Today I just received these photos of The American Book Center in Amsterdam and both large windows are featuring Notations 21 exclusively. There are 8 upcoming Notations 21 events and the ABC is making sure that

Red Circle (2011) by Theresa Sauer

NIU’s School of Music will present a concert of “Visual Music” at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 31, in the Music Building Recital Hall.

The title of the program refers to the unconventional approaches to musical notation employed by the composers whose music will be featured: John Cage, Kyong Mee Choi, Robert Fleisher, Paul Paccione and Theresa Sauer.

Composers Choi, Fleisher, Paccione and Sauer all will be present at the concert. Choi will come to NIU from Roosevelt University in Chicago, Paccione from Western Illinois University in Macomb and Sauer from her home in New York. Fleisher is a member of the NIU School of Music faculty.

The influential and controversial American composer, Cage (1912-1992), was also the author of several books, including “Notations” (1969), which presented a wide variety of musical compositions employing non-traditional approaches to notation.

Inspired both by Cage and by more recent developments in musical notation, composer-musicologist Sauer collected excerpts from works by more than 150 composers from around the world in her book, “Notations 21” (2009).

This program will feature the work of several composers whose music appears in “Notations 21.”

Works to be performed include: “Aria” (1958) with “Fontana Mix” (1958) for voice and electronics by Cage; “Three Motets: Arabesques” (1999) for four prerecorded clarinets by Paccione; “Sublimation” (2003) for marimba and electronics by Choi; “Mandala 3: Trigon” (1979) for amplified oboe, soprano saxophone and clarinet by Fleisher; and “The Circle Series” (2011) by Sauer.

Performers will include School of Music students Ramses Bugarin, Collin Clauson, Ted Lempkowski, Daniel Pratt, Joel Ream, School of Music alum Richard Moore and School of Music faculty member Diane Ragains.

This concert is one of several Notations 21 events open to the public.

Sauer’s residency at NIU (Thursday, March 31, and Friday, April 1) is made possible by the NIU School of Music, the College of Visual and Performing Arts and the NIU Art Museum in Altgeld Hall, where an exhibition of representative scores from Notations 21 will be on view from Thursday, March 31, through Saturday, May 14.

The opening Art Museum reception is from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Thursday, March 31. Regular gallery hours are from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, from noon to4 p.m. Saturday and by appointment for groups.

Sauer also will speak to student composers from 3 to 3:50 p.m. Friday, April 1, in Room 202 of the Music Building.

“What we have in Notations 21 is a beautifully rendered volume on notation. Beyond the composers, students and scholars of 20th/21st Century music, one can easily imagine this book in the hands of artists and art historians, and anyone who appreciates a book with stunning visuals. Bravo!”
Read more by Frank Retzel…download New Music Connoisser Review

In Rushworth, Australia with a population of 1000, there’s a woman who is doing incredible research concerning musical scores and composition.

Carmen Chan recently had an exhibition at the Shepparton Art Gallery entitled, ‘Do You See What I Hear? Exploring Cross-sensory Experiences in Visual and Musical Arts by a Variety of Interpreters of Graphic Scores.’ At this exhibit were five scores, an audio-visual production of Benjamin Boretz’s ‘Talk’, and some junk instruments she had collected. Two of the scores were exhibited with music, where viewers could listen through headphones, and there was also a performance where visitors played all five scores.

Carmen’s research project is centered at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia where she is doing post-graduate studies.  She is mainly interested in how unconventional notation acts as a guide to improvisation. This originated from her experience as a performer in percussion, which eventually led to score making and, in a broader sense, composition. By inviting the public to interpret music from visual materials, she is essentially promoting experimental music making activity. Carmen says, “I was influenced by reading about Cornelius Cardew and his Scratch Orchestra, and I’m trying to explore avenues that allow experimental music activities to happen within a broader community.

I wanted to know more details about her background. She received training in percussion performance at the University of Melbourne under Tim Hook.  Next she went to Musikhögskolan i Piteå in Northern Sweden with the intention of practicing ‘standard’ repertoire in isolation.  There, she met Gary Verkade, a Professor in Organ, and studied improvisation, interpretation, graphic notation, history, analysis and as Carmen says, ‘everything music’. She began to make her own scores when she was studying Cardew’s ‘Treatise’ with Verkade.

She thought that the most exciting score at the exhibition was the one on the wall and it was completely unplanned, but it worked really well in terms of asking viewers what music they could play ‘from it’, and then inviting them to give it a go.  She also put pianos – one upright, one junk, and one prepared in front of the score so people could read the score as they played.

I asked Carmen about the junk instruments and why they were included in the exhibition. She replied, “The junk instruments worked fantastically, both ‘visually’ and for the ‘exotic’ value for music making. The reason for using non-traditional instruments is to disassociate potential interpreters with the idea of trained professionalism, in order to promote creativity.

Carmen is planning on moving this project from the gallery setting at a University into a more community-minded setting, which does not have values of status and authority associated with it.  She is very hopeful to engage with more people.

And so, I wished to pursue this idea of scores and the concept of composer. What actually makes a composer? Carmen says, “I suppose I’m not entirely sure about being called a ‘composer’, because I don’t compose music as such, I just make scores, and invite people to interpret them.  I’m more of a score-maker, if that’s a word.”

But what do you think about that? Does a score need to have detailed or even minimally guided direction for performance in order for the creator of the score to be considered a composer?

…new territory being explored by an amazing woman in an amazing place.

The recordings of interpretation will be broadcast on Radio Monash soon…for more information on Carmen please visit http://arts.monash.edu.au/music/research/student-profiles.php

“My ongoing research for the Notations 21 Project goes beyond that of the book. There are so many incredible new ideas about notation and performance that I knew the book was just the starting point for me in many ways. I am still asking questions, discovering new visual scores and realizing that the composers in the book are still creating beyond all that I could imagine.

One of these extraordinary composers from the Notations 21 anthology is Ann Millikan. I was so impressed by her innovative work years ago and even more so now. Because of my interest in why composers choose to develop new notation for their works, I chose to discuss this issue with Ann since she uses new notational techniques in many of her works. She responded by saying that many times there is no other option but to create something new on the score. read more

Michael J. Schumacher

I am now developing a documentary for Notations 21 that will feature Michael J. Schumacher. Michael is a composer, performer and installation artist based in New York City.

The book is also a testament to how music can inspire visual art.

“Regardless of their ages or nationalities, what all of the composers featured in this book have in common is the need to express their musical ideas visually, incorporating mixed media, cutting-edge technologies and groundbreaking philosophies,” says Sauer, who is also a composer and educator. “The book also pays homage to composer John Cage and his book, ‘Notations,’ which was published 40 years ago.” Cage’s celebrated 1969 book presented a vast array of his own compositions as stark visual concepts.

According to Sauer, the continuing development of illustrated scores and innovative notation brings along with it an expansion of artistic freedom and advancements in musical improvisation. That becomes quite evident in “Notations 21,” where the images range from standard notes on staff lines, to wild geometric shapes and patterns, to hand-drawn artwork and scribbles, to combinations of two or more styles in a single composition.

“This book is meant both to introduce people to the fascinating world of innovative notation and graphic scores, and to provide a forum for composers in search of new ways of bringing awareness of their compositions and philosophies to the forefront of music’s collective consciousness,” Sauer says. “There are new technologies and media today that were not available to John Cage in the 1960s.”