If Tigers Were Clouds
Sounds from the heavenly orchestra? Revelations from the junk yard? Quarter-tone Chinoiserie? Yoko Ono with sticky tape? The American experimental tradition in music goes to the heart of the pioneer spirit. These rugged individualists, sonic prospectors, and intransigent iconoclasts — composers who have forged their own paths, come what may — often find the sort of lasting place in our collective imagination that eludes their less adventurous contemporaries. Billings, Ives, Cowell, Partch, Cage, and Nancarrow loom large among the usual suspects like adamantine faces on new-music’s Mount Rushmore. But where are the women? Was it really only Ruth Crawford-Seeger who stepped out of the kitchen for a while?
“If Tigers were Clouds lifts the lid on that crock, unleashing a panoply of potent flavors, a swirl of alluring fragrances, and enough joyous noise to tip the scales mightily toward some semblance of gender parity. Here are women who have been there all along, “Mavericas” to some, insufficiently sung heroines to others, each doing her own thing(s)—sometimes right under men’s noses, too often under their thumbs, and nearly always overshadowed. It’s time to stir things up. Zeitgeist, one of the nation’s longest-running new-music ensembles, has CDs of music by Harold Budd, Terry Riley, Fred Rzewski, Eric Stokes. They rock. All premiere recordings Detailed booklet included Enhanced CD
