Check out this feature of Daniel Goode on MMNY.
“Composer Daniel Goode will lead participants, aided by a neighborhood map and suggested drumming rhythms, through a portion of Soho’s cast iron district. Using their hands, the group will drum on the hollow cast iron fronts of the “best” buildings. The piece ends when a select number of buildings have been turned into musical instruments.” MMNY Winter Feature!
The FLEXIBLE ORCHESTRA
in a new orchestration of
ten clarinets, electric guitar, double bass, and harp,
will premiere four composers’ works on Thursday, October 25th,
8:30 PM at the Ukrainian Restaurant, 140 2nd Ave. at 9th Street.
Come early and eat: 212-614-3283
$15/10 for students and seniors
N/R/L/#6 trains
Info: dsgoode@earthlink.net
danielgoode.com
WORKS by Daniel Goode, Will Holshouser, Lisa Karrer, Ma’ayan Tsadka, Mary Jane Leach, conducted by Jeannine Wagar
This work for chorus and gamelan (percussion) ensemble was begun during the Iraq war, and continues to reflect concerns for the earth and for how we organize our society. The toys disarm, the voices speak our minds, the gamelan glues it together.
Harvard students dancing to “Opalescent” by Elizabeth Bergmann and Jody Diamond, performed April 9th, 2009.
Interesting collaboration
From: Daniel Goode
Date: October 27, 2011 1:15:37 PM EDT
To: Maayan Tsadka
Subject: Re: hi from santa cruz+bird question
Glad to try to answer you. The Mockingbird track never got more than being a kind of loving improvisation on what seemed like “equivalent” sounds on the clarinet (I’m finessing this, avoiding an important comparison), again reproducing impressionistically the species form. I did have a wonderful apercu that it was very like the early-middle Stravinsky form (Rite, Symphonies of wind instruments, other pieces around that time): tableau-like repetitive sounds with sudden cut to the next one, weighted towards one or some of the tableaux.
The weighting issue was also a big determinate of my thinking with the Wood/Hermit thrush songs, once I found out from transcription and analysis what was going on. So it was more the ‘bird-form’ than the nature of the song itself that got me thinking about composition. In presenting the transcription, I was more faithful to the bird-form than the bird song, in which I had to alter register, approximate “microtones” from tempered, and decide in many cases to avoid a lot of the noise elements in the songs.
At beginning I simply had a beautiful clarinet solo, which I performed in many concerts, before I decided to transcribe more from my tapes. One of them was an actual “duet” between two wood thrushes. So I had an idea, suggested by nature: they performed their “solos” each in their own time, not “co-ordinated.” Also there were several individuals singing in a given environment. My decision to make a piece out of an environment of eight different thrushes would be an idealized one, not one you would would ever find in the woods. Individual scores performed in their own timed count was the solution to counterpoint and harmony. Both just happened, and I liked the result.
In New York I was using fabulous musicians, many of whom were distinguished improvisors. I wanted to expand the sound palette—especially the harmonic richness, by saturating the texture with overlaps. So I invented a guided score of processes that started with changing the duration ratios in the song, like expanding the length of the longer notes, shorter, speeds, registers, etc. This is all music stuff, not “nature.” This is where it rested until I made a really major shift in the perspective of the whole piece. I decided to find a way in which the environment’s “music” could combine with the local folk music (which I was then playing on clarinet in Cape Breton, Canada). They had outdoor fiddle festivals in rural sections where not far were some woods with thrushes and other birds. That was the image. I ended with this tri-part form: thrush songs enter additively; improvised processes on the songs; a “cacophony” when the folk musicians (I sometimes had a whole band, sometimes one or two folk musicians) enter with their own repertory right on top of the bird song improvisation. Then in a gracious gesture to my guest folk musicians, the bird song players fade out, the folk musicians band takes off through the rest of their suite, and has “the last word.”
In Tuba Thrush, I took the melody of one individual and orchestrated it to bring out what seemed to me like a harmonic progression. The title comes from finding a deer snort (remember at half-speed—on my field recording), and finding a sound on the tuba that the player uses first in his/her seat and then traveling out of hall, kind like the path of the startled deer away from the microphone. And I followed the actual sequence of phrases from my transcription. That was in the Flexible Orchestra, 2009, and is on the F.O. website. 11 flutes, viola, tuba, harpsichord. http://eamusic.dartmouth.edu/~larry/flexible_orchestra/
I’m now looking at a commission (American system—no money) from a trio in Japan: flute, violin, piano. I thinking of taking a recording I call “the ornate thrush” and re-thinking composition with bird song, so the story is not ended.
By the way, I now have a blog. Maybe I can put this interchange up there? I was probably good that you asked me. I haven’t really put it down anywhere before.
Hi, to Larry!
All the best!
Daniel
On Oct 24, 2011, at 11:41 PM, Maayan Tsadka wrote:
Hi Daniel,
I hope everything is going well with you.
Santa Cruz is beautiful as always, and since Larry arrived it is even more interesting.
it’s really great to have him here.
I saw that you have a flexible orchestra concert coming soon. good luck! what an interesting instrumentation.
Is this the same group you had last year? i wish i was there to come and listen. who are the composers?
I would love to write a piece for the orchestra, i guess it is too late for this one, but would love to take part in the future.
and for the birds question–
don’t know if you remember, back in the summer when i saw you i started working on that piece about birds (hummingbirds, rapid wing movement),
which ended up not having much to do with the bird due to the deadline, but i was facing this issue which i’d love to hear how you dealt with.
when you were working on your thrushes pieces ( and maybe also the mockingbird), how did you transformed it into a piece rather then just being a transcription of the bird calls?
did you use the inner structure of the calls in order to determine the overall form of the piece in anyway?
i hope i’m being clear here with this question… would love to hear from you if you have time.
take care,
maayan
Wed Nov 9 – 8 PM
Roulette – 509 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn
Performance by the Flexible Orchestra
Buy Tickets Here
Listen to a sample of last year’s French Arithmetic – 24m 23s
$15 General Admission
$10 Members/Students/Seniors
Flexible Orchestra was formed by composer, Daniel Goode, in 2004 with the purpose of having an ensemble of about fifteen sound as full as a symphony orchestra—through strategic orchestration. One larger section from one instrumental family gives the mass effect, plus a smaller section of varied instruments which is there to complement, contrast, and “spice up” the ensemble.
Featured will be Guy Klucevsek’s “Suite for Accordion and Flexible Orchestra.” This is the 2nd year of the “Accordions Plus” format for the orchestra, with five accordions, violin, cello, bass, flute, and percussion, conducted once more by Tara Simoncic, who has led the Flexible Orchestra since its debut in 2004. Guy will also be soloist in orchestra-member, Kamala Sankaram’s new commissioned work. Daniel Goode, artistic director and founder, will present “Adagietto-ed” which reworks Gustav Mahler’s “Adagietto” from the Fifth Symphony for the Flexible Orchestra, using toy accordions from Chinatown. Barbara Benary, director of Gamelan Son of Lion, long time collaborator of Mr. Goode’s, who composed for the “trombones plus” format of 2006, offers her “Accordingly,” featuring Kamala Sankaram, soprano. Bill Hellermann, co-director of the DownTown Ensemble will have a new work for the full ensemble and narrator.
The first Flexible Orchestra was 12 cellos, flute, clarinet, and trombone. Each format is planned to last two years. The second two-year orchestra was 10 trombones, 2 clarinets, 2 contrabasses, and piano with amplified viola, marimba, gamelan gongs added in one instance. All the music is composed expressly for the orchestra, or arranged for it. An added benefit is that with a section of cellos, or trombones, or flutes, or accordions already in place it is able to do revivals of mono-timbral works which rarely get performed after their premieres. So eight amplified cellos did an early Lois Vierk work; ten trombones did a early Frederick Rzewski work; eleven flutes did Henry Brant’s 1932 “Angels and Devils.” The orchestra has done arrangements of Christian Wolff, Kent Kennan, and others. The New Yorker called it “Daniel Goode’s big avant-garde combo,” and Time Out said the name of the ensemble “implies a certain frame of mind.” Both true!
Daniel Goode, composer-clarinetist lives in New York, is founder of the Flexible Orchestra a new concept in orchestral sound, co-director of the DownTown Ensemble, member of Gamelan Son Lion. Recent work is the opera, French Arithmetic premiered 2010 by the Flexible Orchestra’s concert of new works and revivals for its latest array of seven accordions, three strings.
This article first appeared in Roulette written by plwn on October 20th, 2011. Click here
Daniel Goode, composer-clarinetist, is founder of the Flexible Orchestra – a new concept in orchestral sound, co-director of the DownTown Ensemble, member of Gamelan Son Lion. On November 9th, Goode brings his Flexible Orchestra to Roulette.
ROULETTE: Tell us as about the work you’ll be doing at Roulette.
DANIEL GOODE: The Flexible Orchestra is my baby. “Invented” in 2003-04. My project is to reform the modern symphony orchestra. Its inflexibility of instrumentation first of all. Yeah, you can add the occasional electric guitar or schmoosaphone, or something, but basically you’re stuck with the old tried and true format. So I made up a paradigm format that expresses the meaning and intent of the orchestra in my opinion (I theorized a bunch in the Letter From Vienna): one large section of one family that gives the “massed” or “chorale” effect (like the strings in the trad. orch.) but DOESN’T always have to be strings. LIke ten trombones, or twelve cellos, or eleven flutes, or now seven (this year five) accordions. THEN, you need smaller numbers of other contrasting and supporting instruments: like 2 clarinets plus 2 double basses, plus piano (to go with the 10 trombones). Given my budget and my rehearsal loft size, I picked 15 instruments as the approximate total (give or take a few) and made those distributions and choices. All this is documented with programs scores, mp3s and pix at the Flexible Orchestra website
http://eamusic.dartmouth.edu/~larry/flexible_orchestra/
Go there and have a ball! I found a really talented young conductor, Tara Simoncic, who has made each concert an artistic success. All work (including arrangements which we happily do) must be commissioned since each combo is unique.
BUT, here’s a fabulous serendipity: we have a large section of trombones or flutes or cellos or accordions as a core to the group, so we can revive pieces written for multiples of these instruments that don’t get many “second” performances because of the difficulty of assembling such. So a ’60′s piece for multiple trombones by Fred Rzewski (“The Last Judgement” – a spin-off of the trombone solo near end of M’s Don Giovanni), Lois V Vierk’s “Simoom” for 8 amplified cellos, Bill Hellermann’s 1976 “to brush up on” for 6 cellos, Guy Klucevsek’s “Spinning Jennie” for 7 accordions, Henry Brant’s classic 1932 “Angels and Devils” for 11 flutes. So we plug these in to a program of all new pieces by famous or not famous wonderful composers. (See programs on web site). Then, I’m so proud of this: because it’s an idea not a specific group of people the orchestra can spring up anywhere where these combos can be assembled. So next July 14 in Wroclaw, Poland (that’s “Vrotzswaff”) we are funded to do a concert using the first format, 12 cellos-flute-clarinet-trombone, with local Polish composers and some of our American repertory.
R: Are there working artists today with whose work you identify, or rather, who do you consider to be your peers?
DG: Well, the composers I like are, as you might expect, the ones we program on the Flexible Orchestra: Barbara Benary, Kamala Sankaram, Bill Hellermann, Guy Klucevsek, Jordan Nobles (Vancouver), Christian Wolff, Philip Corner, Skip LaPlante, Jim Fox, and on and on (see programs).
R: What are some defining characteristics of the musical scene you would fit yourself into? What elements of your scene differentiate it from what has come before, or what is happening now?
DG: I’ve been on the scene in NY since 1971 (not counting grad school at Columbia in the ’60s. I’ve always been in the avant-garde or whatever the new music scene is or was from the world of Cage, minimalism, world music (or new music for gamelan ensemble—Gamelan Son of Lion). Did lots of solo clarinet (extended and circular breathing techs) at XI and Roulette—of West B’way days. Started with Bill Hellermann the DownTown Ensemble in 1983 because there were NO repertory groups of the very new (only Composer X’s Ensemble–you know who I mean) type of thing existed based on the one-man show art exhibits. So we dissented from this as non-communitarian art. Our friends and us had no ensemble taking care of our needs. New groups, high-technique conservatory trained groups not composer-performer groups which we were, added to the scene in the late ’90s. I think they are more conservative than we are at the DownTown Ensemble. Our ties go back to the original revolutionary composers of the late ’50s through the ’60′s etc. I recently deplored the world of the Stone which lets the composer shoulder the financial burden of the concert—which is where we all began. I titled my two little articles “We’ve Been Demoted” (see attachment).
R: What was the last music you listened to?
DG: Just finished listening to a CD from Australia called “Ecopella.” Fun madrigal and folk-song style chorus on original pro-environment lyrics and music. Why not! But New York Kool it’s not! Last night I went to the new Freddy’s Back Room to hear my friend and sometime collaborator, Bonnie Barnett, improvising experimental vocalist playing with bassist extroadinaire, Ken Filiano. Great. She also did a set at ABCnoRio with guitarist extraordinaire, Anders Nilsson.
R: Is there an event or experience that led you to start in experimental media?
DG: In the late ’60′s I discovered myself on experimental clarinet. And started really enjoying playing other’s new music scores in ensembles.
R: Who do you see as instrumental in your development as an artist?
DG: No one person to point to in going into new music. The scene in Southern CA at UCSD was hot with composers, performers, ideas flowing all over the place. Then continuing in Soho in the ’70′s.
R: What is interesting to you about your own work?
DG: I’m really pushing all my inner resources now. Continuing instrumental orchestra music with my Flexible Orchestra pieces since 2004. Now adding opera and political cantata type of music. I’m working on my “One-Word Opera.” And my first opera, “French Arithmetic.” Working on a second one-act: “Puppet Dance, and Opera-Ballet.”
R: Do you do other things aside from music?
DG: I’m writing more about music now, and in a personal voice. Published by Frog Peak Music, and in occasional issues of the blog, “Deliberately Considered.” I’ve got my own blog now, http://danielgoode.com/
This piece was originally posted on Jeffery Goldfarb’s excellent web site “Deliberately Considered” on September 21st 2011 [Click Here]
To read Marvin Taylor’s response to this post [click here]
To read my response in turn [click here]
The tendency to reduce an understanding and appreciation of cultural achievements is a limitation of the thought in Marx and Marxism, as I suggested yesterday. Such reduction, though, is actually a more general problem, as is explored here in another of Goode’s thumbnail reviews about music and life. -Jeff
Why should we care? Because some of us love the music. Some of us even commit that chauvinist crime of saying: “He’s the greatest Jewish composer” as if there were a contest out there. (He was reviled with anti-semitism in Vienna during his lifetime, especially around his directorship of the Vienna Court Opera). But two of the most progressive conductor’s, Leonard Bernstein and Michael Tilson Thomas (both Jewish), both of whom regarded Mahler as central to their lives, are just full of the usual clichés about him. Oh, like: that those wonderful and suggestive, disintegrating endings to his final works are “about death” or about his death. Well, maybe they are, but HE never said that.
The latest slew of these interpretations came in a visually elegant public television program conceived by Tilson Thomas called “Keeping Score.” I won’t list instances here, maybe some other time. Actually the best one-liners came from the first clarinetist, Corey Bell, of the SF Symphony (featured in the film). He spoke about the “skin-of-your-teeth tonalities” in the Scherzo of the 7th Symphony, and of the “corners to hide out in.”
Thomas does get off one perceptive analysis: tracing the use of the musical “turn” from Mahler’s first work, “Songs of a Wayfarer” to the final movements of his last two completed works. And the importance of the tone, A, in that early work and then in the climax of the first movement of his 10th Symphony.
A final shot of Thomas at Mahler’s grave in Grinzing, a suburb of Vienna, shows without comment, stones placed in the traditional Jewish manner on top of the Mahler’s gravestone. His remains were not allowed to be buried in the same cemetery as Beethoven and Schubert. “Those who love me will find me” he said.
This originally was published in an edited version on Jeffrey Goldfarb’s blog, “Deliberately Considered.”
I’m giving all my papers (that’s everything: music, writings, art works, letters, recordings) to the Fales Collection at the NYU library: Bobst Library on Washington Square South in New York. I’ve already given them a lot of stuff. They’ve got it archived. They’re transferring media to digital format. Curators, researchers, curious souls can go look! Tell me what you find!
