The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble performs THE GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE VORTEX TERRESTRIAL ANTHEM, Op. 142, No. 9 by Gary Lloyd Noland (March 5th, 2023). To read more about the composer, please visit his website at: garynolandcomposer.com

THE GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE VORTEX TERRESTRIAL ANTHEM, Op. 142, No. 9

Paul  Etheredge's Album

Cankles in Spanks (feat. Diogenes Plantagenet) [original song]

IMAGE: Climate breakdown in Whitebark pine country, week after week of smoke-filled skies, Eagle Cap Wilderness, OREGON.

POEMS TO LIVE BY no. 14 #RILKE “My life is not this vertical hour….” from THE BOOK OF HOURS

mp3 [58Mb] http://www.picture-poems.com/mp3/poems-2-live-by_6-4-23.mp3

A wider-circle dialogue tape,
discussing not just #RMR, but
also #fundamentalism, #bookbanning, 
bad ideas in music, like #WANDELWEISER 
& #ASKOSchoenberg, vs. great ideas, 
like #ZAPPA & #VARESE.

The New Yorker article I mention is here: Silence Overtakes Sound for the Wandelweiser Collective | The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/05/silence-overtakes-sound-for-the-wandelweiser-collective

POEMS TO LIVE BY no. 14:—RILKE, Book Burning, & “My life is not this vertical hour”

In three parts, with musical interpolations…
(1) from StarCYCLE DUO alpha Pyxis, the MONK movement
(2) DESERTS, by Edard Varese, 2nd part
(3) PHAROS, 1st movement, “Lock-in” CREGO / ASKO live in PARIS
(4) StarCYCLE DUO Eltanin, movement 2b

IMAGE: The little metaphysical miniature I discuss in the tape.

TALKING HANDS / TALKING FEET, “Natural sound…”

Up. Hold. Fry! Three species of vocal affectation…

We shape the world, and the world shapes us.

Affectation? A genus of  disingenuous vocal sounds designed to impress, coming from our unconscious thought’s inward  sense of insecurity and fear.

Up: when every phrase ascends in pitch, like a glissando, as if asking a question, which is not intended;

Hold: when the last word of a phrase is held artificially, like a fermata, to give emphasis, which is not intended;

Fry: when every last word of a phrase is distorted, like the “fuzz tone” pedal of a rock guitar, which is not intended.

That’s bad.

The www.picture-poems.com webpage I talk about is here: On Love, Learning and the World-wide Tragedy of Public Schools (1999) http://www.picture-poems.com/week4/learning.html

(4) A mistake is a mistake repeated. Even the best of performers can make a habit of practicing, sometimes for years, the wrong notes. Like a famous, world-class pianist, when asked why he never seemed to make mistakes, once  said, "Well, Sir— of course not. I don't practice them!"

MUSIC heard in upbeat and coda is IONIZATION for 13 percussionists, by Edgard Varese, ASKO Ensemble https://soundcloud.com/cliff-crego/ionization-crego-conducts-var

TALKING HANDS / TALKING FEET no. 12 “Up. Hold. Fry.” Three vocal affectations…

the last part of college assignment presentation recreated. the original is out there somewhere collected canterbury 2003 music business & production

Edgard Varese Tribute Ending - 'Prizna Vs Michael Collins' (2003)

Anal Sax [original instrumental]

Octandre 

Edgard Varèse, composer
Jim Walker, flute
Cynthia DeAlmeida, oboe
Richie Hawley, clarinet
Dennis Michel, bassoon
Mark Lawrence, trombone
Paul Merkelo, trumpet
Trevor Nuckols, horn
Nico Abondolo, double bass

“I have always been an experimenter. But my experiments go into the wastebasket. I give only finished works to the public.” — Edgard Varèse, 1923, in a New York Times interview preceding the first performance of Octandre.

Varèse studied in his native Paris during the early years of the last century with Albert Roussel (counterpoint and fugue), Charles-Marie Widor (composition), and Vincent d’Indy (conducting). A subsequent sojourn in Berlin enabled him to make the acquaintance of Ferruccio Busoni and Arnold Schoenberg – to both of whom he remained indebted as informal teachers – and in 1915 he emigrated to New York, his chief residence for the remainder of his life, attracting during his career such modern icons as Milton Babbitt, John Cage, Pierre Boulez, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, who regarded him as a major influence on their work.

Varèse is best known for his pieces centering on percussion, on electronics combined with traditional instruments, and one purely electronic piece, Poème électronique for three-track tape, created for the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. His output consisted of only a dozen, painstakingly crafted works, with a few more posthumously completed by his student and literary executor, Chou Wen-chung. The brief Octandre is his one “intimate” ensemble work – in terms of the number of players involved, certainly not its sonority or emotional impact.

The first performance of Octandre, whose title refers both to its eight-player ensemble and the word’s literal meaning, a flower with eight stamens, was given in New York on January 13, 1924, under the direction of E. Robert Schmitz, founder of the Pro Musica Society, dedicated to the presentation of works by living composers, and a renowned interpreter of the piano music of Debussy.

The first movement is launched by a chant-like oboe phrase – reminiscent of the bassoon melody that opens Stravinsky’s Sacre du printemps), employing the minor second and its inversion, the major seventh. The clarinet responds with a chattering bundle of repeated notes, succeeded by “pumping” sounds in the brass. The movement ends “with the feeling of the beginning (a little anxious),” the composer notes in the score. The second movement begins as a wind-blown scherzo featuring the piccolo’s repeated notes, which are pushed aside by the brass. The final chord is a fierce crescendo, which winds down to the solo double bass leading into the finale, which begins “grave” but blossoms into an energetic fugue with the successive entries of oboe, bassoon, and clarinet. Octandre ends with what can perhaps be best described as a screech.

Chamber Music

Edgard Varèse: Octandre (Live)

(0) INTRO (1) DESERTS part II (2) oral history (3) AMSTERDAM BY NIGHT, w/ bits of PHAROS (4) more oral history (5) CODA from StarCYCLE DUO Eltanin, for two timpani players

IMAGE: A page from SCHLIEREN, recorded in BAMBURG SDR May 1974

Other CONNECTION STREET chapters… 
(1) CONNECTION STREET: "Against Gaudeamus," or why composer's competitions are worse than useless... SoundCloud anhören https://soundcloud.com/cliff-crego/connection-street-against-gaudeamus-or-why-composers-competitions-are-worse-than-useless

(2) CONNECTION STREET: Music, Politics & Anarchy in the Amsterdam of the 1970s https://soundcloud.com/cliff-crego/the-connection-street-music-politics-anarchy-in-amsterdam-in-the-1970s

CONNECTION STREET: ASKO | SCHOENBERG at 50:—remembering the founding of a great ensemble…


Trevor Nuckols is an internationally recognised horn soloist whose career includes concerto, chamber, and orchestral appearances at leading halls and festivals in the world’s musical capitals. His repertoire ranges from early Baroque to newly commissioned works, unified by a consistent focus on structural integrity, tonal depth, and fidelity to the score.

He received his early musical training at the Interlochen Arts Academy before earning his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from The Juilliard School, where he was a Kovner Fellow. He pursued postgraduate study at the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg. His principal teachers include Michael Corcoran, Gene Berger, R. J. Kelley, and Radovan Vlatković. He has held fellowships at the Marlboro Music Festival, Lucerne Festival Academy, Tanglewood Music Center, and Pacific Music Festival.

Mr. Nuckols is the recipient of the International Horn Society’s Barry Tuckwell Award, conferred in recognition of distinguished solo achievement and contributions to the future of the instrument. He is the Gold Medalist of the Vienna International Music Competition and First Prize winner of the International Horn Society’s Premiere Soloist Competition. Additional honours include top awards from the Juilliard Concerto Competition, the Music Academy of the West, and the North International Music Competition.

He has appeared as solo horn with the Münchener Kammerorchester and as an artist with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He has served as guest principal horn with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Philharmonie Salzburg, and the Bad Reichenhall Philharmoniker. His playing is noted for its balance of precision and effortless mastery, and he has been praised by The New York Times as “outstanding” and “an excellent soloist.”

A committed advocate for new music, Mr. Nuckols collaborates closely with living composers and incorporates contemporary works into concert programmes alongside core repertoire. He is co-founder of Duo Corgano, a horn and organ ensemble with organist David Ball, whose performances span early repertoire to modern commissions, often presented in architecturally and acoustically significant spaces.

His scholarly work centres on the development of horn playing from the Baroque through the mid-twentieth century, with particular attention to the British, French, Austro-German, and Czech traditions. He maintains a growing private archive of historical horns, manuscripts, recordings, and iconography. He has presented lectures and master classes at Seoul National University, Tokyo College of Music, New York University, and the University of Cartagena.

He performs on a custom B-flat Alexander horn, Ricco Kühn double horn,   and a 19th-century Raoux-Millereau piston horn. His work is grounded in the conviction that the horn, informed by history and shaped by intent and passion, remains one of music’s most eloquent and enduring voices.


Composer. Writer. Photographer. Former conductor & founder of the ASKO ensemble.

On a bike/ski/hike trek of the Pacific Northwest studying native plants & climate breakdown 🌲 from sagebrush sea to whitebark pine. Composing off-grid the whole way.

#Sun2Sound 🌕 on Bluesky

THINKING LIKE A STONEPINE, a soundpoem manifesto https://vimeo.com/844665859

“LOVE & WATER, three thought poems w/ coda, PHAROS for small orchestra, “Nightwind”” https://vimeo.com/847079690 

CURRENTLY on mt bike/ski/climbing trek through Pacific Northwest, working on a photobook about WHITEBARK PINE COLLAPSE and CLIMATE CRISIS. BASES in the WALLOWAS | AMSTERDAM | ALPS. 

WEEKLY photo/poetry updates at www.picture-poems.com & THE CIRCLE IN THE SQUARE new music, poetry & dance performance project at www.cs-music.com

ALWAYS ON THE LOOKOUT for progressive, tech-savy, instrumental virtuosi interested in dialogue & collaborative undertakings.

CONTACT cliff@picture-opoems.com
Or on SKYPE or FACETIME @cliffcrego

MUSIC? The one thing humans do,
that makes the rest of nature jealous.

Resides in Portland, Oregon. Grew up in Berkeley, CA. Born in Seattle.  PhD, Harvard. “Gary Noland is one of the great composers of the 21st century.”—JACK RUMMEL, KGNU 88.5 FM, Boulder CO, “...iconoclastic, stylistic potpourri standards of giddy humor, no holds barred soup to nuts and high spirits.”—ROBERT LEVIN, pianist, musicologist, composer, "...a fleet-fingered, ebullient performer ... bright, witty and engaging.”—CHRISTIAN CAREY, SPLENDID MAGAZINE, “...distinctive, inventive ... subversive ... You can hardly be indifferent to Noland’s music and so I would urge you to try it.” —ROGER BLACKBURN, MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL, “...set in a dizzying harmonic language that loops uncontrollably through a wide-ranging gamut of possible and impossible tonalities ... The general effect is like watching wet paintings of 19th Century musical memorabilia drip into frazzled 21st Century oblivion...” —ALLEN GIMBEL, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE, “Mr. Noland writes as a ‘time traveler’ in styles long abandoned by most composers as well as styles so new as to not have been imagined but by him. This he accomplishes naturally, convincingly, with originality and true passion. His command of all musical languages and his ability to traverse musical time is nothing less than remarkable. Listen!”—DONALD MARTINO, Pulitzer Prize winning composer, “...mind-bending spiraling of focus which is truly breathtaking ... spectacular...”—CHARLES AMIRKHANIAN, composer, sound poet & radio producer, “I'm amazed at your harmonic skill. Haven't seen or heard anything like it from any one else—except yours truly—certainly not from your generation. It falls somewhere between Strauss and Mahler. Especially like how you are able to slip in and out from the tonal to the atonal—or near atonal...”—GEORGE ROCHBERG, American composer, Pulitzer Prize finalist, “...court jester to the classical establishment...”—PAYTON MACDONALD, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE, “...florid and juicy...” —RICHARD BUELL, THE BOSTON GLOBE, “...an incredible aural web ... a great ostinato of American kitsch. Sul pont never sounded so good.”—RUSSELL STEINBERG, composer, conductor of the LOS ANGELES YOUTH ORCHESTRA, “...I am bowled over by the expertise of your music: you use certain elements from the 19th century and from jazz, etc., and just at the moment when I am about to say, OK, what else is new?, you do a number of things, such as speeding up, becoming wildly dissonant, modulating to a distant continent, stopping completely and throwing some kind of total surprise ... you seem to know exactly when to do what and how much. I don’t know anybody else who can do it!” —ANDREW IMBRIE, American composer, Pulitzer Prize finalist, “... remarkable stuff...”
—MAX MORATH, American ragtime pianist, composer, actor & author, “...a loony composer from Oregon...” —MAX SHEA, WMUA 91.1FM, Amherst, MA, “Gary Noland is one of those 21st Century composers seeking to forge a new aesthetic based on older models that do not traffic in serialism or minimalism ... Zany waltzes, ragtime riffs, chorales, toccatas, and much else romp and tear through these depictions of superheroes and villains from his ‘chamber novels’; other pieces spoof serial music ... to grand operas ... and Jewish guilt.” —JACK SULLIVAN, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE, “...Paranoid Ravel...”—ALEX DUNN, KZSU FM90.3, Stanford, CA, “...It’s a romantic romp, rhythmically robust yet melodically flirting with the nostalgia of cabaret, minus the sleazy diminution of spilled drinks and smelly ashtrays. Its elegance recalls Elgar, and the serious sides, a synthesis of those strange bedfellows Schubert and Ives. Composers hate it when their music reminds you of someone else’s, but writing within a tradition, Noland has incorporated divergent styles that, woven together, work. Cosmopolitan without snobbery, it’s intelligent, pleasurable and convincing.” —ROCKY LEPLIN, THE BERKELEY VOICE

Solo artist.  Song and dance man.  Folk.  Blues.  Contact:  desertersongs@yahoo.com Film critic at https://paulydeathwish.com/

New tracks tagged #edgard varèse