MANYSTREAMS (1993) by Chris Brown First Performance
performed by Room Larry Ochs, tenor saxophone William Winant, vibraphone and percussion Chris Brown, piano and electronics
"We live in a time not of mainstream but of many streams or even, that we have come to delta, maybe even beyond delta to an ocean which is going back to the skies." --John Cage
This piece uses an artificial scale generated by using successive intervals of major second, minor third/major second, minor third, etc. that has this interesting property: when the music occurs within a single octave it is consonant, primarily pentatonic like many folk and popular musics; but when it strays outside a local focus it develops more and more dissonance, eventually creating a polytonality that creates both harmony and discord.
It models for me the contemporary world of intersecting cultures in which we cultivate the simplicity and harmony of our local traditions while exploring the opportunity that the perspective of cultural multiplicity provides. Electronic, interactive, and recording technologies provide the net that keeps us aware of the whole, while allowing us to fragment into a glittering wash of individual streams, that nourish the soil. ---Chris Brown
"Room" 1986 marked the first performances of this ensemble characterized by its use of interactive electronic technology in the context of improvisational music. "Room" has since toured extensively on the West Coast, and particularly in Europe, with appearances at the Moers New Jazz Festival, the Taktlos Festival in Switzerland, and the Rheinische Musikfest in Cologne. "Room's" first recording was a CD in 1989 for the Sound Aspects label, and the most recent release was the 1992 "Hall of Mirrors", available on Music and Arts.
William Winant has devoted his career as a percussionist to the performance of contemporary classical and improvised musics. He has premiered compositions written for him by such noted composers as John Cage, Lou Harrison, Terry Riley, Somei Satoh, Gordon Mumma, Alvin Lucier, Frederic Rzewski, and Alvin Curran. He is a Visiting Lecturer in Music at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and is a member of the instrumental faculty of Mills College.
Larry Ochs is a member of the Rova Saxophone Quartet and has recorded for Black Saint, Hat Art, Sound Aspects, and Metalanguage Records. In 1983 he organized the first tour of a US new music group to the Soviet Union. He has collaborated with such composers as Alvin Curran, John Zorn, Butch Morris, Fred Frith, and the San Francisco Taiko Dojo, and in 1989 received a commission for the Reader' Digest Commissioning Program of Meet the Composer.
Chris Brown has performed his music throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe, including at five different New Music America Festivals, the Cabrillo Music Festival, the STEIM Symposium on Interactive Composition in Amsterdam, Tage fr Elektronische Musik Basel, and at the Bourges Festival in France. In addition to his work with "Room" he also performs with the computer-network music group "The Hub" and with the Glenn Spearman Double Trio. His recordings include "Snakecharmer", a CD of works for solo instruments and interactive electronics, and the forthcoming "Lava", both on Artifact Recordings. He currently teaches Composition and Electronic Music at Mills College, and is Co-Director of the Center for Contemporary Music.