Sofie:

Here's the copy for the rest of the poster. I want you to have some fun with it, so we can make it less commercial and more playful than I've described it before. The exception to this is the address side of the mailer which should be strictly business so it conforms to the mail requirements AND states the basic information for reference. But the back side of the mailed piece should look as interesting as possible ! Play around with different possibilities for where the picture and the black and white screen of the lava should go, and with different sizes and shapes of the type in the layout. I've put some texts from other authors that describe what I want this music to be in the copy below for the back side: the phrases not in quotes should be bigger, look interesting, and also be associated with the quotes that follow. You can make the quotes be really small, but it would be nice if they didn't look too academic, like maybe they could flow into some irregular shaped paragraphs, or something like that. The straight ahead description of the piece should be fairly prominent and easy to read.

What follows contains instructions all in capitals, or separated from the copy by starting on a line with dashes, ------------ like this

FOR THE ADDRESS SIDE OF THE MAILER:

------------the bulk mail permit EXACTLY as shown on their other poster ------------return address EXACTLY as shown on their other poster

------------then under the address:

New Langton Arts presents the premiere performances of:

LAVA by Chris Brown

an environmental music performance for brass quartet, four percussion and live electronics with an ensemble led by William Winant and Toyoji Tomita

September 29 and 30, 1992, (Tuesday and Wednesday) at 8:30 PM Great American Music Hall, 859 O'Farrell St., San Francisco

Tickets are $10 ($8 for students and New Langton Arts members), available through the GAMH Box Office (415-885-0750), BASS (510-762-BASS), and New Langton Arts (415-626-5416).

LAVA is a commission from New Langton Arts of San Francisco with generous support from the Wallace A. Gerbode Foundation of San Francisco.

------------The last paragraph can be pretty small, and at the bottom.

FOR THE SIDE OPPOSITE THE MAILER:

------------ straight ahead description below:

LAVA is an evening-length work for brass quartet, four percussion, and four channels of electronic sound generated interactively by a computer controlled, signal processing system. The piece works with the movement of sounds between the acoustic instruments and a four channel sound system installed around the audience at whose center are the musicians. The model for the music is a volcano, evoked by the quickness and intensity of molten sounds, which are all live electronic transformations of sounds from the instruments, moving from the center out into space, creating an enveloping musical landscape.

------------quotes and titles below:

Fire Ceremony:

"everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing stays fixed...this universe is an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular measures and going out by regular measures. It throws apart and then brings together again; it advances and retires. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony. The hidden harmony is better than the obvious." --Heraclitus

Corroborree: ("from Australian, a nocturnal festivity; also, a tumult; uproar") - Webster's

"an unsung land is a dead land: since, if the songs are forgotten, the land itself will die...all "goods" are potentially malign and work against their possessors unless they are forever in motion... The Ancients sang their way all over the world...wherever their tracks led they left a trail of music. " --Bruce Chatwin Songlines

Designs in Time:

"The sandpainter 'paints' loosely upon the ground by letting the sands flow with control and skill through his sensitized fingers...every color and line forms a precious seed to resurrect into a quickening force" --David Villasenor Tapestries in Sand

FOR THE INSIDE FOLD-OUT PART:

LAVA

Lava (from lavare, to wash), the burning, liquid rock flows out over the earth's crust, destroying the life in its path, but also cleansing and fertilizing the soil. LAVA describes a primordial state of flux, the transmutation of one material into another through a streaming of intensely concentrated energy.

The fluid motion of burning lava streams is imitated by a score that describes all musical elements as states of change, without fixed pitches, only as directions of pitch, timbral and dynamic change; and by the use of simultaneously occurring, multiple tempi indicating when such actions begin and complete, co-ordinated with electronic click-tracks heard by the musicians over headphones. The resulting texture is a complex phasing of turbulent, yet gradually changing parts played out in counterpoint to repetitive, spatialization patterns formed by sounds from the instrumentalists being captured, electronically transformed, and moved around the hall. Although it occasionally erupts, the slow unfolding of systematic processes in LAVA also evokes a geologic, evolutionary sense of time.

New music composer/performer Chris Brown is a San Francisco pianist and electronic instrument builder who is currently Co-Director of the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College, where he teaches composition and electronic music. Brown's compositional work focuses on the use of live, interactive electronics to extend the sonorities of traditional acoustic instruments, and has been performed in collaboration with some of the most innovative new music composer/performers of today. He performs regularly with the ensemble "ROOM", including saxophonist/composer Larry Ochs, percussionist William Winant, and computer music specialist Scot Gresham-Lancaster; and with "THE HUB", an interactive computer music band that is creating a new genre known as Computer Network Music.

William Winant has been described as "one of the best avant-garde percussionists working today", and has devoted his career to the performance of contemporary classical and improvised musics. He is the principal percussionist with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and the Cabrillo Music Festival Orchestra, and is also well-known for his work with the Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio. Winant has made first recordings for such composers as John Cage, Morton Feldman, John Zorn, Lou Harrison, and Peter Garland and has performed with some of the leading musicians of today, including Pierre Boulez, Keith Jarrett, Steve Reich, the Kronos Quartet, John Zorn's Naked City, and Oingo Boingo. He teaches percussion at the University of California at Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, and Mills College.

Toyoji Tomita studied trombone at Julliard in New York and the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, and the Didjeridu (an ancient Australian aboriginal instrument) and modern literature and performance with Stuart Dempster at the University of Washington in Seattle. In 1977 he won first prize at the Gaudeamus International Concours for Interpreters of Modern Music in Rotterdam, Holland, and subsequently toured extensively as a solo recitalist in France, Belgium , Holland, and Germany. Since 1983 he has also performed as a dancer with Ma Fish Co., directed by Margaret Fisher, and he is currently on the faculty of Mills College where he co-founded the Mills College Didjeridu Ensemble.

Lava is a commission from New Langton Arts of San Francisco with generous support from the Wallace A. Gerbode Foundation. Langton is a primary Bay Area institution in the presentation of non-commercial and non-academic contemporary music. The music program presents works in such genres as computer music, electronic and tape music, and music using artist-made instruments, with a special emphasis placed on presenting composer/performers in concert.