Blank Forms RADIO

To conclude “Coming Together: Attica 50 Years On,” Blank Forms presented a day-long May Day radio show commemorating the 1971 Attica rebellion. Celebrating the 50th anniversaries of both Archie Shepp’s Attica Blues and Frederic Rzewski’s compositions “Attica” and “Coming Together,” the show featured key compositions and political recordings from the 1970s, including a rare concert of Rzewski’s Attica works with Julius Eastman, Sonia Sanchez reading at the prison accompanied by incarcerated poets and musicians, and a post-mortem from Bobby Seale about his participation in negotiations at the prison. Hosts Ciarán Finlayson and Lawrence Kumpf interviewed Renée Levine Packer, author of This Life of Sounds: Evenings for New Music in Buffalo (Oxford University Press, 2010); Glo Harris, wife of Beaver Harris; and Michael J. Hull, director of the film Betrayal at Attica (2021) and custodian of the digital archive of Elizabeth Fink's Attica Brothers Legal Defense evidence collection—writer Isaac Brosilow conducted an interview with Joshua Melville, son of Attica Brother Sam Melville. This event was produced in conjunction with the New York University Steinhardt Department of Art and Art Professions.

Coming Together: A Mayday Broadcast

The Public's Not Ready For You Yet: A Cricket Radio Show

Special guest shows from around the world.

https://www.nts.live/shows/guests/episodes/blank-forms-19th-may-2023

Blank Forms: Arbitrary Fun with Lawrence Kumpf and Lary 7 190523

The Warsaw-based club night Brutaż is helping to shape Poland's underground through thoughtfully curated parties and strong politics behind their grassroots ideals. Here's a new mix showcasing their style, to give a small taste of what to expect at the surprise room they will present at Unsound 2015.

In the words of Brutaż's founder: "There are many forms of dancing. Some of them are just a fad and a pose, others result from state-of-the-art entertainment. We're interested in neither. Rhythm results in movement. It's unavoidable, no matter how odd the tempo, context and environment. This mix is a tip of the hat to nobody, the nobody who dances. Nobody is the most outstanding dancer at Brutaż."

Unsound Podcast 24: Brutaż

Paonga Sea

Spice Village

This episode is a feature on visionary composer Maryanne Amacher and her piece Petra, 1991, originally commissioned for the ICSM World Music Days in Boswil, Switzerland. 

Maryanne Amacher was a composer of large-scale fixed-duration sound installations and a highly original thinker in the areas of perception, sound spatialization, creative intelligence, and aural architecture. She is frequently cited as a pioneer of what has come to be called “sound art,” although her thought and creative practice consistently challenges key assumptions about the capacities and limitations of this nascent genre. Often considered to be part of a post-Cagean lineage, her work anticipates some of the most important developments in network culture, media arts, acoustic ecology, and sound studies. 

Amacher’s 1991 piece Petra was originally commissioned for the ICSM World Music Days in Boswil, Switzerland. Written for two pianos, Petra is a unique example of Amacher’s late work, a direct extension of her working methodologies for electronic compositions taken into an acoustic realm that alludes to the music of Giacinto Scelsi and Galina Ustvolskaya. The piece is a sweeping, durational work based on both Amacher’s impressions of the church at Boswil and science-fiction writer Greg Bear’s short story of the same name, in which gargoyles come to life and breed with humans in a post-apocalyptic Notre Dame. 

In May 2017, Blank Forms presented the American premiere of Petra in New York with Marianne Schroeder, who originally performed the piece alongside Amacher in 1991, and Stefan Tcherepnin, who performed it alongside Schroeder in 2012 at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin.  This third-ever performance was an expanded version based on a newly discovered notes and scores from the Maryanne Amacher Archive. 

Artistic director of the Giacinto Scelsi Festival in Basel, Marianne Schroeder is a Swiss composer and pianist specializing in the interpretation of New Music. She has collaborated with and premiered work by John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Dieter Schnebel, Anthony Braxton, Morton Feldman, Pauline Oliveros and Giacinto Scelsi, with whom she studied. She is currently a professor at Hochschule der Künste Bern, and has also taught at the International Summer Courses in Darmstadt. 

Stefan Tcherepnin is an American electronic music performer, contemporary artist, and composer in fourth generation, continuing the family heritage of his great-grandfather Nicholas, grandfather Alexander, and father Ivan Tcherepnin. As a family friend of Amacher’s and a student of hers at Bard College he is uniquely qualified to navigate the labyrinth of Amacher interpretation. With kind support from the Consulate General of Switzerland in New York, Yamaha Artists Services and The Tin Man Fund.

You can see  Marianne Schroeder & Stefan Tcherepnin perform Petra live May 24, 2017 at St. Peter's Episcopal Church. Tickets for the performance can be purchased here

Blank Forms : : Clocktower.org

Blank Forms #11: Maryanne Amacher's Petra

A conversation between scholar and historian Amy Cimini, Yarn/Wire percussionist and Adjacencies interpreter Russell Greenberg, and Lawrence Kumpf situating Maryanne Amacher’s "Adjacencies" within the lineage of her larger body of work. They discuss the practical challenges surrounding the interpretation and re-staging of the piece 51 years after its last performance and play a variety of pertinent audio, including a rehearsal recording of "Adjacencies"’ original performance by Jan Williams and Edward Burnham, audio research material used as a model for its reinterpretation, and a selection from the later piece "City-Links..: Buffalo" demonstrating Amacher’s practice of recycling audio material from earlier work.

Blank Forms #21: Maryanne Amacher's Adjacencies

Blank Forms' Lawrence Kumpf is joined by composer Tashi Wada for a show surveying Wada's work and methodology of the past decade. They discuss Wada's time and studies with James Tenney at CalArts, his early forays into just intonation, and his close collaborations with cellist Charles Curtis and his father Yoshi Wada.

Tashi Wada is a Los Angeles-based composer and performer whose works explore harmonic overtones, resonance, and dissonance through precise tuning and a gradual change in pitch. Grounded in a belief that “music should be as direct as possible,” his compositions use apparently simple structures to generate rich and unanticipated perceptual effects. Working in relation to American experimental music, microtonal music, and so-called drone music, Wada’s practice is also informed by interdisciplinary performance and Fluxus-affiliated artists. He studied composition at CalArts with James Tenney and for many years has performed alongside his father, composer Yoshi Wada.

Blank Forms Radio

Blank Forms #22: Tashi Wada

Lyrics:

There was a place beyond the pale,
Thousands of miles that a man would sail.
Busy streets all paved in gold.
Anyone can make it here, or so I’m told.

There she stands the light and the law in her hands.
Beautiful as can be, set my spirit free.

Chorus:
She’s got a lot of love to give,
That don’t make it for free.
She’ll have you spending all your money
From sea to shining sea.
I’ll cross any bridge to her,
I’ll ride any rail.
Cant keep a promise,
But she sure can tell a tale.

I saw your face bleak in the bay,
Eyes cold as stone as you were telling us please stay.
A cinderella story, bell of the ball.
Knocking on your door I’m at your beck and call.

Lady liberty looking right down on me.
Bureaucratic as can be living under a fee.

Chorus:
She’s got a lot of love to give,
That don’t make it for free.
She’ll have you spending all your money
From sea to shining sea.
I’ll cross any bridge to her,
I’ll ride any rail.
Cant keep a promise,
But she sure can tell a tale.

Tell Tale

Excerpt from side B of 'Gog Magog' on We Are One (WAO 001)

T.D. / S.S. "On The Rocks!" (excerpt)

Recorded in Chicago, Toronto, and Manhattan, 2019
Mastered by Mikey Young
John Daniel: Turntable (Debussy's La Mer), Signal Processing, iPhone
Photograph Taken By Ed Stuparitz

forestmanagementadr.bandcamp.com/album/after-dark

Forest Management - The Blue Light Blues

Dustywave

My Life Is Music

Dustywave Part 5: My Life Is Music

slipsilver

justin

Thirst idea fire company/SahelSounds of Sahara/Gordon Hempton Solitude/Genggong II David Attenborough/Ocigam Trazom Christina Kubisch/Pierre Mariétan Rose Des Vents IIB Camp 2 Gir Jenssen/ 3 Hour Delay Packed Inside the Plane (Shenzen/Hong Kong) Grzegorz Bojanek/Joe McPhee Graham Lambkin Chance Meeting /Voices From Possessed Children (1978) Okkulte Stimmen/ EX HK. Side B Hans Kruesi+Endless Humiliation The Gerogerigegege/Halim El-Dabh Leiyla Visitations 2/Desert Lizards & Insect Solo G Hempton/Mahalid Destin Manambitamby/Aaron dilloway mudwalk, more Thirst idea fire,K&K Shots/Jeph Jarman Recording of Hail/Arno Peeters Elements/Incident at Ras Oumlil Jos Smolders/ Jag en gök Hans Appelqvist/John Tilbury, Keith Rowe, Kjell Bjørgeengen Sissel/Tom Didn’t Get the Right Gift Mechanical Sterility/Sheep Wind Fence Flute recorded on Dartmoor 1971 David Toop/Tomoyuki Aoki, Harutaka Mochizuki, & Hasegawa-Shizuo Enka Moods/Jem Finer Water and Birds/Birds Pauline Oliveros + Andrew Deutsch/World Trade Center 1999: Processing Sound through a window on the 91st floor, facing North  - Stephen Vitiello

DISSOLVE IN THE PRESENT

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Blank Forms #11: Maryanne Amacher's Petra

Blank Forms

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