Response - Morton Subotnick at Roulette 3.10.07
I had heard so much about Mr. Subotnick as a pioneer of electronic music, but had yet to really hear his music. Before the concert I went to his web site to hear a few preliminary mp3 cuts, just a few seconds each and representing only his work from the 60's and 70's, and the sounds felt dated, although I can imagine how interesting to people they must have appeared at the time. Still, I was apprehensive and didn't want to be disappointed, but thought I would give this listen a try. The first half was a piece where Mr. Subotnick provided color and filtering for the pianist Vicki Ray's performance. Because of this nature of the piece, it didn't feel necessarily like an equal role between them, but there also was no dominating presence of one over the other because Ms. Ray kept her playing subdued throughout, exploring space as often as sound. In the second half, Mr. Subotnick was featured alone, on a new rendering of the 1976 piece Until Spring. This sounded truly cutting-edge and what I had hoped electronic music could be, yet had been mostly disappointed in the past. The live version was mixed in surround sound (though really quadrophonic at Roulette) and had some incredible sweeping gestures that took advantage of all four speakers, placed in corners of a square around the audience. The layers were often busy and in a state of constant mutation, but repetition of ideas was also prevalent. It appeared to have a linear, journey-like form from beginning to end... while I've often been criticized for these "episodic" gestures in my own writing, I look forward to them in the work of others, and was exhilarated and inspired by the end of Mr. Subotnick's piece. This is a man who is truly doing great things with a newer medium on a level artistically on par with masters of more tried and true media, and like a great painter or author, he gets to do it alone and create a personal vision, free of limitations. I could tell this is his greatest wish in life when afterwards Mr. Subotnick took time to introduce the audience to his new music composition software, for younger children to be inspired to create before they have to know about notation and other fundamentals that can discourage the youngest musicians out there. I intend to use this software with my students as soon as possible.