improv

The music Phil and I played during the concert recorded here was not determined in advance (except in respect to when and where we would play, and that in general Phil would mainly sing and I would mainly play the double bass); as this implies, we improvised both the form and content of the performance. But contrary to what some writers often assume, this doesn’t necessarily denote elements of stream-of-consciousness, or moment form, or indeterminacy. Indeed I would suggest this is composed music in many senses of the term, but not composed in advance of performance. It is certainly ‘determined’ in the sense that on the whole we decide what will happen, it doesn’t just happen to us. As experienced improvisers Phil and I know what we are doing (although we don’t always know what we are going to do). Admittedly, every now and then we might also do something we didn’t even know we could do, but in the main we draw on our considerable individual vocabularies and structuring strategies to spontaneously produce unforeseen and unrepeatable constellations of sound with a malleable yet form-aware structure. For me this represents one of the ideal possible states of music-making - a musical voyage of discovery, without a map but with an erudite and companionable fellow-traveller!

The Knowledge Of Its Own Making

Knotted Properties

HCR08 | Phil Minton & Simon H. Fell: Knotted Properties [excerpt]

Phil Minton Cylinder

Phil Minton & Guylaine Cosseron : Piste 1

Annie Gosfield (sampling keyboard), Ikue Mori (electronics) and Sylvie Courvoisier perform live at The Stone, NYC, on July 24, 2018. Excerpt taken from 8:13 - 13:35

1.Gosfield, Mori, Courvoisier at the Stone

In this program we present selected works of British singer, trumpeter and composer Phil Minton, with a focus on his extended vocal techniques: from freely improvised abstract pieces for solo voice, unusual renditions of classical and jazz repertoire, avant-garde compositions inspired by Daniil Harms and Joseph Brodsky works to through-composed music for a choir of 27 singers based on the letters of Ho Chi Minh. 

The podcast also includes our exclusive recording of Phil Minton’s only performance in the US in the past 10 years (with Axel Dörner on trumpet, C Spencer Yeh on violin+voice and Okkyung Lee on cello) and some of the personal insights from his phone interview to Extended Techniques.

Running time: 1.53 minutes

Playlist

1)	Phil Minton and Roger Turner, “Urgent,” Ammo (1984) 
Phil Minton (voice), Roger Turner (percussion) 
Leo Records (1998, 2006)

2)	Phil Minton “Dough song 8,” A Doughnut in One Hand (1998)
Phil Minton (voice)
FMP/Free Music Production

3)	Phil Minton and John Butcher, “Joyweed,” Apples of Gomorath  (1999)
Phil Minton (voice), John Butcher (tenor and soprano saxophone)
Grob (2002)

4)	Phil Minton, John Butcher, Roger Turner, Veryan Weston, “Mouthful of Ecstasy,” Mouthful of Ecstasy (1996)
Phil Minton Quartet: Phil Minton (voice), John Butcher (saxophone), Roger Turner (percussion), Veryan Weston (piano)
 Victo

5)	Simon Nabatov, “Part 2” and “Part 3,” Nature Morte (2001)
Simon Nabatov Quartet: Phil Minton (voice), Frank Gratkowski (as, cl, bcl, fl), Nils Wogram (trombone), Simon Nabatov (piano)
Leo Records

6)	Simon Nabatov, “And That’s All,” A Few Incidents (2004)
Simon Nabatov Octet: Phil Minton (voice), Frank Gratkowski (as, cl, bcl, fl), Nils Wogram (trombone), Ernst Reijseger (cello), Cor Fuhler (live electronics, keyolin), Matt Penman  (bass), Michael Sarin (drums), Simon Nabatov (piano)
Leo Records

7)	Phil Minton and Veryan Weston, “Klang Nocturne,” Ways (1987) 
Phil Minton (voice), Veryan Weston (piano)
ITM Records 

8)	Phil Minton and Veryan Weston, “Evening,” Songs From a Prison Diary (1993)
Cleveland Watkins, Maggie Nicols, Phil Minton, Norma Winston, "Voices from Somewhere" choir 
 Leo Records

9)	Phil Minton and Veryan Weston, “Magnificat,”  … past (2004) 
Phil Minton (voice), Veryan Weston (piano)
ReR Records

10)	Phil Minton and Okkyung Lee, “mu jin,” Annica (2011)
Phil Minton (voice), Okkyung Lee (cello)
Dancing Wayang Records

11)	Okkyung Lee, Phil Minton, Axel Dörner, C Spencer Yeh, “Untitled” (2012)
Okkyung Lee (cello), Phil Minton (voice), Axel Dörner (trumpet), C Spencer Yeh (violin and voice).
Extended Techniques

12)	Tom Cora, The Untraceable Cigar, “Diving bell”(1996)
Roof quartet: Tom Cora (cello), Phil Minton (vocals), Luc Ex (guitar), Michael Vatcher (drums)
Red Note


This is a copy of Extended Techniques podcast # 2 (November 3, 2012)  http://extendedtechniques.com/

Contemporary music podcast, reviews and NYC events calendar:

http://www.facebook.com/ExtendedTechniques

Photo © Peter Gannushkin 2012 

©2012 by Extended Techniques. All Rights Reserved.

The Voices of Phil Minton - Extended Techniques podcast # 2

Annie Gosfield, whom the BBC called “A one woman Hadron collider” works on the boundaries between notated and improvised music, electronic and acoustic sounds, refined timbres and noise. The New York Times recently described her as “a fabulously creative composer” (Zachary Woolfe) who “exuberantly exploits the inadvertent music of contemporary life: static, distortion, the clangor of industry and the siren song of space junk form part of her digital palette.” (Steve Smith). Seth Colter Walls wrote about "Ms. Gosfield’s thrilling chamber orchestra writing" reviewing the opera “War of the Worlds,” a collaboration with the L.A. Philharmonic and director Yuval Sharon, which was included in best of 2017 lists in the New Yorker (Alex Ross) and the L.A. Times (Mark Swed). She was the 2015 Fromm composer at the American Academy in Rome, a 2012 fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, and received the FCA’s prestigious “Grants to Artists” award. She composes for others and performs with her own ensemble, with performances at Warsaw Autumn, the Bang on a Can Marathon, MATA, MaerzMusik, the Venice Biennale, OtherMinds, Lincoln Center, The Stone, The Miller Theatre, and The Kitchen. Annie's discography includes four diverse solo releases on the Tzadik label. Large-scale projects include War of the Worlds, an opera performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the streets of L.A. and Walt Disney Concert Hall; EWA7, a site-specific work created during a residency in the industrial environments of Nuremberg, Germany; and Daughters of the Industrial Revolution, a concert-length piece inspired by her grandparents’ immigrant experiences in New York City during the Industrial Revolution. She writes about the compositional process for the New York Times’ series “The Score.” Gosfield held the Darius Milhaud chair of composition at Mills College, and has taught at Princeton University and California Institute of the Arts.

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