Browse by Artist: CORNER, PHILIP

Artist:	CORNER, PHILIP
Title:	On Tape From the Judson Days
Label:	ALGA MARGHEN (ITALY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	ALGA 019CD

"'On tape from the Judson days. Remember? When you made these things at home, on the best equipment you or your other poor friends could find? Electronic music from the 1960s. And you had that Japanese tape recorder with built-in mike; indeed that was the only piece of furniture on your tatami floor on the Lower East Side that summer of 1961.' This compact disc presents tape music recorded between 1962 and 1963 for the friends meeting once a week in a loft in NYC. The first track, 'Lucinda Pastime,' was the soundtrack for a dance piece by Lucinda Childs: 'the tape was made in the kitchen sink, with primitive equipment and all the different kinds of plates and bowls in the house. The enjoyment of listening to this musique liquide at night, in bed, and always finding it too short.' 'Memories: Performances': 'Ah yes...yes! The principle of this tape is the recombining of recorded performances from the past, my past, this time. Because the idea, and practice, of collage was really around in that time.' 'From Thais,' was made on request of Yvorine Rainer, 'collaging mostly extracts from Massenet opera, mix after mix to get thrown around fragments of the opening until the thin, otherworldly quality of the ending.' 'Oracle, a Canata on Images of War,' was commissioned by the Living Theatre: 'All sounds in violent counterpoint, made by me at home...playing with real noises, with a deliberately pulverized reality made of over-recorded close-miked crashes which even blew the machine's circuitry. Mixed into the Darkest White Noise ever made.' 'Flares' used dancers and musicians and slides and lights in a total-space multimedia'; this is the only piece on this compact disc which uses purely generated tape sounds. 'Circus Tape' was for 'a whole evening of inspired crazy-fun, from burlesque to creaking doors.' All previously unreleased works presented in a digipack CD with 16 pages booklet.

Artist:	CORNER, PHILIP
Title:	3 Pieces For Gamelan Ensemble
Label:	ALGA MARGHEN (ITALY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	ALGA 034CD

"'Gamelan' means for Philip Corner more than the name for Indonesian orchestras. The composer uses the word the way, apart from Europe, someone might say 'symphony'. A basis of making music, adding a few wonderful ideas from the Orient: a precise relation between the scale of time and that of musical space; a simple formal concept, expressed directly through sensual attractiveness; some freedom, or mystery, added to the precision. 'Gamelan' is the name of the first piece. In 1975 at Livingston College where Barbara Banary, who had just constructed the earliest instruments for Son Of Lion, invited Philip Corner to compose a piece. Its opening gong stroke and long resonance has gone through several revivals over the years since, and has come to seem like a 'classic'. This piece is the link to the composer's earlier works, particularly those of struck resonant instruments, like Metal Meditations, which are intensely focused on the immediate presence of the sounds. What is added here is counting, although counting so long a length dissolves again into the intuitive. The second track on this CD is titled 'The Barcelona Cathedral'. The composer Tom Johnson wrote about it in 1978: 'A few weeks ago I attended a rehearsal of New York's own gamelan ensemble, Son Of Lion. One of the works I heard that evening was a new composition by Philip Corner. Corner was conducting in big slow beats that fell heavily once every few seconds. With each beat about ten mallets fell onto the metallic percussion instruments with a tremendous clang. A variety of pitches resulted, and the general effect was much like a big church bell. The piece went on for nearly half an hour, always with that same relentless beat, but with slightly different effects.' These first two compositions, first issued on LP for Lotta Poetica, have been remastered for this CD edition that also features a previously unpublished major work entitled 'Belum'. The author wrote about it: 'There is improvisation within a structure that only reveals itself over many repetitions. The melody is quite difficult, with many syncopations and rhythmic irregularities. We have learned it well, but since no one knows exactly how each will play, there is individual freedom and group chance results. Bringing together different cultures in a new kind of harmony. ...It [the music culture of Indonesia] has added to my previous development sense of music as wonderful-sound, the sense of music as wonderful-measure. Thanks to this, I now love numbers and with no diminishing of the senses...'. 16 page booklet, color photos, graphic notations and scores are included with liner notes written by Philip Corner."

Artist:	CORNER, PHILIP
Title:	Gong +
Label:	ALGA MARGHEN (ITALY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	ALGA 042CD

"Gong + presents three previously unpublished compositions by Philip Corner recorded in New York City, 1974. 'Metal Meditations with Listening Center', a 29 minutes long piece, is a collaboration between Philip Corner and Bill Fontana. At that time Bill Fontana was very interested in the resonance properties of every object, putting his ear to everything, and sometime recording what he called 'Listening Centers' (soon to be issued by alga marghen). A microphone placed in a resonating space (for example a jar, or a pipe) recording the environment with no intervention from the artist. This time the 'Listening Center' was integrated as an active element on two pages from 'Metal Meditations' ('one stroke: vigorous: one resonance' and 'these are twirlings, sworlings') performed at the Intermedia Foundation. The continuous resonance of metal objects mixed with the chaotic sounds of New York City distorted through the 'Listening Center'. 'Gong!' is a series of works and can be considered forms of kinds of 'Metal Meditations'. They are more-elaborated performing plans for/on this 'prototype of all rich resonances', so, are musics assuming long-resounding & more-than-single-pitched large-surfaced (likely) lower-tone-favoring metals. Some substitutions are possible: piano? low clusters and selected sonorities. Colors controlled from pedal. Struck by soft stick(s)--- or from keyboard. This specific version, titled '2 as entrance ? passageway (resounding regularly)', was recorded on May 22nd, 1974 at The Kitchen and performed by Philip Corner, Brian Dallow, Daniel Goode and Carole Weber. The piece starts with deep resonances of the gong played by two performers and very slowly fades into the pulsation of the low-key strings of the piano. The last composition on this compact disc, taken from a different series of works titled 'Pulse Polyphony', was also recorded at The Kitchen during the same festival. 'Pulse Polyphony' compositions may use very different materials; one of them (the central part of 'Oracle', an electronic music piece) was included in On tape from the Judson years, a previous compact disc issued by alga marghen. The version presented here is the passage from string piano to bell-tree."

Artist:	CORNER, PHILIP
Title:	More from the Judson years, early 60s - Volume One
Label:	ALGA MARGHEN (ITALY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	ALGA 055CD

"Yet not to forget that extraordinary place where so much of the new and exciting performances at that most interesting time in New York, took place. There was a Theater there; and a place for the first Happenings. An Art Gallery... and later the famous Judson Dance Theater. There was Philip Corner first performance. The concert was in early 1962, January 2nd, to be exact. Handwritten change on typescript: Yoko Ono's studio, changed at the last moment to Judson Church. A lot of players; and a lot of pieces. Some of my old friends, like Toshi Ichiyanagi or Richard Maxfield. And a lot of new names from California, Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles, the connection between the old New York and this new scene. The creation of the Dance Theater: Philip Corner involvement with it from the beginning. Excerpts from the liner notes of Volume One, written by Philip Corner: 'Passionate Expanse of the Law' (1959), extract from the first NY performance, featuring Charlotte Moorman, Philip Corner, Malcolm Goldstein. 'I wrote this on an Army cot in Texas, in the Fall of 1959; a continuation of and a major development my exploration of maximum disjunction.' 'Air Effect' (1961), first performance, featuring Philip Corner, Alison Knowles, Malcolm Goldstein. 'From 1961 already my music became characterized more and more by attention to the continuous quality of sound. A chamber ensemble, dedicated to directness of breathing.' 'OM emerging' (1971). 'As pure to begin' (1963), Philip Corner, piano with preparations, objects and amplification. 'The purity of keyboard sounds turn progressively noisy, effected by the strings themselves being touched, and touched by objects which are then laid on them and magnified by microphones'. 'Music, reserved until now' (1963), recorded at Judson, 1965 and featuring A-yo, David Behrman, Philip Corner, Malcolm Goldstein, Dick Higgins, Joe Jones, Alison Knowles, Jackson Mac Low, Charlotte Moorman, Nam June Paik, Chieko Shiomi. 'A score for non-traditional sound sources.' 'Composition with or without Beverly' (1962), recorded at ONCE Festival in 1963; Philip Corner, piano with prepared tape sounds. Digipack first press of 1000 copies, including a 12 pages booklet with liner notes, scores and original documentation."

Artist:	CORNER, PHILIP
Title:	More from the Judson Years, early 60s - Volume Two
Label:	ALGA MARGHEN (ITALY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	ALGA 056CD

Excerpts from the liner notes of Volume Two, written by Philip Corner: 'Everything Max Has' (1964), Max Neuhaus solo, recorded at the ONCE Festival, 1965. 'A performance of Max's taking down all of his stuff; tons of equipment filling entire stages'. 'Big Trombone' (1963), Jim Fulkerson improvisation over tape collage. 'Homage to Revere' (1962) for ensemble of copper-bottom kitchen utensils. 'Punkt' (1961) for ensemble of staccato sounds. 'Since the critics were calling us the plink plunk school, I contributed a composition favoring only those punkts for centuries having defined and inhibited Western music'. 'Passionate Expanse of the Law' (1959) for ensemble, recorded at the Composers' Forum, NY, 1972. 'Expressions in Parallel' (1958) for ensemble. 'From my earliest compositions I have been more enticed by an opening out towards greater possibilities, than in cheap and arbitrary limits of stylistic unity.' Digipack first press of 1000 copies, including a 12 pages booklet with liner notes, scores and original documentation.

Artist:	CORNER, PHILIP
Title:	Extreme Positions
Label:	NEW WORLD RECORDS
Format:	2CD
Price:	$30.00
Catalog #:	NW 80659CD

"Philip Corner (b. 1933) studied composition with Henry Cowell and Otto Luening and musical analysis with Oliver Messiaen. During the 1960s and '70s he was an active member of Fluxus, a founder (along with James Tenney and Malcolm Goldstein) of the Tone Roads Chamber Ensemble, the resident musician and composer for the Judson Dance Theatre, and co-founder of Gamelan Son of Lion (with Barbara Benary and Daniel Goode). The musical opportunities that these ensembles and their performances offered Corner insured that he was both prolific and had or developed a deep understanding of the important artistic influences of that time. Corner uses a variety of scoring methods -- some scores are conventionally written out, some are graphic scores with added commentary and some are, indeed, only text or commentary by which Corner creates an attitude to sound-making materials, the manner of eliciting sounds and the manner of responding to the activities of others. He is truly the equal of John Cage in forcing us to examine what we call music and how we understand music-making. He is a master of the art of presenting what amounts to a Zen koan to the performer or performing ensembles. He sets interpretive challenges of the highest order while often creating music which can be realized by amateur or professional musician alike. Corner has commented that being drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to Korea was in fact a 'fortuitous' event in his life: 'One of the things I learned in Korea was to go into the quality of sound ... to enter into this thing that the Orient had explored that the West hadn't.' This set of recordings includes two of the seminal pieces from this period -- Sang-teh (Situations) and Lovely Music -- and proceeds to explore music from five decades of work under the direction of Corner's earlier collaborator, James Fulkerson, and the composer himself. This is the first comprehensive overview of his work, including many of his key compositions, and is an ideal introduction to an important but overlooked figure of the American avant-garde."

Artist:	CORNER, PHILIP
Title:	40 Years And One: Philip Corner Plays The Piano
Label:	XI
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	XI 125CD

Solo piano works, performed by the composer, recorded in 1998. "Philip has vision, he did something nobody else did, he brought the expressive into indeterminacy (he calls it 'non-compulsive indeterminacy'). He's also one of the only composers I know who can give you a handful of worlds (notes) for a score, suggestions and alternatives for a realization and create wonderful expansive vistas of music and sound. Philip loves sound(s), he really listens and relishes (cherishes) the sensual aspects of perception. When he plays the piano there is a tremendous sensitivity (sensibilit�), his own art of touching and caressing the keyboard. He also loves embellishments, whether in Korean classical music or in the late French baroque of Marin Marais or Fran�ois Couperin. There's humor too, he's very funny (as many of his 'fluxus' performances and art works will show) and his universal and non-conformist approach to life is extremely refreshing in a (music-al) world still dominated by the dull mainstream of academia." -- Anton Lukoszevieze. Featured pieces: 1. 7 Joyous Flashes (3:45) 2. Concerto for Housekeeper (5:58) 3. Short Piano Piece IV (2:51) 4. Short Piano Piece IX (2:07) 5. Short Piano Piece XIII (1:50) 6. Flux & Form No. 2 (solo) (4:01) 7. Flux & Form No. 2 (3 versions mixed) (4:39) 8. Pulse: a 'Keyboard Dance'/C Major Chord (25:43) 9. "perfect" (on the strings) (21:49)

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