Cover
Mark Applebaum
The Bible without God
Live Mouseketier Performances
Innova 649
Tray
CD 1
1-13. The Bible without God (2005) 34:00
14. Garden of Memory (2004) 7:07
15. Essl Museum (2002) 28:45
Total 70:02
CD 2
1. Wired Gardens (2003) 16:06
2-5. The Mind Altering Concert (2005) 57:46
Total 73:57
continuous performances; additional track indexes are provided for convenience only
March 12, 2005 marked a 12-year reunion. In 1993, David Tudor, then music director of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, invited me to compose music for a 90-minute Cunningham Event that the company was performing in Minneapolis. Entitled Flux-Arena-Rama, the Event was scheduled at the Target Center and was co-sponsored by the American Composers Forum and the Walker Art Center, both of which were undertaking a vast Fluxus retrospective at the same time. Those 90 minutes changed my life.
I performed on three original electroacoustic sound-sculptures, instruments intended equally for their extraordinary sonic qualities and arresting visual impact. Built out of junk, hardware, and found objects mounted on soundboards, I played them with chopsticks, violin bows, wind-up toys, plectrums, and my hands, modifying the sound, often in obscene excess, with a battery of live electronic gadgetry. (A 27-minute excerpt of this performance appears on Innova 511.)
On the morning of the performance I asked Merce if he wanted to hear some of the music I would play that evening. With a glint in his eye he instantly responded ÒOh no! WeÕll hear that during the performance.Ó The crew set up the floor and the sound system. The company began its morning class. I tightened the mousetrapÕs threaded rods and double-checked my doorstops, shoehorns, and Astroturf. Meanwhile, Merce was off in a quiet corner, cogitating on the uniqueness of the space (a basketball court, a space surrounded by the audience) and choreographed the entire dance.
It would be misleading to imply that he started from scratch. He was, in fact, making a unique sequence of dance phrases, passages of choreography that the company had in its repertoire, and when I say, Òhad in its repertoireÓ I mean knew in its sleep with unshakable precisions, based on an internal sense of time, and not tethered to a particular music. The dance that Merce created that day was complex and beautiful, an idiosyncratic series of long and short motives, sometimes in isolation and sometimes juxtaposed with other simultaneities—passages danced by solitary bodies and others by trio, quintets, and up to the full company, phrases oriented in every direction.
My music aspired to similar complexity and beauty. But it was never intentionally coordinated with the dance. Among their contributions to the world of art—and the art of collaboration—Merce Cunningham and John Cage invited us to experience the mysterious beauty of cohabiting media. The music and the dance, by chance, have coincidental moments of seeming congruity. And by chance, there arise coincidental moments of seeming polarity—like when the dance is slow and lyrical while the music is hyperactive and dissonant. But most of the time is spent in a fluid and abstract middle ground in which music and dance seem to collide at oblique angles. The audience is challenged to take this in, to witness unpredicted concurrence and to become aware of the mercurial manner in which their attention is directed from eye to ear and back again.
IÕve never gotten over this joyful experience in 1993. Although fleeting, it subtly changed the way that I compose all of my music and, more important, it altered the way that I look at the world. I am delighted that a Cunningham Event happened on the Stanford campus in 2005. It was an opportunity to share this unusual and exciting process—the collaborative creation of a once-only, site-specific intersection of music and dance—with my own community and the chance for a reunion. I am particularly pleased to have involved so many members of the Stanford community in its realization. Thirty-five eager students, faculty, and staff performed a 24-hour tag-team realization of Erik SatieÕs Vexations for solo piano prior to the site-specific event. The eighteen manic members of [sic]—the Stanford Improvisation Collective—performed the eventÕs overture (an outlaw rendering of John ZornÕs Cobra), and all sixteen intrepid students from my seminar Silence! The Music of John Cage are heard on this CD performing the score The Bible without God.
In 1963 a New York Times critic argued that the Merce Cunningham Dance Company would be more successful without John Cage and his music. Village Voice dance critic Jill Johnston responded that this would be like Òthe Bible without God.Ó
My score, The Bible without God, consists of thirteen parts performed on two antiphonal soundstages flanking the audience. From one soundstage I performed seven passages on my latest sound-sculpture, the Mouseketier. Built at Stanford in 2001, the Mouseketier has new innovations, but it also distills the best properties and materials from the earlier instruments I played in the 1993 collaboration.
The seven Mouseketier passages alternate with six short pieces played from the opposing soundstage. These pieces were composed for the sixteen talented students in my John Cage seminar.
Sixteen (track 2)
Sixteen is scored for bass clarinet, trumpet, trombone, celesta, xylophone, vibraphone, glockenspiel, crotales, triangles, cowbells, tam-tam, glass windchimes, guitar, violin, cello, contrabass, and variable natural objects—leaves, branches, etc. Like John CageÕs late ÒnumberÓ pieces, the players, synchronized by stopwatches, choose when to articulate given notes within specified time durations.
Mobile for Paper and Wristwatch: Alien Argot (track 4)
The second piece is actually two compositions performed
simultaneously. Eleven players
performed Mobile for Paper, a piece
whose ÒobjectsÓ—specific molestations of a piece of paper (crumpling,
tearing at various speeds, flicking, rubbing, folding, etc.)—can
may be played in any order. The remaining five players sang Wristwatch:
Alien Argot, a series of nonsense phonemes,
vocal clicks, and wheezes notated in the international phonetic alphabet and
sung in an indeterminate canon.
48 Objects (track 6)
In 48 Objects each
player chooses three objects that make interesting sounds when rubbed, shaken,
tapped, scratcheds,
blown, broken, twisted, torn, wound, folded, dropped, or waved. The score is reminiscent of early
pieces by John CageÕs colleague Morton Feldman: boxes, corresponding to units
of time, are either empty (to indicate silence) or filled with an integer (to
indicate articulations made by the corresponding object).
Keys, Strings, and Pencils (track 8)
At the heart of this work is a prepared piano, an instrument pioneered by Cage in which the strings have been overrun by various objects and attachments that drastically modify the pianoÕs timbre. The ensemble is divided into three groups. Five pianists perform at the keyboard, three at a time in tag-team fashion; when one performer wishes to play, he or she simply touches the shoulder of a pianist who then vacates a position at the keyboard. A second group consists of three artists who draw abstract notational specifications on cards with pencils; their drawing is audible because they sit at amplified desks. The third group, eight players standing in a single-file line, wait for the artists to produce completed cards which they immediately render in sound on the inside of the piano—plucking or scratching strings, playing directly with mallets or other objects. As soon as they complete their card, they return to the line to await the creation of another.
Circulation (track 10)
Circulation is based
on the Stanford campus map whose various icons have been rendered on 32
transparent sheets. Each player
independently aligns three sheets—a structure sheet (e.g. buildings,
fields), and an object
sheet (e.g. parking lot codes, loading zones), and a path sheet (e.g. the
walking route of John Cage seminar students from their individual dormitories
to the Event site, the walking
route of campus sponsors from their offices to the Event site).
On top of this is placed a window in the exact shape of the Campus Drive
loop; this window circumscribes the visual information that may be interpreted
by the players who individually determine the meaning of the lines, shapes, and
points, much in the manner of CageÕs process pieces.
Wristwatch: Geology (track 12)
Wristwatch: Geology is a composition for stones tapped together. The score appears on the face of customized wristwatches fabricated specifically for the piece. Players follow the second hand as it passes over various shapes. (A circle indicates one tap, a square four taps, a curled line rubbing, etc.) Because the second hands are not synchronized, the stones are heard in a canonic relationship.
The Bible without God was performed by:
Alex Bandza, trumpet, piano, found objects, paper, stones
Krystal Barghelame, celesta, piano, found objects, paper, stones
Molly Butcher, cowbells, voice, found objects, stones
Justine Lai, tam-tam, found objects, paper, stones
Henry Lee, cello, euphonium, piano, found objects, voice, stones
Cheri Li, violin, found objects, paper, stones
Michael Lindquist, contrabass, found objects, voice, stones
Spartacus Locus, bass clarinet, saxophone, found objects, paper, stones
Andy Meyerson, vibraphone, found objects, paper, stones
Kevin Montag, glockenspiel, piano, found objects, paper, stones
Aubrey Mu–oz, triangles, found objects, voice, stones
Drew Peterson, xylophone, piano, found objects, paper, stones
Karl Pichotta, crotales, violin, found objects, paper, stones
Nick Schlag, guitar, found objects, voice, stones
Matt Spitz, trombone, contrabass, found objects, paper, stones
Julianne Stern, glass windchimes, found objects, paper, stones
Mark Applebaum, mousketier electroacoustic sound-sculpture with live electronics
Garden of Memory, Essl
Museum, Wired Gardens, and the Mind Altering Concert were solo mouseketier
electroacoustic sound-sculpture performances with live electronics.
Does this last sentence belong here?
Only
one person can be the best at something.
Ralf Laue of Germany, for example, stacked 555 dominoes on a single
supporting domino. According to
the Guinness Book of World Records
this accomplishment has never been equaled. Presuming that you are not Ralf Laue, it seems safe to say
that you are not the best domino stacker.
This isnÕt a criticism; most people are not the best at any one
thing. Likewise you shouldnÕt get
upset with yourself if you are not the worst person at something. This status seems to be less
attractive, but it is an equally exclusive distinction. Guinness has not been particularly
scrupulous in its record-keeping of worsts, but suffice it to say, you are
probably not listed in its pages as the worst at something.
But
thatÕs just you. I am the best and
the worst at something. In fact,
it is the very same thing. And
does anyone care?
I
have never been and never will be the worldÕs greatest or worst pianist. I started piano lessons when I was
seven. Years later, and after
about 8,000 agonizing hours of practice, I could play some moderately demanding
classical music and I was reasonably adept as a jazz improviser. Audiences applauded at my concerts and
some musicians even looked up to me.
These affirmations conferred a respectable social standing within my
local music milieu and implied that I was a good pianist. But despite this, I knew that there
were just as many pieces that were well beyond my technical and interpretative
abilities. And the more I compared
myself with my favorite jazz pianists, the more I discovered my own
inadequacies. Once, while living
in Copenhagen during college, I attended an Oscar Peterson concert. The first half was inspiring; but by
the end of the concert my awe had degenerated into a resolve to quit jazz
piano. It seemed that I could never join the elite echelon of pros who
constituted my musical superheroes and, to tell the truth, when the going got
tough, I was uneasy being average.
Thankfully I did not abandon the piano
and my skills improve every day.
However, I continue to oscillate between euphoric confidence in my
abilities at one moment and the despair of mediocrity in the next. In 1990 I chose to respond to this
dilemma. More out of instinct than
by design, I invented a new instrument: the mousetrap.
The mousetrap is an electro-acoustic
percussion contraption, a musical Frankenstein built out of assorted junk and
found objects—threaded rods, nails, wire strings stretched through
pulleys and turnbuckles, plastic combs, bronze braising rod blow-torched and
twisted, doorstops, shoehorns, ratchets, squeaky steel
caster wheels, springs, lead and PVC pipe, corrugated copper gas tubing, toilet
tank flotation bulbs, Astroturf, parts from a Volvo gearbox, a metal Schwinn
bicycle logo, and mousetraps.
These disparate elements are mounted on a soundboard and, assisted by
contact pickups, amplified through speakers. To collect parts for the mousetrap I rummaged through junkyards, garages,
surplus stores, and warehouses.
Suspicious hardware store clerks eyed me nervously as I conducted
investigations into the acoustical properties of their wares. It was a feeling of accomplishment
when, weeks into my research, the same salesmen would excitedly welcome me into
the store, giddy with their own epiphanies: ÒMark, listen to how this thing
sounds when you hit it with this!Ó
My project became an informal and unexpected arts outreach program.
The
mousetrap turned out
to be only the beginning of an obsession, the first in a series of original
instruments that IÕve designed and constructed during more than a decade. Its progeny include the mini-mouse, the midi-mouse, the duplex mausphon, and six micro mice.
I call these instruments sound-sculptures because I am just as concerned with
their arresting visual impact as with their astounding sonic quality. The most recent sound-sculpture is the mouseketier, so-named for its multi-tier
design. I play it with a number of
different strikers and gadgets including Japanese chopsticks, knitting needles,
combs, thimbles, plectrums, surgical tubing, a violin bow, brushes, various
wind-up toys, corrugated Lego rail, and my hands.
Inventing
a new instrument provides immediate gratification: one instantly becomes the
worldÕs greatest player of that instrument. The problem is that one abruptly realizes that one is also
the worldÕs worst player. So the
satisfaction that comes from being novel is tempered by the fact that there is
no communal standard by which to form a meaningful judgment, no cultural
practice. The goal then is to
envision—to invent—the
skills that might constitute virtuosity on a unique instrument. Or, to think of it in historical terms,
to develop a classic and then mannerist state of the art from a pre-classic
antecedent. There is ample
latitude to do this within a culture of one. But it is also a lonely and challenging undertaking in the
absence of a community to inform and guide progress.
There
are many ways to measure the success of something, but to a
considerable—and embarrassing—extent, I measure my success against
that of others. As a pianist I
look intuitively at the vast community of piano players who provide abundant
measuring sticks. Experts can make
particularly sensitive measurements, but even the layperson is qualified to
make judgments. Most of us, at
least those who have participated broadly in Western culture, can make a crude
determination of whether a pianist is a beginning, intermediate, or advanced
player. Furthermore, we have an
approximate idea of what kind of effort and training might nurture the playerÕs
progress. We can do this because
we are familiar with the cultural practices associated with playing the piano. But what steps should I take to improve
myself as a sound-sculpture artist?
How do I assess my progress?
What are the correct performance techniques? Do these questions even make sense in a culture of one?
When
I started to invent instruments I found myself in a cultural vacuum. But I soon discovered compasses by
which to navigate the new terrain.
First, I certainly did not invent the idea of the sound-sculpture. While my instruments are unique, they
might be thought of as contributions to an entire genus of sound-sculptures,
some of which inspired mine. From
this observation I realized that I was part of a community, that I was
complementing a cultural discourse already in progress. It was small not large, marginal not
mainstream, but it was a community nevertheless, one that provided ideas for my
own development.
Second,
I drew upon more generic aesthetic models from art and music. I considered samples of art that I
admired, those paintings, sculptures, textiles, and architecture that seemed to
teach me lessons about form, rhythm, symmetry, and texture. And I considered traditional orchestral
and folk instruments and reflected on their timbral features, intonation,
dynamic range, and articulation.
These were all observations that informed my own approach to building
instruments and playing them. As
unconventional as my sound-sculptures are, they have a kinship with all musical
instruments and this suggests that my work is part of a very expansive
community indeed.
And
third, having dedicated myself to the development of sound-sculptures for more
than a decade I was able to apprehend the richness of my own history. With each new sound-sculpture I refined
the ergonomics, better integrated the electronic components, and improved the
soundboard design. With each
successive concert I added to a personal but increasingly detailed legacy of
performance practice, further broadened my technical facility, and defined an
idiomatic method. Compositionally
I found myself referring to recent and earlier aesthetic orientations. (In performance I will nostalgically
think to myself ÒAh, remember how I used to approach the doorstop in the
mid-1990s?Ó) It is an autobiographical
narrative, but it spans time and thereby provides historical perspective. By looking back, I see that I have come
some distance and this distance urges me to look forward.
Some
composers might disagree, but having the sound of a doorstop among the range of
timbral possibility is, for me, a huge (and now indispensable) advantage. Being able to digitally reverberate
that doorstop has its charms too.
So in my recent research I have focused on modifying the sounds with a
battery of electronic devices.
These devices allow me to reverberate the tone, add distortion or echo,
change the pitch, and warp the timbre in countless ways. I can accompany myself in performance
by recording and playing back live multi-track loops, make them sweep to the
left or right in the stereo field, speed them up, or slow them down. Perhaps just a trivial ornamentation at
first, the electronics have become a fundamental part of what now might be
called a hyper-instrument. There
is a subtle performance technique in the use of my electronics, and their
integration with the sound-sculptures requires deftness and practice. In my more delusional moments, I think
of myself as a super-coordinated human, like a virtuoso hiphop deejay operating
his or her playback equipment, or a NASA test pilot finessing complex flight
controls.
My
current problem is that it is impractical to carry all of my electronic gizmos
to every performance. Even though
I have developed a clever system by which non-essential, replaceable, and
robust pieces fly in my suitcase (usually wrapped in pajamas or sweaters) while
the more delicate pieces are crammed into my carry-on luggage, I still bump
into the airlinesÕ baggage limits.
Consequently, I have one behemoth set-up for local performances, a
modest set-up for domestic performances that require travel by airplane, and an
even smaller one for performances that necessitate international travel. I think it would be ludicrous to ask a
pianist to perform one night on a piano with the customary 88 keys, the next
night on a piano with no black notes, and the next night on a piano with no
sustain pedal. Yet this is
comparable to the musical challenges posed by the frequent changes in the
ergonomics and functions of my set-up from performance to performance. As such, I have multiple
hyper-instruments to master, not just one.
Practical
considerations—mundane things like gravity, money, and air
travel—really do have a puissant impact on the music. Even if I was artistically inclined, I
canÕt float around the stage during my performances; neither can I afford to
build a sound-sculpture out of gold; and, as mentioned already, my baggage
allowance presents another constraint.
In fact, the mouseketier
case was designed first on the basis of the maximum airline baggage dimensions;
the instrument came second. In
this regard, the culture of air travel, as distant from music as it may seem,
has had a direct impact on the physical circumscription of my invention that,
in turn, influences the music that I create.
I
cannot say whether or not my sound-sculptures have had an important impact on
the world. They have been seen and
heard in concerts throughout the United States, in Europe, and in Asia. And recordings of these instruments may
have traveled further. I do know
that they have engendered some fascinating intersections with other
artists. Among these were
opportunities to use my sound-sculptures in a collaboration with the Merce
Cunningham Dance Company; to compose a piece for the Paul Dresher Ensemble that
coupled my instruments with traditional ones like violin and bassoon;
to perform compositions
for mouseketier with
orchestra, chamber ensemble, and jazz
band; and to realize my Concerto for
Florist and Ensemble in
a performance that was surely both the best and worst of its genre. The sound-sculptures seem to provoke
interesting responses too.
Children are particularly attracted to them and display none of the
psychological encumbrances that make exploration tentative by adults. I am thrilled when, after a
performance, I overhear a bunch of concertgoers—usually young
persons—announce that they are headed straight to the garage to build
their own sound-sculptures. And
perhaps most gratifying, the sound-sculptures have challenged some of my
students to build their own instruments and to think about what might
constitute virtuosity in a new medium.
With
all of this interest in my sound-sculptures, it is clear that one day
conservatories of music will contain whole departments dedicated to the
training of mouseketier
players. College students will
debate the merits of one mouseketier player over another.
And the common person on the street will be able to distinguish between
beginning, intermediate, and advanced mouseketier performers. Okay, I realize that this is probably just a fantasy. But before we dismiss this unlikely
scenario entirely, we should keep in mind that all of our traditional
instruments were, once upon a time, singular, new, and alien. At some point in our history it was
unfathomable that a keyboard instrument such as the piano would enjoy such
broad appeal, familiarity, and legitimacy. One need only turn to the percussion instruments of the
orchestra to observe a more recent evolution of cultural cachet. The classical orchestra typically
included only timpani. The
exceptional use of the triangle in MozartÕs opera The
Abduction from the Seraglio was identified by European audiences, in
its time, as a transparent reference to exotic Asia Minor. But in my generation, the triangle was
simply one of many available percussion instruments in my kindergarten
teacherÕs box of musical tools—and I grew up in Chicago, not Turkey. Similarly, my great-grandparents might
have apprehended the xylophone and the marimba as icons of Southeast Asian or
Central American cultures; today, however, these are indeed among the prosaic
instruments of focus in a Western music education. So goes the fusion, colonization, and evolution of culture.
If
not a survival of the fittest instruments, there is a survival of the most
popular ones. And if not a natural
selection, there is a cultural selection that has bequeathed to us the rich and
evolving musical traditions we enjoy today. Conversely, for better and worse, we have lost numerous
instruments and instrumental practices, some of which we know of dimly through
historical documents and others that we can only imagine. One of our pleasant myths is that the
art that has survived throughout history has done so because of its intrinsic
greatness. But perhaps its survival
simply indicates that it was useful to those who had the agency to insure its
longevity. If that is the case,
then all of our actions—whether the invention of a new instrument, the
writing of a poem, the reading of books and viewing of films, the tasting of
food, the consumption of advertising, the practices we keep in business, law, dance,
and sport, the ideas we debate in politics and philosophy, the ceremonies we
undertake in our religions and in the rituals of our daily lives, the stories
that we tell and the memories that we keep alive, the celebration or
destruction of traditions, and the growth of new practices—are cultural
votes, forces that shape the world that future generations will inherit.
Mark Applebaum (b. 1967, Chicago) is Assistant Professor of Composition and Theory and John Philip Coghlan Fellow at Stanford University where he received the 2003 Walter J. Gores Award for excellence in teaching. He received his Ph.D. in composition from the University of California at San Diego where he studied with Brian Ferneyhough, Joji Yuasa, Rand Steiger, and Roger Reynolds. His solo, chamber, choral, orchestral, and electroacoustic work has been performed throughout the United States, Europe, Africa, and Asia with notable performances at the Darmstadt summer sessions, the Bourges Festival in France, ICMC in Beijing and Singapore, ItalyÕs Festival Spaziomusica, the Young Nordic Music Festival in Sweden, Sonic Circuits in Hong Kong, AmsterdamÕs Great Virtuoso Slugfest, SEAMUS, strictly Ballroom series at Stanford UniversityÕs CCRMA, the Woodstockhausen Festival in Santa Cruz, ISCM, the BONK Festival, the College Music Society, the Southeastern Composers League, NWEAMO, the Florida Electro-Acoustic Music Festival, the Northwestern University New Music Marathon, the Kansas City Electronic Music Festival, Piano Spheres, SIGGRAPH, the Time Canvas Festival in Antwerp, the North American Saxophone Alliance, Stockholm New Music, the Harvest Moon Festival in Montreal, the Minneapolis SPARK Festival, the American Composers OrchestraÕs OrchestraTech, the Festival of New American Music in Sacramento, UC BerkeleyÕs CNMAT, Music for People and Thingamajigs Festival in Oakland, Dartmouth CollegeÕs Hopkins Center, the Essl Museum in Austria, the Unyazi Festival in Johannesburg, BelgiumÕs TRANSIT Festival, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., at Electronic Music Midwest where he served as the 2002 visiting artist, and as featured composer at the 2004 University of Michigan Eclectronica Microfestival.
He
has received commissions from Betty Freeman, the Merce Cunningham Dance
Company, the Vienna Modern Festival, the Paul Dresher Ensemble, Zeitgeist,
MANUFACTURE (Tokyo), the St. Lawrence String Quartet, the Harmida Trio,
BelgiumÕs Champ DÕAction, Festival ADEvantgarde in Munich, the Jerome
Foundation, and the American Composers Forum, among others. His music has been
played by the Arditti String Quartet, Speculum Musicae, Musica Nova, Zeitgeist,
newEar, SONOR, Inauthentica, red fish blue fish percussion ensemble, the
Northwestern University Contemporary Music Ensemble, the University of Illinois
New Music Ensemble, the NYU New Music Ensemble, the Stanford Symphony
Orchestra, the Callithumpian Consort, Skin & Bones, MANUFACTURE, players
under the direction of Harvey Sollberger, Mark Menzies, and Dennis Russell
Davies, and some of the finest solo artists of our time, including Steven
Schick, Irvine Arditti, Gloria Cheng, Craig Hultgren, Helen Bledsoe, Magnus
Andersson, and Bertram Turetzky.
Performances of his chamber music can be heard on his CD Catfish on Tzadik.
His orchestral works appear on the Innova CD Martian Anthropology, and solo acoustic works appear on the Innova CD Disciplines.
In
1997 Applebaum received the American Music CenterÕs Stephen Albert Award and an
artist residency fellowship at the Villa Montalvo artist colony in Northern
California. He has engaged in
numerous intermedia collaborations, including That Brainwave Chick (with neural artist Paras Kaul), Archittetura
Redux (with film-maker Iara Lee,
Caipirinha Productions), Concerto for Florist and Ensemble (with florist James DelPrince), The Bible without
God (with the Merce Cunningham Dance
Company), Aphoristic Fragment
(with animator Anna Chupa), Interactive Sound Pavilion (with architect David Perkes), Spring Migration (with choreographer Brittany Brown), and projects
with the laptop DJ ensembles Digital Cutup Lounge (Hong Kong) and Tricky OL
(Japan).
Since 1990 Applebaum has built electroacoustic instruments out of junk, hardware, and found objects for use as both compositional and improvisational tools. His instrument, the Mouseketier, is the featured solo instrument on the piece Agitprop. Mousetrap Music, a CD of sound-sculpture improvisations can be heard on the Innova label. Also on Innova is The Janus ReMixes: Exercises in Auto-Plundering, a CD of eleven electronic works whose source material corresponds exclusively to recordings of the eleven acoustic compositions that constitute his Janus Cycle (1992-1996). Hybrid pieces featuring both acoustic and electronic instrumentation can be heard on the 2003 Innova CD Intellectual Property, a recording that also features his piece Pre-Composition that earned the 2005 second place emsPrize from Electronic Music Stockholm.
Applebaum is also active as a jazz pianist. He has concertized from Sumatra to the Czech Republic, performing a solo recital in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso sponsored by the American Embassy. In 1994 he received the Jazz Prize of the Southern California Jazz Society and in 1999 the Mark Applebaum Trio performed in the first Mississippi arts event broadcast live over the World Wide Web. At present he performs with his father, Bob Applebaum of Chicago, in the Applebaum Jazz Piano Duo. The duo recently made its Tunisian debut at the Municipal Theater in Tunis. Their first studio recording, The Apple DoesnÕt Fall Far from the Tree, is available on Innova.
Prior to his current appointment,
Applebaum taught at UCSD, Mississippi State University, and Carleton College
where he served as Dayton-Hudson Visiting Artist. He has been invited to give lectures and master classes at
various institutions, including Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth,
Wesleyan, Oberlin, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, Brooklyn
College, the Eastman School of Music, the New England Conservatory of Music,
the Kansas City Conservatory of Music, Hong Kong University, the JML/Irino
Foundation in Tokyo, the Bruckner Conservatory in Linz, Austria, the
Universities of Toronto, Michigan, Illinois, North Texas, Oregon, California at
San Diego, California at Berkeley, San Francisco State, Bowling Green State
University, Lawrence University, Depaul University, the College of Santa Fe,
the Janacek Akademie, Czech Republic, and at the San Francisco Commonwealth
Club. Additional information and announcements
of upcoming performances may be found at www.markapplebaum.com.
***
The Bible without God was performed on White Plaza, Stanford University on the afternoon of March 12, 2005 in concert with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company who had been in residence on campus for one week.
Garden of Memory was performed at the Chapel of Chimes in Oakland, California on June 21, 2004 as part of an annual summer solstice walk-through concert in which several dozen performers occupy unique spaces throughout Julia MorganÕs idiosyncratic and stunningly beautiful columbarium.
Essl Museum was performed on June 26, 2002 at Sammlung Essl in Klosterneuburg, Austria as part of this extraordinary museumÕs concert series devoted to experimental contemporary music.
Wired Gardens was performed at the Cantor Art Center, Stanford University on September 7, 2003 during a CCRMA extravaganza involving multiple performances scattered across the museum grounds whose sounds were piped into a central auditorium.
The Mind Altering Concert was performed late at night in a darkened Toyon Hall, Stanford University on April 7, 2005 with weary and/or hallucinating students laying about rugs and couches.
***
Notes on The Bible without God were adapted from the Encounter: Merce program for White Plaza Event #1 presented by Lively Arts at Stanford University.
Culture Sculpture originally appeared in Community Matters, a reader for writers, 2nd Edition, edited by Marjorie Ford and Elizabeth Schave Sills; published by Addison Wesley Longman Press, 2004.
This CD was funded by the generosity of John Bravman, Stanford University Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Dean of the Freshman-Sophomore College & Potter College
Thanks to those who contributed to the making of CD:
John Bravman
Shari Palmer & the Stanford Introductory Seminars Program
Stanford Lively Arts including Robin Fribance, Ashli Lewis, & Lois Wagner
Presenters Karlheinz Essl, Sarah Cahill, Patience Young, Giancarlo Aquilanti, & Chris Chafe
Audio Engineers Jay Kadis, Matt Wright, Sandy Greenfield
Stanford Music Department including Mark Dalrymple, Beth Youngdoff, Stephen Hinton, & Jonathan Berger
Elizabeth Schave Sills
Merce Cunningham, Trevor CarlsonÉ
The students of Silence! The Music of John Cage