A Companion to Slug
Frog Peak Newsletter #16
http://www.frogpeak.org
October 2010
==================
PEAK PICKS (contents)
==================
* New members, new Frog Peak scores
* New CD by Jody Diamond: In That Bright World
* SALE: Peter GarlandÕs musical travel diaries
* Frogspeak: Larry Polansky on New Music Box
===========================
NEW MEMBERS, NEW WORKS
Composers recently welcomed to Frog Peak include John King,
William
Brooks, Clarence Barlow and Mike Winter.
New scores include Barbara Monk FeldmanÕs ÒString Quartet
I,Ó and
two beautifully hand-crafted scores by Eric Richard's: ÒIn
the PocketÓ
and Ògawainquest.Ó Other new additions are listed below, and
on our
web site
Â
The Frog Peak /Johanna Beyer project continues with the
release of
three new annotated editions: BeyerÕs ÒMovement for String
Quartet,Ó
ÒPercussion Suite,Ó and the important set of piano pieces
ÒClusters.Ó
We thank all the editors (listed on the Beyer artist page)
for their
fine work on these pieces. Beyer was a 1930s experimental
composer
closely associated with Henry Cowell, Percy Grainger and
Ruth
Crawford. Frog Peak is delighted to make available her
important and
often overlooked work.
==============================
Selected NEW FROG PEAK SCORES
==============================
Philip Corner
* Few Gaa.
Indeterminate instrumentation.
* From a
Forgotten Dance. Violin and piano.
Anne La Berge
* Urban
Doldrums. 2 improvising musicians and 2 computers.
* Brokenheart.
Guided improvisation for musicians and Max/MSP/jitter
patches.
Sal Martirano
* String
Quartet No.1.
* Ballad.
Amplified singer, flute, tenor sax, 2 trombones, string
bass and 2 percussion.
Larry Polansky
* 30 Rounds
(MacDowell Diary)
* Ontslaan
(toontood). 4 or 5 guitars.
Paul Schick
* Rotating.
Vietnam War chamber opera for power trio and 2 voices.
* Vis-ˆ-vis.
Photo opera for power trio and photographs by Edward S.
Curtis.
Charles Shere
* Sonata ii:
Compositio ut explicatio. Piano.
William Brooks
* Mediaeval
Lyrics. WomenÕs choir.
Christian Asplund
* Magnificat.
Viola and piano.
* 2,4,8.
Trombone quartet.
=====================================
New CD by Jody Diamond
In That Bright World: Music for Javanese Gamelan
=====================================
Compositions by Frog Peak co-founder and co-director Jody
Diamond,
recorded with the musicians of ISI Surakarta, the National
Institute
of the Arts in Central Java, Indonesia. New World Records
80698-2.
(Complete notes and samples of each track are on line at
www.newworldrecords.org. (Available from Frog Peak, New
World Records,
and Amazon.)
Notes by ethnomusicologist Judith Becker (excerpt):
This
CD is both a tribute to the profound musical influences
that Javanese gamelan traditions have had on Jody Diamond as
a
musician as well as an exploration of their impact on her
compositional creativity. What she has done is not so much
to create a
hybrid tradition, but rather to do the work of translation.
The aim of
the translator is not to be original, but to make
transparent to an
outsider what was formerly opaque. The translator approaches
his/her
job with humility, and must be steeped in the original
language. The
translator reveres the original, it gives her joy and moves
her to the
point of wanting to share her joy with others. É [T]hese
recordings
were made in Java, with Javanese musicians playing all the
parts
(except for Diamond herself, who is the female singer). Her
ÒAmericanÓ
pieces are elaborated upon with gusto by Javanese musicians,
in
Javanese idioms. What does it mean when a translation is
returned to
its homeland and then elaborated upon in the idiom of the
original?
This is globalism gone wild in joyful, enthusiastically
realized
performances of DiamondÕs pieces by Javanese musicians.
==============================
SALE: Travel Writings by Peter Garland
==============================
Regularly priced at $160, the complete travel writings of
Peter
Garland are offered at a discount of 25% for $120. Please
mention this
newsletter when placing your order.
Gone Walkabout: Essays 1991-1995 (2 volumes). Gar25.
Field Work, Vol. I. Gar26.
Field Work, Vol. II. Gar27.
Field Work, Vol. III. Gar28.
Field Work, Vol. IV. Gar30.
Food for Thought: Writings 1988-2002 (2 volumes). Gar29.
=============================
FROGSPEAK: Larry Polansky on Frog Peak Music (a composers'
collective)
Excerpts from an Interview by Frank Oteri.
New Music Box, January 2010, American Music Center
http://newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=6226
FJO: How and why did you start doing [Frog Peak]?
LP: My wife, Jody Diamond, and I started it. It was in the
early days
when I was at the Mills Center for Contemporary Music and
Jody was
working at the other end of the building with Lou Harrison,
as Lou's
gamelan director. At that time there was a whole community
of people
who really had no outlet for their work. And there were a
couple of
significant theoretical works that I thought should be made
available,
like Jim Tenney's Meta-Hodos and John Chalmers's Divisions
of the
Tetrachord.
There were no personal computers at the time. Jody and I had
just
gotten a Kaypro, which was an early CPM machine. And we
started with
this idea that composers would take control over the
distribution of
their own work. Not to be so much a publisher, but to be
what I like
to call an availability site. That by pooling resources,
instead of
composers going to a photocopy store and mailing it out when
somebody
asked you for something, there'd be one place where people
could get
it. Make it a collective and dedicate ourselves to having no
interest
in advertising or promotion whatsoever, and also to try to
eschew,
reject, the notion of imprimatur. We donÕt certify anything.
David
Mahler joined Frog Peak and David controlled everything
about David
Mahler. Or David Rosenboom, or Anne LaBerge, or whoever came
in. It
was a philosophical, social, artistic experiment in every
possible
way.
And as it has remained an experiment, it remains fun. Not so
parenthetically, but somewhat surprising, it has started to
become
some of the things it intended to avoid—that is, being
at Frog Peak
may have a certain kind of non-functional importance to
people that we
never wanted it to have. But it still serves the community.
It gets a
lot of people's work out into the world in an honest,
simple, sincere
way, with no cosmetic nonsense and no hype. I've been
committed to
that all through my life—never selling anything, never
convincing
anybody of anything, of really staying true to the musical
idea as
much as possible.
FJO: So how does one sign up with Frog Peak?
LP: Well, one asks us [laughs]. We try to take people, but
it's hard.
The overhead of taking someone in is pretty significant. We
lose
money. We subsidize it personally. We're not a non-profit.
We decided
at the beginning to never apply for a grant and to never
devolve into
arts administrationÉ We move slowly, so seldom, but
regularly, take
people. We try to take people who are committed to their
music and
sincere. I try to avoid careerist sorts of motivations,
resume-building, that sort of thing. In hindsight I have
noticed that
the composers we tend to work with are those for whom the
music is
paramount, the business of music secondary or non-existent.
We have to
like them, because they become a part of our family. But the
other
abiding principal when we started was, since there is no
imprimatur
involved—we're not saying anything about these people,
it's just a
collective—if we're not a comfortable fit for someone,
we can very
easily say, "Do it yourself." That's all we're
doing. Buy or rent a
copy machine, or go to Kinko's like we did for the first ten
years in
the 1980s (or whatever the copy stores were called in
Oakland!).
There's nothing we're doing that's not completely
transparent.
FJO: So what is the difference between being published by
Frog Peak
and being self-published?
LP: It's whatever distinction you want it to have. [laughs]
None as
near as I can tell, except that you don't have to send out
your own
score. É Stamina is everything in the world. É I think with
Frog Peak,
its main virtue is that we've stayed afloat for a very, very
long
time. We've kept small. We've kept to our basic principles,
as high in
integrity as we possibly can. And to our surprise we've
gotten
noticed. We have a lot of standing library orders. Complete
collections are in a number of good libraries. So it's a
good thing
for composers because they get out in the world, to safe,
widely
available places. But really now with the web, there's no
reason not
to put all your pieces on the web as well, and certainly we
encourage
that.
FJO: Of course the tricky thing there is if the scores are
all
available for free, isn't one of the few revenue streams a
composer
could have gone?
LP: That's a matter of some contention, and one that I think
is widely
misunderstood. I don't think most composers make much money
from the
physical sale of scores. There are certain cases where they
do, of
course, if you're a choral composer for high schools for
example. But
most of the composers we represent are not like that. And if
they want
that kind of relationship, they can go to a traditional
publisher. We
don't own anything (for the most part). We have no rights.
In a few
cases we do, but it's sort of accidental. So there's no
notion of
exclusivity. We don't even have contracts. People don't sign
anything
when they come to Frog Peak, because nobody's bound to do
anything. I
didn't, donÕt want that kind of relationship with anybody.
These folks
are my friends. I play music with them, I have dinner with
them. I
don't want to do business.
FJO: With the roster of composers that you have—a lot
of them are
friends or at least kindred spirits in some way—is
there something
that links all of these people's musics somehow?
LP: Quite honestly they're the people that we decide to
invite to this
family. Of course we like their music but it may not even be
that, we
may like the way they deal with the world, their integrity,
how
serious they are. Some of the people are very, very
different. Some of
them can occasionally be a bit annoying, but all of them
are, most of
the time, amazingly thoughtful and helpful. [laughs] But
they're all
friends. That's the criteria. I can't not like someone in
some
profound way and commit so much of my life and resources to
them. On
the other hand, I tend to like most people for a lot of
different
reasons. So we're fortunate in that way.
FJO: So it might be an oversimplification to say that most
of this
music is coming out of the American experimental tradition.
LP: I don't know that that term means much to me anymore, or
ever did.
We all use it as a kind of shorthand, but more importantly,
the music
in Frog Peak comes from a community, and that community is
ever-expanding and ever-malleable.
=============================================
Previous newsletters are at www.frogpeak.org. The current
title from
the text of a Shaker song; "Slug" is one of many
Shaker monikers for
the Devil.