“A guerrilla is someone who is sacrificing his life…
Without blood there is no cause…
I use (the term) Gay Guerrilla in the hopes
that I might be one if called upon.”

– Julius Eastman

After Julius Eastman’s never-fully explained death in 1990, his legacy was thought to be lost.   Four years ago he was rescued from obscurity by the release “Unjust Malaise” (New World Records). The result of years of dogged research and recovery by composer Mary Jane Leach, the collection consisted of 3 CDs worth of archival concert recordings.

This past fall, one of Eastman’s most infamous works, “Gay Guerrilla” (1979), received a new and pristine performance.  The event came together as a result of conversations between three faculty members at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY.  Michael Century was searching for something with multiple keyboards and Pauline Oliveros remembered the piece, which requires four pianos and lasts about 30 minutes.  Leach was on hand to provide the score.

The November 18, 2009 performance took place in the resplendent concert hall of RPI’s lavish arts center known as EMPAC.  The performers are Century, Max Canaday, Catherine Chou, and André Watson.

Here’s the video:

About two thirds of the way through the piece, Eastman quotes the Lutheran hymn “Ein feste Burg ist unser Got” (A mighty fortress is our God), re-interpreting that affirmation of faith as a sonic manifesto, then concludes with the majestic rising modal scale that helps make this work an anthem to liberation unique in contemporary classical music.

Century’s new performing edition of “Gay Guerrilla” will soon be available through Leach, who maintains an archive of known Eastman scores and recordings.

Previously on My Big Gay Ears:

Julius Eastman’s Lost Legacy

But those who knew Yvar are surely grateful. And based on the stunning performance by Winston Choi in this new CD on Albany Records there are also new generations finding beauty and power in the music.

Let me admit that I enjoyed the notes by Nils Vigeland, Yvar’s former student, a pianist and a director of the Mikahshoff Trust, as much as the music on the CD.

Vigeland explains the pairing of Ravel’s “Gaspard de la Nuit” and Yvar’s most important composition, “Elemental Fragments.” One was modeled after the other and both are tour de forces of piano showmanship.  Yvar called his piece “a spiritual child of Ravel’s Gaspard…”

In Yvar’s work, the middle movement “Shaman” is my favorite. I heard it a few years ago as a stand-alone with its original name, “The Long Eyes of Earth,” played by Anthony de Mare, another former Yvar student. It’s like a big ritual or meditation and there’s a gliss in the high treble that repeats over and again, to suggest a rattle.  The piece is structured on the Fibanacci number sequence (1-2-3-5-8-13, etc.) and is exactly 688 measure long. Dan Brown, or rather his character Robert Langdon, would love it.

The common biographical statements on Yvar never give the full sense of personality that I’ve heard about, especially when De Mare talks about him. But Vigeland reveals some of Yvar’s inner conflicts and questions, especially about the tricky balance of being both composer and pianist, and lets the different sides of the man come through.

At the University of Buffalo in the early to mid-70s:

He agreed to play nearly everything, often with mixed results because he was non-judgemental concerning what he was asked to do. This led to extreme censure form thse members of the faculty that demanded aesthetic loyalty. Concerning this, he had no confederate. He was committed to doing things, not staking out a political position.  the value of these activities was less important to him than the doing of them.

If all the work didn’t always advance his career, I think the embrace of so many kinds of music foreshadowed our post-modern, post-Uptown vs. Downtown era.  Yvar would probably fit in better to today’s music scene, tho then he might not be Yvar.

A decade later:

…in 1984 appearing at that bastion of high modernism, Darmstadt’s Fereinkurse, as an uninvited recitalist.  Having shown up without prospect but with an international reputation, he was given an impromptu midnight gymnasium time slot to take his chances with an unplanned event. The room was packed, the young audience intrigued by the late extension of the day’s activities. Yvar strode to the piano, blue blazer, loud tie and boutonnier in place and launched into… Ginastera’s “Danzas Argentinas.” What would be the young disciples’ reaction to this decided “outsider art”? They went wild with enthusiasm.

I didn’t know Yvar but a story like that makes me sure wish I did.  He was born in Troy, New York, the city where I’ve lived since 2005.  He died of AIDS (a fact noticeably absent from Vigeland’s notes) in 1993 at age 52.

As profligate a performer and productive a composer (more than 50 works) as Yvar was, there’s still not much on disc. Mode Records started a series called Edition Mikhashoff more than a decade ago but has only released a few titles to date, though it has a cache of his recordings and grants and bequests to fund them.  Lets hope more of Yvar’s recorded legacy – performed by himself as well as others – continues to appear with more than a trickle.

I caught a screening of “Wild Combination” on November 11 as part of the quirky little iEAR series at RPI, here in Troy. The filmmaker Matt Wolf was on hand and took a few questions.  During his final comments he revealed that he’s currently making a documentary about Jerome Robbins who he’s not liking (news flash: nobody did). But Wolf says that he probably would have liked Arthur Russell, even if they might not have been close friends.  Based on Wolf’s beautiful film, I feel much the same way and am also reminded of how tricky it is be very friendly with an artist when you don’t grove to his work.

Russell died of AIDS in 1992 at age 40.  As with so many other gay men of his generation who passed on way before their time, it’s hard to know what more he might have accomplished and whether he’d ultimately find a mature musical voice. Judging from this distant vantage point, Russell’s challenge was to bring together his disparate interests in folk music, the avant garde and disco.

Wolf’s film is a loving tribute that made me root for Arthur and be touched by the tragedy of his life and the still palpable grief of those loved ones left behind, namely his parents and his partner Tom Lee.  It’s based primarily on archival footage and Wolf said that every scrap of film that exists of Russell is in the movie. Admirable work, for sure.  We see Russell singing as he plays cello, also playing guitar and generally hanging out at venues like The Kitchen and Experimental Intermedia.  There’s footage of Ginsberg speaking at Russell’s memorial, and the dozen or so talking heads who were interviewed include Philip Glass. There’s also plenty of colorful original footage and enough keen editing to show the hand of a smart and promising filmmaker.

What’s not present is much of an understanding of the gay experience. The memories of Arthur’s slightly trouble childhood in Iowa — being too smart, picked on at school, etc. — are set up to suggest the youthful presence of a great artistic persona. But what it really sounded like was just another fag child suffering on the playground.  Painful but very familiar.  Wolf also includes two comments from interviewees that simply aren’t believable.  There’s Arthur’s mother saying she did a double take when she heard, second hand, that her son was gay. As if every mother doesn’t always have more than an inkling.  And then Arthur’s companion tells of how he spotted (cruised) Arthur three times in the East Village before finally approaching him. But then he adds something like, “whether or not we might both be gay never crossed my mind.” Hello?  You were chasing him around your neighborhood hoping for what? An evening of watching the Yankees.

Anyway.

After setting up his subject as a mighty innovator and iconoclast for the first two-thirds or so of the 71 minute film, Wolf does let his interviewees talk about Russell’s difficult personality (he could lead a band, but not be a member of one) and his jealousy and paranoia (at one point he was convinced the Rolling Stones were stealing his ideas).  Besides the friendship with Glass and Ginsberg (who admits to a crush), there’s documentation of two brief collaborations of interest:  he played with the Talking Heads a few times and he wrote music for a Robert Wilson creation, “Medea,” though Wilson pulled Russell’s music after only one performance.

“Wild Combination” (the title comes from a Russell song, by the way) also puts forth the facts of Russell’s death from AIDS with admirable clarity and matter of factness. I liked how one friend said that Arthur was always rather spacey and dissasociative and that AIDS ultimately made him more so.  And my eyes got moist when Russell’s dad recalls a brief final conversation with his son in the hospital (“You’re a good sport.” “Really?” “Yeah, really.”)

The recent revival  – or new but long overdue? –  in Russell’s music serves as a kind of coda to the film. This section runs a little long, but is still heartening.  Russell was a finicky dabbler and made numerous takes, edits and mixes of his music, so there’s thousands of tapes that might be fodder for still more releases to come.

Hearing his mumbly but soulful voice, jumping between registers and heavily laden with echo, I thought of Antony and the Johnsons.  Bridging avant garde and disco, or serious and pop (or whatever the latest terms are) is a never ending effort and apparently younger generations are seeing something prophetic in Arthur Russell.  If not for AIDS, he might have been right there with them.

Soon thereafter, Oliveros realized “Deep Listening” more broadly described the aesthetic approach to contemporary music she had been pursuing for 30 years. While it can seem abstract, Deep Listening might be described as “musical mindfulness,” in which the composer or other artist approaches the work from a position of deep awareness.

Oliveros began using the term in her myriad activities as a performer and teacher, and started offering training and certification in Deep Listening techniques. A few years ago, she renamed her Kingston-based organization the Deep Listening Institute.

Deep listening is no longer underground. This weekend, three Hudson Valley locations will host concerts that mark the culmination of the Deep Listening Convergence, a coming-together of 45 musicians from across North America and Europe that began in January with online dialogues and rehearsals.

Yes, online rehearsals. Since the 1950s, when she experimented with the then-new medium of electronic tape, Oliveros, 74, has remained at the forefront of technology, and the Internet has long been one of her tools. Participants in the Deep Listening Convergence used the networking program Skype to improvise and rehearse new compositions. Like a telephone conference call, Skype allows up to 10 computers to give and receive audio and video information in real time.

“I was sitting here in my kitchen and hearing four people from different cities in Switzerland and four from Canada and others from the U.S.,” said Oliveros last week from her home in Kingston. “It was great. They did a long and goofy improvisation.”

Whether they are goofy or serious or a bit of both, a lot of Deep Listening compositions are in store this weekend. Each of the three concerts, at venues in Troy, Hudson and High Falls, will have a different program of new works, from solos to large ensemble pieces. The instruments at hand are also diverse, and will include traditional Western instruments, drums and folk instruments, plus electronics. Vocalizing and some movement will be part of the mix as well.

Among the new works is “Spiral Tap,” by Sarah Weaver, 29, a trombonist and composer from Chicago. She composed the new work using Deep Listening techniques to explore the number sequences represented in the spirals of a seashell. It will be performed by six musicians playing conch shells.

“Everyone using the (Deep Listening) system is more in touch with their authentic selves and a new level of communication is available that’s not there in other compositional systems,” says Weaver, who’s in the process of moving to New Paltz. She plans to become Oliveros’ apprentice in Kingston and also start an ensemble in Manhattan.

Like most of the participants in the convergence, Weaver has completed a three-year training to become certified in Deep Listening. Over the years, Oliveros has spread the word – and the sound – of Deep Listening far and wide. Her institute offers a variety of special workshops and summer retreats, and Oliveros has been teaching Deep Listening at RPI for the past six years.

One method Oliveros uses to track the reach of Deep Listening is a “Google Alert,” in which the search engine sends her a message every time it spots a new Web site using the term.

“I get alerts every day,” says Oliveros. “The usage includes all kinds of musicians and it includes religious and spiritual groups. It’s becoming very common.”

Originally appeared June 8, 2007 in the Times Union.  Also available in my book Artists & Activists: Making Culture in New York’s Capital Region.

Her wife.

The coupling of these words may cause your tongue to stumble, but for many people in committed gay or lesbian relationships, the terms are longed-for alternatives to euphemisms like partner, companion or lover.

Yet there’s far more at stake in the cause of same-sex marriage than just better terminology. Filmmaker and Troy native Jim de Seve, whose documentary “Tying the Knot” opens today at the Spectrum 8 Theatres in Albany, named his 4-year-old production company 1,049 Films because that’s the number of federal rights and privileges afforded to married couples.

“That number’s now risen to 1,138,” said de Seve, who will attend tonight’s screenings. “There’s Social Security benefits, hospital visitation rights, fishing licenses just a huge number of things. And because of the Defense of Marriage Act, gay couples get zero.”

Between 2001, when De Seve began work on “Tying the Knot,” and the film’s debut at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival, same-sex marriage went from the margins of public debate to become a fierce legal battle, a central issue in the most recent presidential election and an international cause. Since filming began, gay marriages have been sanctioned in Amsterdam, Canada and Massachusetts, while a countervailing movement has added “traditional” marriage definitions to several state constitutions.

De Seve and his collaborators “really just walked into this issue,” the director said. “We were chasing footage on a couple of different levels. We wanted to include personal stories, but also have bits that would explain the history of marriage. We’d go on these `marriage movements’ where people go to city hall (for a marriage license) and get turned down. There are funny moments, because the clerks can’t make heads or tails of a couple of women coming in together.”

Like a Michael Moore for lavender audiences, de Seve uses both original and archival footage as well as humor to make his points. “Tying the Knot” makes the case that the precepts for marriage have changed dramatically over the centuries, and mixes in potent human drama.

“We tell the story of Sam, a rancher in Oklahoma, who was with his husband for 25 years,” said de Seve. “When he died, a will said Sam should inherit everything – a huge farm, a barn and a house that they had built together.” But relatives of the deceased man prevailed in court to deny Sam any inheritance.

Then there’s the story of Lois and Mickie, a couple who were both police officers in Tampa, Fla. After they had been together for 10 years, Lois was killed during a bank robbery, the first woman ever killed in the line of duty in Tampa. “It was almost a state funeral,” de Seve said. “Mickie sat in front, was handed a flag by the police chief, and was treated like a survivor in every way except the pension.”

De Seve believes both couples had marriages based more on love than on laws. “I came to understand and believe that the real marriage happens in peoples’ hearts, and if two people are entering into what they term a marriage, they are in fact married,” he said. “In terms of having your marriage recognized by the state, that’s the next level.”

“Tying the Knot” played at more than 60 festivals before going into general release. When it screened at the Toronto International Film Festival last September, de Seve and Kian Tjong, his co-producer and partner of five years, took the occasion to tie their own knot. Tjong is Indonesian; the couple is acutely aware that if they were straight, Tjong could become a U.S. citizen.

“We’re feeling it right now,” said de Seve, referring to the lack of those 1,138 advantages to marriage. Tjong’s father in Indonesia is seriously ill; even though he is in the United States legally, if he were to visit Indonesia he might not be able to re-enter America.

“Kian hasn’t seen his father for seven years it’s just really inhuman,” said de Seve. “We pay the same taxes as everybody else.”

Tjong helped raise the $250,000 budget for “Tying the Knot.” The funds were cobbled together from a variety of investors and donors, including celebrities such as Liam Neeson and Yoko Ono. Tjong “went around and hand-delivered a small chrysanthemum with a fund-raising packet,” said de Seve. “Yoko sent us a check for $5,000 with a picture. She signed it, `Celebrate life. Love, Yoko.’”

Earlier this week, de Seve and Tjong sold their home in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn in anticipation of a move to Troy, where they’ve already purchased two fixer-upper houses off Hoosick Street. “I love that I’m coming home,” said de Seve. (Co-producer Stephen Pelletier and story consultant Amy Halloran are two other “Knot” participants with roots in the Capital Region.)

His mother, Geraldine de Seve, is looking forward to her son’s return to the Capital Region and bringing along “his husband.” The phrase seems to flow easily for her.

“I’ve been practicing for a long time,” said Geraldine de Seve. “My daughter has a husband, and my son has a husband.”

Originally appeared in the Times Union, April 15, 2005

Also available in Artists & Activists: Making Culture in New York’s Capital Region.

DeSpain has been telling stories to audiences large and small, old and young ever since. Next month, the Troy resident turns 60 and will have three new books released, drawing to a conclusion his nine-volume series for August House publishers titled “The Books of Nine Lives.” The multicultural story collections will bring his published books to a total of 20.

In all of his stories which he estimates total approximately 1,000 DeSpain has one central message.

“My main force in the telling and the writing is to point out in an entertaining way that we human beings are far more alike than we are different, no matter the culture, the time, the language, the religion,” he says. “… I search for stories that are a good yarn, that are suggestible with vivid feelings, events and actions and that have a soul or a consciousness without being preachy.”

A 32-year career of speaking and writing has brought DeSpain into contact with thousands of listeners and countless readers. But it started with a leap of faith.

DeSpain decided that storytelling would be his life’s work when he was 25 and sitting on a beach in Zihuatanejo, Mexico. That trip was the first of many world travels that have punctuated DeSpain’s life and brought him new story material. But at the time, he was no itinerant.

DeSpain had earned advanced degrees in communication, literature and drama and seemed on the verge of a career in college teaching. A position at Seattle University soon brought him to the Northwest.

“I moved to Seattle and stayed for 27 years,” he says, “but I left teaching after two years” to tell stories.

Coffeehouses were DeSpain’s first regular venue, although his reputation grew quickly.

“It took a few years, (but) I became Seattle’s resident storyteller (as) proclaimed by the mayor,” he recalls. In 1977, the year of that designation, he also began a syndicated newspaper column and a television show, both called “Pleasant Journeys.”

An old family name, “Pleasant” is also a nearly ideal moniker for a man who has a special way with audiences.

“He was wonderful,” says Kim McMann, head of children’s services for the Troy Public Library. In May, she organized a DeSpain performance for an audience of about 40 children and adults. “He told stories and wrapped everyone around his finger,” she says. “We were on the edge of our seats.”

To DeSpain, audiences are an essential component in his art.

“Three elements – story, listener, teller – must come together as one during the experience,” he says. “If I’m doing my job, the audience is getting the story they deserve based on the quality of their listening.”

The idea of storytelling can evoke intimate and nostalgic locales, like campfires or elementary school classrooms. But DeSpain performs in a wide variety of settings, including corporate offices, supper clubs and large conventions. His largest live audience 16,000 strong was at a storytelling conference 10 years ago in Louisville, Ky.

Last year, prior to an appearance at another large gathering in Boston, DeSpain invited some friends and neighbors to hear him rehearse. Jim Lewis, a Troy furniture designer and artist who had made a mask for DeSpain to use as a prop, was on hand for the run-through.

“He blew me away,” says Lewis. “He had three interwoven stories and he would tell a bit of one, a bit of the next and then the other. They supported each other and had different takes on his theme. The effect was seamless and powerful.”

“All of my writing is a result of my telling,” says DeSpain. “When I write the story down I’ve probably (already) told it over the course of a year. You will be able to hear me in the reading, because my pauses and breaths, my rhythm, is contained in the prose.”

Before adding a new story to his repertoire, DeSpain researches its origins and finds variations in written sources.

“I take the story apart, down to its skeleton,” he says. “I put it back together, simply, purely. I go out and tell it. And then I learn how I tell it. And then I write it the way I told it.”

DeSpain is almost as enthusiastic about sharing the art of storytelling as he is about the stories themselves. During residencies in schools, he follows up a performance by teaching children how to tell their own stories.

“We’re all natural storytellers,” he says. “Our lives are a story, and when we share them with each other, our lives are enriched.”

Originally appeared in the Times Union, August 31, 2003.

Also available in Artists & Activists: Making Culture in New York’s Capital Region.

Such is the sonic universe of Pauline Oliveros, a 70-year-old composer and accordionist, internationally known as a leader of experimental music. A longtime resident of Kingston and a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, Oliveros has fashioned an influential aesthetic, codified (and trademarked) as “Deep Listening,” which she embodies and teaches regularly in classes, retreats and concerts.

Adventuresome concertgoers in the Capital Region will have several opportunities to hear Oliveros in the coming weeks. She will be performing with Kim Cascone this Wednesday at RPI, and with her trio, The Space Between, on Dec. 5 at the Arts Center of the Capital Region, also in Troy. In addition, through November she hosts a “Sound Festival” with a variety of guest artists at the Deep Listening Space in Kingston.

A trickster spirit

Students of meditation and the spiritual concept of “mindfulness” will find commonality in Oliveros’ definition of Deep Listening, which is at the core of all of her work: “Listening to everything inclusively all the time, and reminding yourself when you’re not.” She adds, “That’s been my practice for about 48 years now.”

“Pauline is a trickster spirit, a challenger and nurturer, and also a very funny woman,” says composer Anne Lockwood, a friend of many years and colleague from Crompond, near Peekskill. “Her generous spirit sparks and sustains musicians all over the world in thoroughly practical and direct ways.”

Born in Houston, Oliveros arrived in upstate New York in 1981 after walking away from a tenured professorship at the University of California-San Diego. “Everybody’s jaw dropped when I left such a position, in such a part of the country,” she says during a recent interview at her RPI office.

“I had spent a sabbatical leave in the summer at Saugerties, and found it really beautiful with lots of interesting activities,” she says. The Creative Music Studios, a teaching and performing collective for free jazz and experimental music, was the impetus for the activities in the region. “By the time I got there, it was on the wane,” she says. “I worked with them a little bit, but I really wanted to start my own organization, a not-for-profit, which I did.” In 1985, she established The Pauline Oliveros Foundation to support artists in making new works.

Apart from a two-year stint in New York City, Oliveros has remained in the region for more than 20 years. She settled in Kingston in 1987, a year after she met her companion and frequent collaborator, Ione, an African-American playwright, author and stage director.

Ione has served as librettist and director for several of Oliveros’ largest works, including “Njinga the Queen King,” an operatic pageant on the life of an African warrior princess that was presented at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1993, and “Lunar Opera,” presented at Lincoln Center two years ago. But aside from their prestigious commissions, books and CDs, Oliveros and Ione are also the leaders of a community arts organization in Kingston albeit one dedicated to mostly cutting-edge work.

Arts Center

Since 1996, the foundation has been based in its own building, known as the Deep Listening Space, which houses administrative offices and a state-of-the-art recording studios, while Oliveros and Ione live a few blocks away. The Deep Listening Space Gallery hosts art exhibitions, performances, workshops and rituals. The city of Kingston supports some activities, including an annual series of parks concerts called “Celebration of Cultures.”

When it comes to talking about art (or just about anything else), Oliveros is plain-spoken, articulate but never verbose. She speaks with a low and gentle voice, and laughs from the belly. Her attire is the simple-country but vaguely Buddhist style mastered by residents of the Woodstock region. At times, when her weight is up and her silver hair is cut short, she bears an uncanny resemblance to photographs of Gertrude Stein.

Just as Stein turned the English language on its head, so too has Oliveros shaken up people’s conceptions of how music can be made. In many of her compositions she abandons standard notation (lines and spaces, sharps and flats, and the like) in favor of lists of instructions and graphics that are more suggestive than literal.

For example, the score to “Portrait of Quintet of the Americas,” a woodwind quintet written in 1996, consists of a series of circles or mandalas with connecting lines that form spokes. The piece begins and ends at the center, which reads “Stillness/Listen.” Successive rings of circles carry instructions like “Sense,” “Feel” and “Intuit” and suggestions like “Signature” and “Quotation.” Each player is given a particular set of pitches that form the basis for improvisation within the pathways of the score. The piece’s duration and profile vary dramatically with each performance.

In addition to her graphic scores, Oliveros continues to write with standard notation, and she works with the latest electronic music technologies as well. At Wednesday’s concert at RPI, she will play an accordion that is connected to her own “extended instrument” system of electronic processing.

Coming Together

Collaboration is another essential element of Oliveros’ work she always welcomes others into the process of making music. It’s not that she’s shy or self-doubting. She’ll play a solo if asked, and can be firm in her opinions. But looking at the “Portrait of Quintet of the Americas” again as an example, the performances that result from a score that is so open, even vague, say as much about musicians as as about the composer.

Oliveros has even been known to begin a concert by asking the audience to make sounds. “I began to do that in about 1972 to involve audiences in doing things. I don’t always do it in that overt a manner, but I do invite the audience very often to help me create whatever the piece is going to be by the way they listen,” she says.

It is the sharing of the creative process (and not the funny-looking scores or strange-sounding electronics) that makes Oliveros such a genuine, if mild-mannered, radical.

“My work is political in any number of ways, starting with the fact that I share creative activities,” she says. “I try to pass on to my students the principals of collaboration, communication and co-creation. It’s a politics that’s not so visible, like holding up a sign.”

Oliveros’ impact on the experimental fringes of the music world is well-established. But what of audiences in the Capital Region and in Kingston?

“We have a definite local following,” Oliveros replies with her characteristic bemused smile and matter-of-fact tone. “Sometimes we have hardly anybody and sometimes a full house; just depends upon what’s going on.”

Originally appeared in the Times Union, November 17, 2002.

A story on Oliveros and the 2007 Deep Listening Convergence is available in my book Artists & Activists: Making Culture in New York’s Capital Region.