Sunday, March 10, 2024 / 3:00pm
MIT Killian Hall, Building 14W-111
160 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02139
Featuring
Evan Ziporyn, clarinet and bass clarinet
Christine Southworth, videos
Nick Joliat, sound design (for Ki Part One)
Dave Cook, sound engineer
Program
(order announced from the stage)
Evan Ziporyn, solo
Philip Glass, Best Out of Three (1968/2022)
Moondog (Louis B. Hardin), Symphonique #6 “Good for Goodie” (1969)
Terry Riley, Ki for Evan Ziporyn (2022)
EZ, Pop Channel selections (2022)
By Evan Ziporyn
Today’s program is culled from various multirack clarinet recordings I’ve made over the past 3 years, including my 2022 album Pop Channel. The exact selections and order will be announced from the stage.
It is anchored by Boston premieres of pieces by two living legends, Philip Glass and Terry Riley. It will also include a new version of Moondog’s tribute to Benny Goodman, Symphonique #6, and my own arrangements of music from the greatest of all song books, American pop music of the last 50 years.
The manuscript to Philip Glass’ (b. 1937) Best Out of Three was found by his archivist in 2021. A polyphonic expansion of the solo saxophone piece Gradus, from early 1968, it was never added to his catalog and set aside, perhaps because, as Glass put it, “the players had a hard time staying together.”
This excerpt from the original 1968 manuscript may help explain why:
Each score system has exactly 64 8th-notes (except when they don’t), no measure lines, and with sustained notes indicated by long strings of eye-blurring ties. As with many great rides, it’s prone to derailment, and once you’re off the track, finding your way back on, while full-throttle can lead to, well, a train wreck!
That being said, the resulting music is quite wonderful, a window into Glass’ musical mind at the cusp of his signature breakthroughs, the Music in [Fifths, Similar Motion, etc] pieces that emerged later that year. Like those later pieces, Glass works within a strict frame, fusing an ascending diatonic motif with a 32-beat metrical framework, somehow creating a never-repeating, seemingly infinite set of melodic and harmonic variations that traverses the centuries while staying fixed in the here and now.
I am grateful to Richard Guerin of Orange Mountain Music for texting me when the piece resurfaced, asking if I wanted to ‘take a look at it.’ I immediately called MIT’s own Luis ‘Cuco’ Daglio, and we recorded the piece here in Killian Hall in August, 2021. Cuco did the initial edits, with the final edits and mastering done by Dave Cook, who is doing live sound today. I premiered the piece at Big Ears 2022 in Knoxville, it was released by Orange Mountain Music soon thereafter, and is available HERE and on all streaming platforms.
Terry Riley (b.1935) continues to create and surprise at age 88, remaining active as a composer, performer and teacher. I asked him via text (it might have been Instagram) for a new piece in mid-2021. He readily agreed, explaining that he was now working entirely in a new and unique way, making bespoke handmade scores that combined graphic notation (sometimes very specific) with visual imagery, in this case of the sights and sounds of his adopted home in his adopted home at the foot of Mt. Fuji, in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. These are to be interpreted by the performer, implicitly subject to Terry’s approval.
Here’s a sample page, which he texted me soon thereafter:
Eight more pages followed, in no fixed order, together making the full score of Ki (2022). This wonderful, truly collaborative way of working is a continuation of the ‘enhanced’ composer/performer relationship that’s been a hallmark of Terry’s career, as exemplified by his iconic 1964 composition, In C. I made Part One in collaboration with Nick Joliat; that and the the rest of the piece was edited and mixed by Dave Cook. The score itself in its entirety is revealed in various ways over the course of Christine Southworth’s accompanying video. Ki was commissioned by Alex Rigopulos and Sachi Sato. I premiered the full version with video at Big Ears 2023, then traveled to Japan later that year to perform the work for Terry at Club Rame, Shibuya, Tokyo.
Moondog aka Louis B. Hardin (1916-1999) is the true avatar of the music we now know as minimalism. After years of homelessness in the 1950s and 1960s, he was given shelter by Philip Glass for over a year,, during which Moondog, Glass and Reich rehearsed Moondog’s vast collection of rounds and canons on a weekly basis. Unsighted since his early teens, Moondog composed his pieces line-by-line using braille: what you will see in Christine Southworth’s video to Symphonique #6 (“Good for Goodie”) is in fact the entire score, unfolding with the multiplicity of lines. I am deeply grateful to Wolfgang Gnida of moondogscorner.de for his encouragement in the realization of this project.
Dave Cook, Area 52 owner and engineer, has worked in the recording industry for over 25 years. He has album credits with artists such as: The B-52’s, 10,000 Maniacs, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Juliana Hatfield, Graham Parker, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, among others. He has mixed live, radio concert broadcasts for artists including David Bowie, Alanis Morissette, Bare Naked Ladies, Goo Goo Dolls, and Radiohead. In his time as chief engineer for several studios, Cook also worked in audio for video post-production, studio construction and design, team management, and staff training and development. Live concert sound has become a large part of Dave’s career lately, touring with artists such as Laurie Anderson, Carly Simon, Natalie Merchant, Medeski; Martin and Wood, Ethel, Maya Beiser and Marc Cohn.
For more information, visit area-52-studios.com
Christine Southworth ’02 is a multimedia composer based in Lexington, Massachusetts, dedicated to creating art born from a cross-pollination of sonic and visual ideas. Inspired by the intersections of technology and art, nature and machines, and music from cultures around the world, her work employs sounds and images from man and nature, ranging from Van de Graaff generators to honeybees, Balinese gamelan to seismic data, and volcanoes to mycelium networks. Her most recent works include Mushroom Modulations (2023) for Garden in the Woods, and Arachnodrone (in collaboration with Ian Hattwick, Isabelle Su, & Evan Ziporyn, currently on display at the MIT Museum). She is founder and executive director of REAL Cruzan Cats, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to cat rescue on St. Croix, USVI.
For more information, visit christinesouthworth.com
Evan Ziporyn (b. 1959, Chicago) is a composer/clarinetist who has forged an international reputation through his genre-defying, cross-cultural works and performances. At MIT he is Inaugural Director of the Center for Art, Science and Technology (CAST), founder & Artistic Director of Gamelan Galak Tika, and curator of the MIT Sounding performance series.
His music has been commissioned and performed by Yo-yo Ma’s Silkroad Ensemble, Brooklyn Rider, Maya Beiser, Roomful of Teeth, Bang on a Can, Kronos Quartet, Wu Man, the American Composers Orchestra, Sentieri Selvaggi, the American Repertory Theater, Steven Schick, So Percussion, Gamelan Sekar Jaya, Sarah Cahill, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. They have been presented at international venues including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, London’s Barbican Center, the Holland Festival, Brussels Ars Musica, the Singapore Festival, the Sydney Olympics, the Bali International Arts Festival, and Big Ears. His opera A House in Bali (directed by MIT colleague Jay Scheib) was featured at BAM Next Wave in 2010; that same fall his works were featured at a Carnegie Hall Zankel Making Music composer’s portrait concert. His multimedia interactive stallation, Arachnodrone (a collaboration with Ian Hattwick, Christine Southworth & Isabelle Su) is currently exhibited at the MIT Museum, following its 2018 debut at Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
From 1992-2012 he was a founding member of the Bang on a Can All-stars (Musical America’s 2005 Ensemble of the Air), finishing his tenure with the group with an appearance on an episode of PBS’ Arthur. His long-time work with the Steve Reich Ensemble led to sharing a 1999 Grammy for Best Chamber Performance for their recording of Music for 18 Musicians. He is also the featured multi-tracked soloist on Reich’s Nonesuch recording of New York Counterpoint. Other awards include a 2012 Massachusetts Arts Council Fellowship, the 2007 USArtists Walker Award and the 2004 American Academy of Arts and Letters Goddard Lieberson Fellowship.
His puppet opera Shadow Bang, a collaboration with master Balinese dalang Wayan Wija, was premiered at MassMOCA and was the centerpiece of the 2006 Amsterdam GrachtenFest. Recordings of his works have been released on Sony Classical, Cantaloupe Music, Islandia Music, New Albion, New World Records, Koch, Innova, CRI, and numerous independent labels. He has collaborated with some of the world’s most creative and vital living musicians, including Brian Eno, Paul Simon, Ornette Coleman, Iva Bittova, Maya Beiser, Thurston Moore, Meredith Monk, Bryce Dessner, Philip Glass, Terry Riley, Louis Andriessen, Shara Worden, Sandeep Das, Kelley Deal, Cecil Taylor, Henry Threadgill, Wu Man, Matthew Shipp, Wayan Wija, Kyaw Kyaw Naing, and Ethel.
Recent projects include 2023’s telematic Poppy 88, Arachnodrone, two 2022 solo albums (Pop Channel & Philip Glass: Best Out of Three), Bowie Symphonic: Blackstar (w/Maya Beiser), and daily podcast music for acclaimed filmmaker Caveh Zahedi. His compositions and arrangements were featured throughout Ken Burns’ Vietnam; his arrangements were also featured on Silkroad Ensemble’s Grammy-winning CD, Sing Me Home. Other recent recordings include Terry Riley’s Ki, Eviyan: Nayive (w/Iva Bittova & Gyan Riley), and collaborations with DuoJalal, Czech composer Beata Hlavenkova, and Polish jazz masters Waclaw Zimpel and Hubert Zempel. His performance with the MIT Wind Ensemble of Don Byron’s Clarinet Concerto, commissioned by MIT, and released on Sunnyside Records, received a 5-star Downbeat review.
For more information, visit arts.mit.edu/evan-ziporyn
MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST)
CAST creates new opportunities for art, science, and technology to thrive as interrelated, mutually informing modes of exploration, knowledge, and discovery. CAST’s multidisciplinary platform presents performing and visual arts programs, supports research projects for artists working with science and engineering labs, and sponsors symposia, classes, workshops, design studios, lectures, and publications. The Center is funded in part by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Website: arts.mit.edu/cast
Email: cast@mit.edu
MIT Music & Theater Arts (MTA)
The Music and Theater Arts Section of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences annually affords 1,500 students per year the opportunity to experience the unique language and process of the performing arts. Faculty and teaching staff, informed by their ongoing professional activities, help students understand art’s demand for rigor and discipline and its non-quantitative standards of excellence and beauty.
Website: mta.mit.edu
Email: mta@mit.edu
Special Thanks
Dedicated to the memory of Liz Lutz
Special thanks to Dave Cook, Andy Wilds & the MTA Events Office, Cuco Daglio, Christine Southworth, Nick Joliat, Alex Rigopulos & Sachi Sato, Sara & Tadashi Miyamoto, Richard Guerin, Wolfgang Gnida, Leila Kinney, Lydia Brosnahan, Philana Brown, Rayna Yun Chou, Stacy DeBartolo, Heidi Erickson, Katherine Higgins, Tim Lemp, Leah Talatinian, and Isaac Tardy.
MIT Sounding is presented by the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology and MIT Music and Theater Arts