POV - Morton Feldman Recordings

I will seek out the CPO release then, thanks!

There's something about the photo on the cover of this LP that is just so strange:

http://www.theoriginalsoundtrack.com/art/mortonfeldman.jpg

For me, I like Coptic Light the best. The thing with Feldman is that the shorter a piece is, the more musical information there is, as for longer pieces it's the opposite.
I'd also reccommend the ECM recording of 'The Viola In My Life' that came out some years ago. Stellar perfomance and sound quality. The last section with orchestra and viola is very moving.

Just dropped for this: http://www.hyphenpress.co.uk/music/morton_feldman_jazz_tributes

Looks fun, I'll let you know.

i can't really afford to go to this. but can i really afford to not go? probably my one and only chance, no?

http://www.glasgowconcerthalls.com/whatson/event/105058-Minimal-Extreme:-The-Smith-Quartet:-Feldman%27s-Quartet-No.2-%286-hours%29

This Thur:

http://www.cafeoto.co.uk/golden-fur-morton-feldman-patterns-in-a-chromatic-field.shtm

That Feldman perf was pretty good, can sink into those shapes for hours -- which is good since he writes material that tends to go well over an hour -- we need more of those quiet performances so that we can hear it against creaky chairs and sirens going round on a late and hot London evening.

Grear new release: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/aug/15/feldman-crippled-symmetry-review?INTCMP=SRCH

GreaT, that is.

anyone heard this one?

http://www.moderecords.com/catalog/238feldman.html

Yup... another winner. Other newish releases: Matchless have put out a couple of DVDs of John Tilbury performing piano + chamber group pieces. Absolutely spellbinding.

For John Cage at the Purcell Room: http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/find/music/classical/tickets/for-john-cage-by-morton-feldman-68641

No intermission, sober Monday night - just pay, watch away from all (right near the top of Purcell), zone out for 80 mins, then fuck off.

My definition of a perfect gig.

"For John Cage" might be my fave Feldman piece (by a narrow margin--was the first one I ever heard of); sounds like an amazing opportunity for Londoners to hear it (10 pounds seems like a steal for something like that)...

I've got a ticket for this. Really looking forward to it - first Feldman I'll ever see live.

£5 student ticket! this and fushitsusha playing a five minute walk from my house, london is making a mockery of my resolution to attend fewer concerts this coming year.

this was good but i cannot express how annoyed i was by the older lady next to me who kept coughing and smacking her lips and burping and tapping her feet and making various other noises. i guess i'm a bad cageian. :(

lol when i went to the free john cage performance w/ john tilbury in glasgow concert halls recently, two little old ladies sat in front of us were in a state of increasing disgruntlement, which climaxed w/ one turning to the other, during a long silent passage, and quite audibly saying, "what rubbish"! like you, i tried my very best to see it as a cageian intervention. they didn't return after the interval.

haha 'what rubbish', how are there still people who will go to a free john cage performance in 2012 and react that way

Lol, in that same Feldman concert @ Purcell a man was snoring away for about 5 mins but actually I am so used to this kind of thing I tend to use it to add concentration and work with it. I had a whole thing I wanted to write about on this but I had to sleep myself when I got back and then forgot about it...

Anyway I would say it should be seen as a real part of concert going - its there, so actively use it.

Anyway, More Feldman and Tilbury in London

My other experience of 'what rubbish' came @ Wigmore hall, in a Renaissance choral recital. This was also programmed with contemporary works and I sat next to two very suited up guys getting very pissy at one of the (admitedly very poor) works. They left at half-time but they missed truly awesome Madrigals in the 2nd half.

I've seen a lot more Feldman in live performance now than I had when this thread was started. It's such a challenge so much of the time. Basically, anything written for less than four instruments is going to be so intimate and spare that you can nearly bet at least one person is going to lose their composure in a way that breaks concentration for the entire room, either by fidgeting loudly or by falling asleep. But I agree you've got to use it, as good as this music sounds as isolationist personal 3AM listening, it really is meant as music for live performance and everything social that entails

The one exception to this I've gotten to witness is 'Rothko Chapel' -- there's a bit more dramatic movement in that piece than most others, and also the physical presence of the chorus on stage keeps everyone magnetized -- when will they sing? And then, once they do, it's out of nowhere. Even at SF's Davies Symphony Hall, which seats nearly 3000 and is notoriously filled with season ticket holders who inexplicably bring plastic bags with them for the seeming and sole purpose of nervously crinkling them during all the most suspended moments -- when Tilson Thomas did 'Rothko', I had never, ever heard Davies that quiet. It was on the bill with Mozart's 'Requiem', I was expecting the traditionalists to be at their most cranky, but nope, 'Rothko' is just a masterpiece

http://www.discogs.com/Morton-Feldman-New-Directions-In-Music-2/release/1218389

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeFnpPNSLug

this is still the first piece I usually play people who ask me about Feldman and it's still so under-recognized for being such a hallmark work in the history of process music. Everyone's made the connection between minimalism and the early tape-loop/tape-delay pieces by Riley/Oliveros/Reich and later Eno, but even before those works, there was 'Piece For Four Pianos' where four people play the same piece of sheet music, but pick their own tempo, so the same chord sequence slowly starts recombining itself into different patterns

it came out on Columbia in 1959, so pretty much everyone heard this, it wasn't some obscurity sitting unreleased for 30-40 years

xpost The two things I have been lucky to see here in NYC are Patterns In A Chromatic Field and Rothko Chapel, the two sides of the divide you mention. Luckily the former was in a small turkish rug shop that seated... maybe 40 people? so the intimacy was not hindered.

sure hope I get to see Patterns In A Chromatic Field in a Turkish rug shop someday

it ruled so hard. La Monte was there or someone who looked just like him.

All 4/5 perfs of the small late works I've attended over the years have been in small-ish venues to no more than 50 people. Seen quieter music, disrupted by others or outside traffic. A fact of concert going life. Almost think it was these kinds of experiences with yawning ladies that led Cage to his theories as much as the Buddhist-musical-theoretical mumbo jumbo.

If a performance is disrupted by a siren think of Varese.

Incidentally, I recommended Feldman to a friend when she asked me what type of classical music she could do her ironing to. I know I know..

also good for folding laundry

it has many uses

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6iekmPrvL1qb9wqio12_250.gif

Last night was p/good - all of these pieces add to one another when played in succession in an unbroken spell - you notice how certain sounds stay on for longer than they should, others are cut off at their peak, and the clashes between all of these sounds that actually do not clash.

There were risks w/the programming: Madame Press Died Last Week at Ninety (a transcription of a piece for ensemble) and Piano (Three Hands) (the third hand supplied by Tilbury's cousin) both took a turn toward a blandness I didn't think Feldman was capable of. But it set the scene for Palais De Mari. Tilbury made a few remarks and called the piece sumptuous but what's impressive is how he undercuts that quality at the most unexpected points and doesn't make a big show of deploying *avant-garde technique a, b, c...*, he is incredibly subtle about this.

Feldman called it Palais a distillation of all his music for piano but its a hard claim to examine and I'm not sure I agree with that.

This was full. I don't think Cafe Oto is that good a venue for recitals but it is the austerity venue for recitals. Sirens all round, you hear a lot of insecure posturing in the pre-concert conversation. Fine in the end, w/Cageian listening a must.

Furthermore you can see Tilbury's versatiliy - how many classical performers would put up w/that venue?

otoh he seems purely into Feldman...I was wondering how a pair up w/works by Webern would look like.

hmm i don't have/know Palais de Mari

i played the "late pieces w/ clarinet" last night. "clarinet and string quartet" just breaths in and out like a gentle warm thing.

ha i just got that album (as MP3s) from eMusic. It's less than 2 bucks for some reason!

Big thanks to all in this thread for the Feldman info. Had never listened to him before reading this a couple weeks ago (poked my head in as I've been having a lot of fun listening to 20th cent classical lately). Have pretty much listened only to him since. Really really fantastic stuff.

Initial faves are 'Rothko Chapel' 'for Philip Guston' and 'Viola in my Life' - though I've enjoyed pretty much everything I've heard.

Stoked that there'll be a performance of a Feldman piece in Boston on March 10th as part of a program with a buncha Webern.
Love it when something like that pops up just as I'm getting into somebody. They'll be playing something called 'Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello' - can't find on Spotify or Youtube... can anybody shed any light?

Again... much thanks, y'all. :)

It's his final composition. A remarkable one even after his unmatched run of longer pieces throughout the 80s. Words fail me, but - of course - you must attend!

Thanks for the info! Sounds fantastic... and I certainly WILL attend.

It's free too!

http://collagenewmusic.org/wp/?page_id=15

The concert was fantastic.

Was odd seeing Feldman's music performed by people for the first time. In stuff like 'Beckett' and 'Rothko' the sounds seem like things that just appear, rather than stuff played by humans. to me. haha

I was lucky to get to see Rothko live too, at Avery Fisher Hall a few years ago, and it was v transformative of my feelings about the music to actually SEE these kosmische barely-there colors actually emerging from ppl arrayed on a stage.

would love to see Rothko.
yeah. seeing it performed has def switched things up for me a bit, listening to him now. glad that's not just me being crazy.

was also weird what this slow-moving 80-minute piece did to time perception. after a bit, my gf was like "i could go soon" (haha). both of us were thinking maybe 25 minutes had elapsed... we looked at her phone and the piece was almost over. very odd.

Feldman associate Eberhard Blum passed away a week or two ago. Haven't seen any worthy obituaries yet. Also a remarkable performer of Cage and K. Schwitters, amongst others.

:-(

Yes one of those brilliant performers of the NY school.

Just picked up the Mode DVD of String Quartet No.2. Whoa.

Only an hour or so in, so... who knows, but WOW so far. Love this guy.

oh. that looks nice.

interested in hearing

mode 119 Morton FELDMAN, Vol. 7: Late Works with Clarinet - Clarinet and String Quartet; Bass-Clarinet and Percussion; Three Clarinets, Cello and Piano - Carol Robinson (clarinets); Diatoma Quartet, Paris.

It's very good. Bass Clarinet & Percussion is the highlight.

Haven't heard that one either. Certainly would like to.
I hadn't heard Feldman at all until this year. Now I can't stop listening... Bunita, Beckett, Rothko... pretty compelling stuff.

Seems he clear knocked it outta the park a bunch!

Stephane Ginsburgh has a handful of Feldman shows coming up with visuals by Kurt Ralske. Stoked this is hitting Boston:

Several performances of Morton Feldman this year, I dreamed of it!
And particularly happy to collaborate with visual artist Kurt Ralske

For Bunita Marcus and Triadic Memories (~ 3h)

12.4 - Spectrum, New York with Kurt Ralske, live video
26.5 - Nuits Botanique, Bruxelles with Kurt Ralske, live video
24.6 - Café OTO, London
11.7 - Museum of Fine Arts, Boston with Kurt Ralske, live video
And maybe more

24.6 - Café OTO, London

Summer is here early :-)

I assume this is old news, but WOW these conversations are illuminating/entertaining. Well worth your time if you haven't checked them yet.

https://archive.org/details/CageFeldman4

John Cage and Morton Feldman recorded four open-ended conversations at
the studios of radio station WBAI in New York. These meetings spanned six months between July 1966 and January 1967, and were produced as five "Radio Happenings". Both were at transitional points in their music. Cage had completed Variations V in 1965 and Variations VI and VII in 1966, and would publish "A Year from Monday" in 1967. Most of Feldman's important work was yet to come. These conversations between two old friends, relaxed, smoking, and throwing out ideas, are full of laughter and long ponderous silences. They form an incredible historical record of their concerns and preoccupations with making music, art, society, and politics of the moment.

'for john cage' performance tonight @ Oto:

http://www.cafeoto.co.uk/aisha-orazbayeva-mark-knoop-morton-feldman.shtm

http://www.city.ac.uk/events/2015/february/aisha-orazbayeva-and-mark-knoop-violin-and-piano

Same duo at it again 10th Feb.