MESSAGIO GALORE take VII

23 january 2o11, 7:3o PM

Ottawa City Hall Art Gallery

11o Laurier Avenue West

 

sound poetry contrasts

extended works & miniatures

curated, arranged & struggled with by jwcurry

& featuring the vocal agilities of

jwcurry

Alastair Larwill

Lesley Marshall

Christine McNair

Grant Wilkins

 

MESSAGIO GALORE is an organically thetic examination of the possibilities inherent in the wide range of activities that occur between literature & music (with interpenetrations of each) commonly called "sound poetry". it approaches the genre as inclusive (encompassing, for instance, chant, optophonetic texts, multilinear narrative, choral works, group improvisation, organized sound effects, concrete & visual poetry, letterpuzzles...) & investigates issues of writing/composing, scoring, transcription, reading, rehearsal, group dynamics, audiencing & &.

 

sound poetry seems to've received its most decisive kick into actualization at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich during World War 1. part of both the difficulty & intrigue of any study of sound poetry is the relative paucity of available source material of any kind, from scores through readings/recordings to theory. there are no How To books displaying The Rudiments Of Sound Poetry, no Thesaurus Of Scales & Patterns, no K-Tel Collection Of Sound Poetry's Greatest Hits through which to approach even a most basic apprehension of what sound poetry might be & how it might function. the vocal & theoretical texts of Hugo Ball & Raoul Hausmann remain among some of the most notably-still relevant reachings toward an accurate delineation of this then-new æsthesis.

 

MESSAGIO GALORE got its kickstart in 2oo4 as a lecture with sound examples, serving (unintendedly) as a good example of how not to go about doing this & suggesting the advisability of a constantly-revised series of takes. given that sound poetry is a physical presence occurring in realtime often using more than a single voice, it has proven instructive to engage a shifting complement of readers to play with in varying degrees of immersion in rehearsal. the transmission of sound to page to sound again is a tricky biznis at best & it can almost be said that there are as many methods of scoring & reading sound texts as there are texts.

 

take VII takes an audio look at several extended works bridged with miniatures, mostly using different methods of scoring & articulation.

 

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part 1

 

1. MESCAL RITE 1, Tomahawk (Duane Denison, Mike Patton, John Stanier; USA, 2oo7; transcribed & arranged for vocal quintet by jwcurry, Canada, 2o1o); source: Tomahawk, Anonymous (Orinda, Ipecac Recordings, 2oo7). "all tunes are original arrangements inspired by native american material from the late 19th century" (CD note). chant (assumedly) devised to accellerate te body rhythms to facilitate the onset of the drug. Tomahawk's electric power trio has here been reärranged back to an acoustic a capella version to overoxygenate the performers & propel them into the linguistically hallucinogenic mindstate to follow. readers: full quintet

 

2. EAST WIND, bpNichol (Canada, 1979?); source: Four Horsemen (Rafael Barreto-Rivera, Paul Dutton, Steve McCaffery, bpNichol), The Prose Tattoo (Milwaukee, Membrane Press, 1983). a gridtext deployed through overlaid entended breathlines, rescore by jwcurry (2oo7) from Nichol's holograph draft. our version continues to toy with a more literl approach to the score than did the Horsemen's more freewheeling phonetic romp. readers: curry, Larwill, McNair, Wilkins

 

3. SIX-FOUR, Alastair Larwill (Canada, 2o1o); source: unpublished manuscript. accumulative disintegrational polysyllabicism formulated as part of a discussion on articulational deliberations with its dedicatee Rob Read. readers: curry, Larwill, McNair, Wilkins

 

4. TOTEM ÉTRANGLÉ, Antonin Artaud (France, 1964?), arranged by jwcurry (Canada, 2oo9/1o); sources: Antonin Artaud/translated by Helen Weaver, Selected Writings (New York, Farrar Straus And Groux, 1976) & KROKLOK #2 (edited by Dom Sylvester Houédard, London, Writers Forum, 1971). "For years I have had an idea of the consumption, the internal consummation of language by the unearthing of all manner of torpid and filthy necessities." (Artaud in a letter to Henri Parisot, 22 september 1945). 18 of these sound cycle excised (by Artaud) from elsewhere in his writings (Here Lies, Insanity and BlackMagic, The Return of Artaud, Le Momo, To Have Done with the Judgement of God, Van Gogh, The Man Suicided by Society, sundry correspondences) & formally linked as a suite. Artaud spent many hours chanting these structures during his residencies in the wig factories. our arrangement enaudios a stroll down a hallful of Artaud-occupied cells. readers: full quintet

 

5. GOING CRITICAL, jwcurry/Michèle Provost (Canada, 2oo9); source: ABSTrACTS/RéSUmÉS, edited by Michèle Provost (Gatineau, privately published, 2o1o). a critical appreciation of Marcel Dzama (by Joseph R.Wolin in CANADIAN ART 25:3) is subjected to sibilant excision & extreme subsyllabic hocketing. a quartet version exists in short film form (read by curry & Provost) but "the lineation of the sounds into separated abruptions in the quartet doesn't allow for the hocketing & clusters that occur during the quintet, which is some 18 seconds shorter & chronically more complex." (curry, ORIOUS ISTIFICATION, Ottawa, CSCA, 2o1o). readers: full quintet

 

6. TWO: Less Time, bpNichol (Canada, 1982?); source: THE CAPILANO REVIEW #31 (edited by Steven Smith & Richard Truhlar, North Vancouver, 1984). vowelless gridtext with, ordinarily, varying degrees of reading path choice left to the readers. tonight's version is a straightforward quartet with a free radical for doublings. readers: full quintet

 

7. anacyclic poem with two shouts DHARMATHOUGHTS STUPAWARDS, dom sylvester houédard (England, 1966); source: KROKLOK #1 (edited by dom sylvester houédard, London, Writers Forum, 1971). "for the artists protest committee for their call from losangeles for a tower against the war" (houédard in KROKLOK #1), an anagrammatical poem in 3 vowels & 4 consonants. duo arrangement by jwcurry (2o1o) fusing a par of arrangements by Nicholas Power/Rob Read & Carmel Purkis/Sandra Ridley (both 2oo8). readers: curry, McNair

 

8. GLASS ON THE BEACH, Richard Truhlar (Canada, 1978?); source: Owen Sound (Michael Dean, David Penhale, Steven Smith, Richard Truhlar), Beyond The Range (Toronto, Underwhich Editions, 198o). transcribed by jwcurry from a trio recording (Dean/Smith/Truhlar) at the Music Gallery in Toronto, 18 august 1979, with additional parts adapted from 2 manuscript scores courtesy of Truhlar. extended vocal waveforms with buried shards. readers: full quintet

 

part 2

 

9. The Dangerous Kitchen, Frank Zappa (USA, 198-?); source: monogaph (North Hollywood, Munchkin Music, 1984), with reference to recordings on Frank Zappa, DEMO'S (UK, Cornhole Productions, 1986), Does Humor Belong in Music? (Los Angeles, Honker Home Video, 1985) & The Man From Utopia (Los Angeles, Barking Pumpkin Records, 1983). while Zappa's sprechgesang approach is ordinarily accompanied by improvised electric jazzband meltdown boop-bop atonalities, we thought it might be worth the lampshade to simulate some a capella doo-wop discontinuities for an alternate avenue toward antisepsis. readers: full quintet

 

1o. Artikulationen, Franz Mon (Germany, 198-?); source: riverrun voicings soundscapes, edited by Klaus Schöning (Mainz, Wergo, 1999), transcribed, arranged & scored by jwcurry (Canada, 2oo8) from a quartet recording made at the Studio Akustische Kunst in 199o. Mon's "environment of syllables and sounds searching for words" (Schöning/translated by Steven Lindberg, CD note) began in the 196os & includes a series of homages to sound artists, this one for Velemir Khlebnikov. readers: curry, Larwill, Marshall, McNair

 

11. WORM, bob cobbing (England, 1954); source: CEOLFRITH #26 (edited by Peter Mayer, Sunderland, Ceolfrith Press, 1974). one of cobbing's earliest semantic derivations into sound burrowing in concrete. readers: full quintet

 

12. Pieces Of Stop, bpNichol (Canada, 1978); source: as 2 above. dedicated to Greta Monach. again, a more literal approach to the gridtext that casts the reversed expectations of its sound envelopes into starker relief. readers: curry, Larwill, McNair, Wilkins

 

13. Riryphur's rurrusur, jwcurry/Rob Read (Canada, 2oo8); source: monograph (Ottawa, Curvd H&z, 2oo8). rolling an R uphill is one thing but what about 25 orso others? an articulational primer in lock'n'hocket disjunction. readers: curry, Larwill, Marshall, Wilkins

 

14. Alice in Wonderland, Sam Loyd (USA, 189-?); source: Pattern Poetry: Guide to an Unknown Literature, edited by Dick Higgins (Albany, SUNY Press, 1987). not intended as a sound score, this concrete lozenge letterpuzzle invited arrangement as aurality, "soft & chewy on the outside with crunchy bits in the middle". readers: full quintet

 

15. auf dem land, ernst jandl (Austria, 1968?); source: konkrete poesie deutschsprachige autoren, edited by Eugen Gomringer (Stuttgart, Philipp Reclam, reprint?, 198o). an "utter zoo" octupletted & here arranged as simultaneous identifications & emissions. readers: curry, Wilkins

 

16. WHITE TEXT SURE version ten, bpNichol (Canada, 1981); source: INUSTRIAL SABOTAGE #63 (edited by jwcurry, Ottawa, Curvd H&z, 2oo8). dedicated to The Horsemen. gridscore for massed vocal textures based on Nichol's earlier (1966) collaboration with David Aylward, WHITE SOUND. this version of this version reïncorporates randomly the colour panels of Nichol's earlier revision, WHITE SOUND :a variant (1976). readers: curry, Larwill, Marshall, Wilkins

 

17. SHE WAS A VISITOR, Robert Ashley (USA, 1967); source: Robert Ashley, Automatic Writing (New York, Lovely Music Limited, 1996). elegy of extended phonemic breathlengths played out from the source statement. readers: full quintet plus guests Sheena Mordasiewicz, Roland Prévost, Carmel Purkis, Sandra Ridley

 

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cover: Sam Loyd (14 above)

 

illimitable thanks to Meaghan Haughian (City Hall Art Gallery), Ontario Arts Council (funding), Ottawa (funding), Brian & Pearl Pirie (for holding the door), Gio Sampogna (camera), Ben Walker (another camera), Lester Jolliffe (recordist) & Rachel Zavitz (Artaud variants & stability)

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filmed by Ben Walker (with sound by Lester Jolliffe), Gio Sampogna & 2 others i know not the names of (plus a camera on the audience, 5 in all)

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see also:

 

announcements:

www.flickr.com/photos/48593922@N04/7454268734/

cartywheel.wordpress.com/2010/12/30/messagio-galore/

pagehalffull.com/pesbo/2011/01/05/messagio-galore-take-vii/

www.facebook.com/events/134225383305600/

 

interview:

cartywheel.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/literary-landscape...

 

photos:

weblog.johnwmacdonald.com/2011/01/messagio-galore-take-vi...

www.flickr.com/photos/pearlpirie/5413512041/

www.flickr.com/photos/pearlpirie/5414123080/

 

reports:

cartywheel.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/post-messagio-mukluk/

www.flickr.com/photos/48593922@N04/7479761780/

 

reviews:

robmclennan.blogspot.ca/2011/01/jwcurrys-messagio-galore-...

pagehalffull.com/pesbo/2011/02/03/the-messagio-is-the-mes...

 

& furthermore:

www.flickr.com/photos/pearlpirie/5385420790/

 

Done