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Unearthing

from ORDO by Philip Blackburn

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about

Unearthing
What if a piece of music were more like a sourdough starter, and every performance (or loaf of bread) contained the whole history of its lineage while also being complete in itself? This is the idea behind Unearthing that evolves (like a game of Telephone) but never loses its unique DNA because it always includes elements of every previous performance. The score asks the performer to listen on headphones (in 1992, one of the earliest examples of headphone-driven performance) to a recording and play ‘exactly’ what they hear. That attempt is also recorded and added to the library of available recordings for the next generation of performers (any number of them, on any instrument) to use. The piece is constantly digging itself up, unearthing its past. In this version, Miss Crann was used as the seed recording and multiple heterophonic, real-time variations were mixed in with the original.

Miss Crann and the Sense for Making Machines
(a paeanistic ode for chris mann, 1949-2018, Australian composer, poet, performer, and fellow compositional linguist)
“When I was 6 I bit my tongue off.” Boy, you’d never have guessed.
Miss Crann? What’s a little puerile spoonerism between friends? Besides, the Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices (CRANN) should be proud.
My bedroom poster at college (1982) was Words & Classes. It was big, wrinkled, covered in Blu-Tack, and threw up different texticles each day.
Kenneth Gaburo lent me a tape of LA DE DA (1985). Smitten I was.
Chris asked me to write a recommendation for his Green Card application. Yes, he stands out in his field. No problemo.
Several Tribeca visits — many words, much green tea (and latterly therapeutic apples) — and one existence — later, here is an echo: a convo, reorganized through brainwave-triggered performance by my chris-scrambled brain. Maybe it’s the record he always wanted to make, with alternate tracks and endings where you can bet on the outcome. Maybe this machine adds new sense and voices to the mix: wry, impudent, dangerous, vicious, ironic, scrutable, intimate, too clever by half. If nothing else, did you realize what soothing chant lies at the core if you just slow the bastard down? Who knew? Meaning is such a pissy little concept.

credits

from ORDO, released October 21, 2023
Miss Crann and the Sense for Making Machines (2018)
Chris Mann, voice (2003)
+
Unearthing (1993)
University of Minnesota Solo Improvisers
Alex Lubet, director, mountain dulcimer
Luke Davis, guitar
Isabel Analise Harrelson, voice
Ryan Picone, guitar
Percy Riehl, flute
Xinyao Zhang, violin
Cong Liu, guitar
Philip Blackburn, flute, dan tranh

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Philip Blackburn Saint Paul, Minnesota

Philip Blackburn was born in Cambridge, England, and studied music there and at the University of Iowa with Kenneth Gaburo. He is a public artist specializing in sound — a composer/environmental sound-artist. Blackburn’s works have been heard in ships’ harbors, state fairs, forests, and coming out of storm sewers, as well as in galleries, parking lots, and on concert stages.

philipblackburn.com ... more

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