Listening to Now. New Phonic Art

European jazz has roots not just in American jazz, but also in European classical music, especially the experimental music from the turn of the century.

New Phonic Art can stand as one example. It consisted of four avant-garde musicians:

Carlos Roqu Alsina. Born in Buenos Aires in 1941. Composer and pianist; studied composition with Luciano Berio; has been a freelance composer in Berlin since 1964.

Jean-Pierre Drouet. Born in Bordeaux in 1935. Premier Prix du Conservatoire de Paris for percussion.

Vinko Globokar. Born in Anderny, France, in 1934. Premier Prix du Conservatoire de Paris for trombone and chamber music; studied composition with Luciano Berio and Ren Leibowitz.

Michel Portal. Born in Bayonne in 1935. Premier Prix du Conservatoire de Paris for clarinet. Laurat des Concours internationaux in Geneva in 1963 and in Budapest in 1965.


from an Interview with Michel Portal:

"New Phonic Art was something else altogether; improvisation became a fashion and a formula, and it seemed like composers and musicians were afraid of losing control over what was played. So this was a test. Of course, there is the fact that we wanted to improvise, and improvisation has a quality of bringing together very good things and very bad things, but the will to improvisation is nevertheless very strong. For me, it was a conflict between the written tradition and what was "spoken," if you will. New Phonic Art was a tool of two composers who were trying to go in this direction [Stockhausen and Kagel], and also of performance.

<snip>

"But eventually we had to stop the group, because we had reached the limits of what could happen with the personalities of the players and with the ensemble. As it was pure improvisation, one could tell what the others were going to do before they did it. One of the musicians was a sad guy, and he'd always start his improvisations with a lament: "oooh, oooh, mmm... and I always thought "I know who's doing that!" No matter what he was doing or what anybody else did, that's always how it went. So, it was done. Also, it had become common to incorporate freedom into some sort of written form, as a tool, and that made more sense to us."

--http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=18096

Django lives.

...in the Twin Cities too.

France Travel Journal. Day 23 (Wed, June 22) - Toulouse

The end.

A pleasant day shopping, but forgot the wine gummies.

Home tomorrow before dark.

Planning next year.

This seems reasonable as a last thing:

France Travel Journal. Day 22 (Tues., June 21) - Toulouse

A varied day, ending with the Fete de Musique.

Morning: took metro to the memorial site of the 1814 Battle of Toulouse.  Much more interesting than I anticipated, though the site was just a monument and a plaque diagramming the battle.

But it made real an important part of the French Revolution, and also the geography of Toulouse.  Napoleon surrendered 2 days before the battle, but that wasn't know at the time.  He was exiled shortly thereafter.

Late morning: metro back to St. Cyprien, to look for 3 Wallace fountains.  We found them all!

Lunch: walked back to the Toulouse side of the Garonne and had lunch at a perky student restaurant.

Break: went to hotel to clean up and rest. Also stopped and purchased Calvados and Hypocras.

Late afternoon/evening:  walked to Garden Royale and Garden des Plantes to search out the remaining Wallace fountains.  We had given up finding the final one, but spotted it just as we were being chased out of the Garden des Plantes, which was closing for the night.

Then, the Fetes de Musique. Kate took many movies.  Great fun. Huge crowds. Lots of booming bass, and very interesting mix of novel instruments and electronic dj mashes.  Kind of a measure of what young musicians are doing today

France Travel Journal. Day 21 (Mon., June20) - Toulouse

The morning started quietly.  We were the last party for breakfast, and strolled a bit before walking up to Pam and Morgan's house for an extremely pleasant lunch.

I didn't see the house last year of course but it evidently was practically a ruin. This year it had become an elegant French house, with one floor built around a small garden. It was exquisite, and a fine of example of the life behind the door.  French streets and house fronts can look shabby, neglected, even rather soiled and off-putting.  But behind these is where the French live, with elegance and grace.

Later in the day we did some window shopping, and had an excellent dinner in the place St. George.  After, a walk along the Garonne to close the day.  There were many, many people relaxing on the banks of the Garonne.

(PS.  Also stopped at Barclay's to straighten out the credit card issue.  It was totally unlike a bank: no teller windows, just a receptionist and some offices.  We met with a 'personal' banker, who discovered that for some mysterious reason, my card had been cancelled.  However, the account was in good standing, and appropriately reflected recent transactions.  I was also able to arrange to have the mot de passage reset and confirm that travle and car rental insurance was covered by the card.  By the way, 'personal' was not entirely untoward.  She had introduced herself via email several months ago, and had a reconrd of our correspondence.)

This is not a French song, but much of it is sung in French. (Ok, a cheap post, but it brings me up-to-date.)

France Travel Journal. Day 20 (Sun., June 19) - Toulouse

We left Lunac in the morning, and drove to Toulouse.  After an unintentionally serpentine path into the centre, we parked the car, consolidated luggage and packages, and dropped them off at the hotel.

Lunch with Kate's Alliance Francais friend Ruiz, and his companion Christof.  I ordered Toulousian sausage, to to assure that I had a least one meal of it.

Then returned the car, and took the Navette back from the airport.

But the social day continued.  We had dinner with our friends Bertrand and Cecile at their home, and we joined by Pam and Morgan. Pam was hugely pregnant.  She's due on the 28th of June.

Here's some more Michel Portal.  It's a bit out of place -- the next posts really should be about the emergence of free jazz in France in the late 60's -- but given Portal's importance to French jazz, it really needs no apology.

France Travel Journal. Day 19 (Sat., June 18) - Lunac

(Feels like a bit of a sprint to keep the posts more or less current.  So this will be another short one.)

The weather was again uncertain, but we decided to take a walk anyway.  It worked out.  We walked without a plotted randonnee however, and looped back to our starting point earlier than planned.

So in the afternoon, we decided to drive into Villefranche de Rourgue.  We arrived late in the afternoon, so it was very quiet.  Villefranche is a bastid, and consisted of a central square and very gridded streets -- right angles and no meandering narrow paths.

Bastides were planned communities -- thus accounting for their regular layouts -- established by nobles to encourage commerce and produce new tax revenues.  Taxes were collected on trades, rather than production, which I imagine made them similar to sales taxes.  Peasants were encouraged to move into the bastide, and develop goods for trade, though they also kept their land for crop production, which was also was used in trade.

I've been trying to sort out how a bastide differs from a villefrance, but without success.  This is the first time wikipedia has come up short.