Symbiosis on overlap - Episode 14 - Seth Horvitz (Sutekh) Solo Piano Selections

You know those comics where our hero has an alter ego? I imagine Seth Horvitz as that man.. by day he is a 5-hour pianist virtuoso and by night he operates under his pseudonym, Sutekh. Perhaps this interview will shed some light on things. In fact.. for those of you reading here we can cut to the chase and explain his move away from the productions you may know him for as Sutekh:

“I never really liked the word “career” and never really wanted my music to become one. It may just be a matter of semantics, but I always equated career with job, and job with something you do for the express purpose of making money. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with making money, but my aim, perhaps a bit idealistic, is simply to do what I love. As I get older, practical considerations become more important, but I’ve always told myself that if music starts to feel like a “job,” then I will need to either quit or re-think my approach. If I was interested in making a career out of it, I probably would have stuck more firmly with dance music. But that side of music has lost much of its interest for me. In fact, even though I continue to produce beat-driven electronic music, I hardly listen to it in my spare time at all.”

I contacted Seth and asked him to submit whatever his heart desired (as I do with all the artists that I contact about doing mixes for Symbiosis). The result is stunning and deserves an hour out of your week to really listen to.

PS. Seth has hinted that he might be back later on in the year to do an ‘anti piano’ mix

Symbiosis on overlap - Episode 14 - Seth Horvitz (Sutekh) Solo Piano Selections Listening Guide

“Those who know me, know I have been fairly obsessed with the piano for about seven or eight years now. This podcast gives me a great opportunity to provide a condensed overview of some of my major inspirations, from Bach up to Kevin Blechdom. I have attempted to create a sequence of songs that covers a diverse range of styles and eras, but at the same time makes connections between them. In this age of attention deficits and overstimulation, I sincerely hope that listeners will find 40 minutes in their day to really *listen* to this music, not only for textures and styles, but for sounds and ideas too. Now sit back, relax, and enjoy!“

Listening Guide

00:00-02:13
Alvin Lucier
Music For Piano With Amplified Sonorous Vessels
Panorama
Lovely Music

A short excerpt from one of many brilliantly simple compositions from Alvin Lucier, an originator of what we now call “Sound Art.” From the liner notes: “Several small vessels such as wine glasses, sea shells, clay pots, and bamboo cups are placed inside or near a grand piano, not touching the strings. Microphones are inserted into the vessels, routed through amplifiers to loudspeakers. As single tones, intervals and chords are played on the piano, resonance tones in the vessels are sounded, picked up and amplified.”

02:13-04:35
Kobat
Ilm
Pieces for Prepared Piano
Source Records

An important, often overlooked 1996 album on Move D (David Moufang)’s Source label from Heidelberg. Long before the prepared piano came back in style with Hauschka and Aphex Twin, this guy produced an album with much more depth than either. I’ve only managed to include a short excerpt here, but for those interested in prepared piano, I would highly recommend hunting this one down.

04:36-06:07
John Cage
Sonata V (performed by Darryl Rosenberg)
Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano
VQR

This is where it all started. In 1948, John Cage completed what remains one of the masterpieces of the 20th century, his Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano. It never ceases to amaze me how terribly *funky* many of these pieces manage to be, while adhering to a strict compositional method involving precisely calculated rhythmic proportions. Anyone who owns (or should I say possesses?) Drukqs or a Hauschka record without having this should be (gently) spanked!

06:07-09:24
Erik Satie
Trois Morceaux en forme de Poire, Pt. 1 (performed by Bojan Gorisek)
Complete Works for Piano, Vol. 3
Audiophile Classics

A huge influence on Cage, Erik Satie is also often cited as an influence by many contemporary electronic composers, yet few go deeper than the Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes. This piece for two pianos, composed in 1897, is sometimes referred to as “Gnossienne 7″, due to its similarity to the famous series. After becoming obsessed with the series myself, I was excited to discover this lesser known treasure.

09:24-12:59
Cecil Taylor
For the Rabbit
For Olim
Soul Note

From one of the giants of free jazz, this 1987 album was recorded live at the Academy of Arts in Berlin. Cecil Taylor is one of those rare improvisers who, on the spur of the moment, can approach the level of intricacy and complexity that would have taken someone like Stockhausen three months of charting and graphing to compose. And he does it with so much soul…

12:59-14:01
Frederick Rzewski
The People United Will Never Be Defeated, Variation 5 (1975)
Rzewski Plays Rzewski: Piano Works 1975-1999
Nonesuch

Rzewski is a virtuoso pianist, composer, and improviser who somehow manages to balance his respect for classical tradition with a fierce sense of modernism. Some have called him the only living composer/performer to carry the torch of Beethoven and Brahms. While that may be going a bit too far, he is certainly a genius, and this excerpt from his monumental set of 36 variations on a Chilean revolutionary song barely gives a taste of what he is capable of.

14:01-17:22
Thelonius Monk
Well You Needn’t
Monk, Alone in Paris
WNTS

Monk needs no introduction - let’s just say that no one ever has, and no one ever will be able to swing like he could. Recorded live in 1964 or 1965, this track comes from one of those mysterious eMusic albums that doesn’t appear in any official discography, but it’s a great solo rendition of an original Monk standard.

17:22-18:31
Conlon Nancarrow
Study 19 for Player Piano (Canon 12/15/20)
Vol. 2 - Studies 13-32
MD&G

Nancarrow (1912-1997) lived much of his life in relative seclusion, composing music for player piano. His most important compositional invention was the “tempo canon” - for the first time, making tempo the central structural element of a piece, overshadowing melody and harmony. For this reason, it could be said that Nancarrow did not compose with notes, but with time itself. This short (and for Nancarrow, relatively mellow) piece doesn’t really do him justice, but it will serve as a gentle introduction to the two insane pieces to follow…

18:31-20:58
György Ligeti
Continuum (1968)
Ligeti: Mechanical Music
Sony

Where Nancarrow used tempo as the defining element, Ligeti, in his seminal late 60s period, used timbre. This piece was originally composed for an actual human performer on harpsichord. In Ligeti’s words: “A harpsichord has an easy touch; it can be played very fast, almost fast enough to reach the level of continuum” - hence the title. However, the human performer is avoided entirely in this version, prepared by Pierre Charial for player piano. To put it bluntly, this piece and the next by James Tenney simply turn my brain inside out, and that’s why I love them so much.

20:58-25:11
James Tenney
Spectral Canon for Conlon Nancarrow (1976 version; piano roll punched by Conlon Nancarrow)
Cold Blue (compilation)
Cold Blue

Three in a row for player piano - is there a pattern forming here? This is one of my all-time favorite pieces of music, period - a very strict process piece inspired by Henry Cowell’s Rhythmicon invention, applied to a piano tuned with 24 pure harmonics on the lowest note. Some fairly intense math is used to calculate the unfolding of the piece, but forget about that for now and just listen. The actual sound, the actual unfolding of the music in the ears and in the mind, is all that one needs to understand, without words, the sublime nature of this masterpiece.

25:11-27:05
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
La Poupee Malade (Luba Edlina, piano)
Album for the Young, Op. 39
Chandos

Now let’s wind down the gears a bit and head back to the 19th century. The title of this piece by Tchaikovsky, written for children, translates to “The Sick Doll.” Simply beautiful and heartbreaking - why doesn’t anyone write sad songs for children anymore?

27:07-29:22
Moondog
Chaconne in A minor
The German Years, 1977-1999
Roof

Louis Hardin aka Moondog lived much of his life as a street musician in New York City, yet in my mind, he is one of the most important composer/performers of the 20th century. It’s hard to know where to start when describing his work. Most know him for his percussion music (played on instruments of his own invention in a meter he called “snaketime”) and his vocal canons (one of which was covered by Janis Joplin’s band Big Brother and the Holding Company). His experiments with repetition have led some to call him the first minimalist (Glass and Reich were both aware of his music early in their careers - Glass even put him up for a while in his Manhattan flat). But he also wrote many brilliant solo piano pieces that sit confidently, as this one does, between Tchaikovsky and Bach, which is something you’d be hard-pressed to say for any other composers of the 20th century.

29:22-33:35
Glenn Gould
J.S. Bach: Sinfonia No. 9 in F minor
Inventions and Sinfonias
Sony

Glenn Gould is the only classical pianist in my iTunes collection who earns the ‘Artist’ meta tag. A perfectionist to the core, this guy could glance at a score, play through it a few times, then never have to look at it again. In addition to being the best interpreter of Bach in the history of recorded music, he had some fascinating views on the recording medium itself. At the peak of his career, he stopped performing in public, deciding that studio recording was the best way to achieve a perfect representation of his abilities (even with his constant humming and groaning bleeding through). Many of his interpretations are either blisteringly fast or achingly slow - I have chosen to include the latter.

33:35-39:22
Ludwig van Beethoven
Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor, Op. 31, No. 2, Allegro (Alfred Brendel, piano)
Piano Sonatas, Vol. 2
Vox

At the risk of being a total dork, let me just say that Beethoven rocks. This is perhaps my favorite movement of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. The intricately syncopated, but utterly propulsive rhythms could teach us techno artists plenty, and the cascading arpeggios could certainly give Philip Glass a run for his money. I generally prefer Gould’s interpretations of Beethoven, but in this case, I think Alfred Brendel handles the piece more delicately and with more swing.

39:22-42:00
Kevin Blechdom
Turn Around
Gentlemania
Sonig

Bach, Beethoven, Blechdom… she may be full of jokes, but look a little deeper and deeper and deeper and DEEPER, and you’ll find a genius worthy of her place in this list of (mostly) dead (mostly) white men.

Get in touch, leave your comments and shout about overlap to the world…

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/symbiosisradio
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Email: simon[at]symbiosis.com.au
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Next week: Jason Kahn
Jason Kahn joins us for Episode 15. An old friend of Symbiosis, he is celebrating his appearance at the Liquid Archtecture Festival in Australia this month.

Coming up: Orien / ieva / Pacheko

Drop me a line if you have got an artist you want to see featured or if you want to submit something to Symbiosis.

Peace,

Simon

 

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