MG take IX

Rather antithetical to report sound as silent photos but motion stilled in image is a kind of implied sound. This, I believe is the finale, piece 32, SIZERZ by Steve McCaffery (Canada, 1976).
It’s interesting how much a piece can change with the chemistry and particular skills of a group, the vocal range, and the arrangement of set order.
A reading can have a sort of narrative arc, with pieces hinging from the last without a pause by some similarity as it did this time. When MG was done with AB series there was more of an amplitude to the wave with pieces contrasting each other more sharply. The melodic and comic and dark were all intercutting. When there was a MG at the Writers Fest it was more a wall of sound.
Here’s another Glimpse at IX.
It’s interesting to hear something live. For example, at a coffeehouse reading lately, hearing the laughing response to David McFadden’s poems showed a listening I didn’t hear before there was a group around the poem I’d only seen on the page. Likewise the synchronized half a dozen or so people reacting to david uu’s Salmon River Soliloquy was fun to hear. I’ve heard a crowd pleased response to Claude Gauvreau’s My Olivine before but this one was such a simultaneous breath of reaction it was neat to be among. There are things live readings do, like during the rolling rs and the trills of The Man in the Lower Left Hand Corner of the Photograph (Mike Patton, 1995) outside a motorcycle gunned its engine.
I love hearing the birdsong piece, Oiseautal, a two-person piece made from parallel evolution texts on birdsong by Haussmann and Schwittters. I don’t think I heard Knots (jwcurry, 1982) before but really enjoyed it. This time around Totem Étranglé (Antonin Artaud, 1964?) sounded new as the Messagio Galore group was pitched differently, with more females and Grant’s deep pitch the last time. Each person’s shape of body and shape of sound gives different instruments for a living orchestra. It was different. Doing covers of poetry that otherwise might be lost to ears and archives breathes life back into the bowl of letters.
Liberty Village, a former factory district that’s becoming shops. Arraymusic has been there since the 1970s. The venue’s next show is a performance of Satie’s music. The last Friday of each month they have an Improvisor’s orchestra.
On Thursday night in Ottawa, the CCMC with Paul Minton perform sound/music at the NAC. CCMC is a free improvisational band that has been reinventing itself throughout four decades. For the last eighteen years, CCMC has been the trio of Michael Snow (piano and synthesizer), John Oswald (alto sax), and Paul Dutton (soundsinging and harmonica). Phil Minton is from the UK and is doing an improv feral choir this week as well.