.

Many of the folks did leave the hall, but those who stayed opened all the windows so that people could sit outside and listen to the talk. From left to right were Don Buchla (not pictured), Ramon Sender, David Bernstein, Morton Subotnick, Bill Maginnis, and Stuart Dempster. Terry Riley was scheduled to be there too, but had to decline at the last minute and sent his regards in a written statement. And Pauline Oliveros was saluted at length, and they played an excerpt from Bye Bye Butterfly (which manipulates an excerpt from Madama B., if you're looking for an opera angle here).

It was an extraordinary evening, listening to these artists tell their amazing stories of ingenuity, resourcefulness and creativity. By all rational standards there's no way they could have created the work they did with the resources that they had—or, more accurately, didn't have. And yet in the process they laid the groundwork for so many things that are integral to music as we know it today, including synthesizers and tape loops.

Unfortunately I only had my phone that evening, so for better images take a look at this Flickr set. There are also accounts of the event at Matrixsynth and Overlap (which includes a photo of people kneeling outside at a window, listening in).

Garden of Memory 2008

Each year on the summer solstice, the indomitable Sarah Cahill gathers the Bay Area new and experimental music community together for Garden of Memory, an extraordinary event at the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland. This is a venue like no other: it's a labyrinthine, Julia Morgan-designed columbarium that honestly defies belief. This year's installment is on Saturday, and I will be performing there for the first time.

The event features simultaneous performances in different spaces within the building by an eclectic collection of musicians presenting a variety of acoustic and electronic music, installations, and interactive events. The audience moves freely throughout the multilevel maze of internal gardens, cloisters, alcoves, stairwells, fountains, and stained glass skylights. Sfmike covered last year's event on Civic Center.

This year I'll be singing a set of solos and duets for unaccompanied voice by Meredith Monk as the solitary West Coast representative of The M6. My plan is to do a set of solos, and then I'll be joined by the delightful Elisabeth Commanday (pictured above, having an exceedingly bright idea) for a couple of duets from Facing North. The set will be repeated several times throughout the event, which lasts from 5pm to 9pm.

If you're interested, details are after the jump. Advance purchase is strongly encouraged, so that you're not stuck queuing up on-site to buy tickets. (Last year's event had 2400 people going through the space, so this is a real possibility.)

Parking is (of course) limited.

Short Stories:Vanya on 57th Street

Illustration no. 3 from Daniil Kharms’s Four illustrations on how a new idea disconcerts someone who is not prepared:

Composer: I am a composer.

Vanya Rublov: I think you are shit!

(Composer, barely breathing, falls to the floor and is carried out.)

h/t Vladimir Martynov, from the liner notes to Come In! (aka the music used by Jorma Elo in his exceptional work for the SF Ballet's New Works Festival; some video here of Elo's piece, though the music is Dvorak, not Martynov)

One of the Slowest Trains, Slowest Trains

Check it out! Recently spotted on a City College ad posted in a MUNI train (Judah to ocean, as it were):

How small a thought it takes to fill a whole post. We're living in the third dynasty of Ur. The, ah, chief god is, ah, Nana. It was enormous and it was like silver (eeeeenoooormouuuuuus). Hashamayim m'saprim k'vod El! It's been a honeymoon honey honey honey huh honey honey uh oh, the Reich Tourette's is kicking in again can't take no mo'...

Another photo courtesy of our roving correspondent Mlle J—

Vingt Regards:XIII. De quadratis magicis

Strange that serialism never quite caught on like Sudoku.

12-tone matrix mousepad from CafePress

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Vingt Regards / I. Strange Bedfellows / II. A New Era, Indeed / III. Hommage à Paolo Conte / IV. Hommage à S. Bar. / V. They Speak According to the Book / VI. Overheard in New York / VII. In Rotation: August 2007 / VIII. LA Phil's New Housemate / IX. Apples and Amoebas / X. Sunday in the Park with Bert / XI. Epilogue / XII. Taking Stock

For Your Consideration

na - cho -qatsi (from the Hopi language). n. 1. Nacho life. 2. Life eating nachos. 3. Life eating crispy tortilla chips smothered in cheese. 4. A way of life that celebrates the consumption of nachos.

h/t M Keiser

Dolmen Musicians

Björk recently did a cover of my song, Gotham Lullaby... I haven't met her but she came to a concert of mine at Lincoln Center... The Lincoln Center Festival presented a three-concert retrospective of my music called Voice Travel. She was at the third one. I like her version of Gotham Lullaby a lot. It's really interesting, so I've been meaning to write to her a card to tell her that I liked it.

—Meredith Monk

TODAY, 3/16, 12PM Pacific: Meredith & Björk in conversation on Counterstream Radio
UPDATE: Listen to the archived program
Counterstream is brought to you by the tireless American Music Center

Audio of Björk & Brodsky performing Gotham Lullaby at Union Chapel, London, December 11, 1999 after the jump.