Another interesting arrival from MELA:

John White, born 1936. An obscure English composer and pianist.

He has performed and/or recorded with Cornelius Cardew, Morton Feldman, Christian Wolff, Brian Eno, Harold Budd, Christopher Hobbs, Gavin Bryars, and Michael Nyman, AMM.

He has been a member of the Scratch Orchestra, London's Gabrielli Brass Ensemble, Promenade Theatre Orchestra, Garden Furiture Music Ensemble, The Hobbs/White Duo, and LIVEBATTS!!

He participated in ensembles introducing the music of La Monte Young, John Cage, and Christian Wolff to English audiences.

His repertoire includes works by Satie, Poulenc, Busoni, works by his colleagues of "The New English Piano School", including Cardew, Hobbs, Dave Smith, John Tilbury, Hugh Shrapnel, howard Skempton, Michael Parsons, Brian Dennis, and Laurance Crane.

John White will be performing solo piano works on Saturday, October 12th at 8:00pm, and with his electronic chamber ensemble on Sunday, October 13th at 1:30pm, at the Greenwich House Music School, at 46 Barrow St. in New York City.

If you are interested in attending a performance and would like further information or to reserve seats, please contact John Emr via email at [email protected], or call 212 533 5639. Seating will be available at performace time. Donation $10.

Our invitation is located in the "photos" section of this group.

Fancy there being somewhere where being �obscure� and �English� is a plus point! Actually the credentials are pretty persuasive. I found a site but there were no mp3s. I looked at various Pauline Oliveros sites � she runs her own record label which has some tempting stuff on it. I have been playing that Lamonte Young chord a lot � different inversions different instruments � the overtones emerge over time as you concentrate, Potter leave LmY playing fast patterns on this chord and its cousins. This began to register as a possible avenue for experimentation.

I tried the Gilbert�s second accompaniment to the hexachord tune and sent him an mp3 with a dhorn clarinet on it. I think there is probably a better interpretation than that one lurking somewhere � but it�s a start. We talked about the idea of a set of five small pieces. But Gilbert mailed back a positive reaction � so maybe we will bank this for now. I made the mistake of trying to do noth pieces in the same Cubase file � confusion. I suppose I must be getting old.

I have finished the Lamonte Young chapter in Potter � he sees LmY crossing the line between Minimalism and Maximalism with the Well Tuned Piano. This is not a line I find very inspiring � say apart from Reich�s Music for 18 Musicians.

So I am left with dream chord � C F F# G. I sketched something on the Yamaha XG box that had very low vox humana drones. I have also found a way of thinking the dream chord through as an improvisational basis �using fifths logic. If you take a half step from the upper note of the interval of a fifth � and repeat � you go through all twelve notes:

C F F# G�����Ab Dd D Eb����E A Bb B

It was this methodology on the Fifths Hexachord which took Gilbert and I to the one a half pieces we completed this week. So this Dream Sequence has to be a candidate for the next move toward the Five Short Pieces that we want this to become.

Riley always follows Young � because they were the first two to meet. Terry Riley�s character emerges so positively from Potter�s account. Lamonte Young (amongst all his other great inventions) seems to have invented many aspects of the hippie life-style � but Terry Riley just picked up the lifestyle and went with it. He is really haphazard about curating his oeuvre and according to Potter �lives in the present to an unusual degree for a man in his 60s�. Well that�s an aspiration for us all.

I have two early Riley CDs from the marvelous Organ of Corti label � the first has Dorian Reed Streams and a Scandinavian jazz version of in C. The second has an early collaboration with Lamonte Young � which I have a better idea of post-Potter, Mescalin Mix which I find difficult and the extraordinary Music for the Gift with Chet Baker playing So What. Potter discusses the way that the semitone shift up in the bridge of So What works in Riley�s time lag accumulator device � a great observation There is no question that the Coltrane-Miles move away from chromaticism to a modal approach had a major impact on both Young and Riley � both of them followed him into high register saxophones. (I even bought a soprano in 1968 ready for Cambridge with some redundancy pay). However the point is that the semitone shift in So What accumulates against the home mode to create a multi-chromatic transition. It seems Riley was rather annoyed when Reich scored an early hit with his tape phase pieces.

I actually managed to set up some visits to Leamington etc flats � this is progress indeed � scheduled for next Tuesday. This has to be a positive step. All I have to do is sort my tax return.

News of Clinton in Africa on www.kwase-kwaza.org - Kevin Spacey is in the party.