Re: Music for aiports...redux

[Len Seligman <seligman@mitre.org>]

Yes!!! Great story on this new rendition of Music for Airports! It was on
Feb. 19th's "All Things Considered." Unfortunately here's all that I could
pull off www.npr.org:

'Music for Airports' -- All Things Considered host Linda Wertheimer talks
                  with David Lang, Julia Wolfe and Michael Gordon, members
of the New York
                  music ensemble called Bang on a Can. The group takes
important but not very
                  well-known 20th century compositions and tours the nation
performing them.
                  They have chosen to recreate Brian Eno's 1978 landmark,
proto-ambient
                  recording called "Music for Airports." This item is
unavailable due to copyright
                  issues. 

I too laughed at an image of academic types listening to Eno with
stopwatches and figuring how to notate it. Turns out I was all wrong. I
listened to brief excerpts from the new rendition, complete with gorgeous
acoustic sounds and a 12 person choir and loved what I heard. I'm gonna buy
this CD. 

Here's some info I found on Bang on a Can from
http://www.stagebill.com/Classical/features/featuresarchive/bang.html. They
mention a concert that sounds very cool at Alice Tully Hall in New York
City on May 19. 

-Len

At 01:13 PM 2/23/98 EST, you wrote:
>Hi Loopers:
>
>Did anybody hear the interview last week on National Public Radio with the
>musicians from Bang a Can -- we think that's there name.  Anyway they have
>transcribed and are now performing Eno's 1978 MUSIC FROM AIRPORTS in real
time
>with real humans.
>
>This was an absolutely fascinating interview replete with tracks from the 
>Eno
>album and the new tracks with the "human loopers."
>
>Some of you will go flambonic when you here the transcribers describe 
>Eno's
>looping and synthisizers as "inhuman" and "cold," but others, like the
>LoOpDoctOrs will go ecstatic when you hear the incredible and different 
>(we
>won't say better) beauty of Eno's loops put inside the frail oral 
>cavities of
>human beings and 18th and 19th century instruments.
>
>Also, it's just amazing how much passionate work these transcribers did to
get
>this morphed into pure, homo-sapanic analogue!  What a quirky, heart-felt,
and
>cool thing.  Also, there is a part there the transcriber talked about what
ENO
>did to get a "climax" in one particular piece.   We won't spoil the fun, 
>but
>it's a fascinating trick and we would love to know from those hip to Eno's
>techniques  what they think of the transcribers analysis of this piece.
>
>We bet you can get a download or tape of this interview from the NPR 
>website.
>Check it out.  If you can't, for the purely mad, the LoOpDoctOrs mite 
>forward
>a copy of the interview (we taped it) if you send us a blank tape.  But 
>if we
>get forty thousand blank cassettes suddenly in the mail, we are renting a
>local warehouse and holding a vintage analogue/lovefest firesale.
>
>Best,
>the LoOpDoctOrs
>
>
>