Iain Cameron's Diary
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2003-02-28 - 11:21 a.m.

I keep losing this stuff - so I am writing it shorter and shoter.

Flutes so cheap here - Armstrong solid silver for $550 and a Yamaha 2 series for $380. Fortunately neither of them is quite me.

I got some Stockhausen lectures at the Julliard Music School bookshop. Very strong tie ins with the discoveries I am making about the NY School eg issues coming out Wolff's memories of being taught by Cage and some of the pieces I got on a Cage pno music CD in the JMS sale - 1940s dance music - deeply attractive stuff.

You can start with this music and look at how Wolff developed the formal ideas that Cage believed structured it - and also how Webern's music influenced both this development but also Stockhausen's deep and powerful formal thinking.

On top of that is the number theory and also the metatonal concepts of Randy Sandke. Heady stuff.

I got into a free concert last night at the Julliard School - a recreation of the music of Stan Kenton. Its a kind of punk progressive music from the same period. Kenton presented himself as an "intellectual" who was taking modern ideas and mixing them in new combinations. All the critics laughed. What last night's concert had was seven extra layers of musicianship which you dont get on the records of the period - plus a state of the art concert hall and sound reinforcement. I was in row 5.

The brass was just extraordinary - some hispanic kids in there including the high note specialist - I guess they play lots of salsa to pay their way. The trombones were smooth and controlled and the saxes gloriously idiosyncratic. A couple of Fr horns and a Sousaphone joined in for the second half.

I especially enjoyed listening to how 19 and 20 year olds who chose to go into this tradition approach the art of improvisation - for me this was like the night that Randy Brecker played the Miles/Gil Evans ouevre with the London Sinfonietta at RFH - except last night I was nearer the front and the concert was free.

Miles went to Julliard - for about 15 minutes and then he left to join Parker's band.

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