[silence] 1969: "The Music of Conlon Nancarrow"

[S.E.M. Ensemble]

Dear Mr. Miller,

Please, don¹t try to construct world-shattering conlusions from a rather
small part of the music-making at the Cunningham dance events.  In 1964,
when I performed with the Cunningham Co.  (& Cage $ Tudor & Rauschenberg)
there was a piano piece played over the loudspeakers ­ I don¹t think it was
announced who the composer was, but I may be wrong. The playing was
technically so demanding that it was clearly not humanly possible to play
that way. I asked Tudor and he said ­ no no, this is a mechanical piano
recording. It was Nancarrow they played. No big deal. No one was fiddling
with any electronics, just a straight recording playback.
Petr Kotik

On 2/19/07 7:29 PM, "    David P Miller" <dpmiller@world.std.com> wrote:

> Hello everyone,
> 
> Here's a bit of a puzzle. Nothing urgent, but a matter of curiosity. I was
> reading a "Playbill" theater program, for the Cunningham Company's
> performances at the Billy Rose Theater, NYC, January 1969. That series
> included one afternoon performance titled "The Music of Conlon Nancarrow,"
> with Cage, Tudor, Gordon Mumma, Viola Farber, and Peter Saul credited as
> performing. The program note mentions that, after a meeting in Mexico
> City, Nancarrow "suggested the idea of [his Studies for Player Piano]
> being electronically varied in live performance. Thus, the nature of this
> concert is a collaborative performance of electronic music, theatre, and
> dance, which has as its core a selection of the Nancarrow Studies."
> 
> Does anyone know of any further documentation of this event? I have looked
> online at the David Tudor Archives at the Getty and the catalog of the
> Performing Arts Collection at Lincoln Center. Also made an inquiry with
> the Cunningham Foundation archives, but nothing. It would be interesting,
> I think, to fill in this gap in our collective knowledge if we could.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> David M.
> dpmiller@world.std.com
> Jamaica Plain, Mass.
> 
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