Christopher:
hurriedly, I have an appointment:
yes, those are very fair points, what I was thinking of was the later
(current?) reception of the PS as being +Brian Eno's+ project.
All the Best
must dash
Dave
----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher Walker" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, November 14, 2005 12:01 PM
Subject: Re: Blah
> <snip>
> A (serious?) application of a
> comparable notion was Brian Eno's Portsmouth Sinfonia: as an artistic
> gesture, in a sense, it worked, in that (though obviously aided by Eno's
> name) it attracted attention, but the succcess of having people who
couldn't
> play music playing it was, is, dependent on the existence of a corpus and
> tradition being played by people who can. It works as a joke... [DB]
> <snip>
>
> The touched-by-stardust explanation isn't really fair. If I've got the
> sequence right, the PF was formed in the late 60s and under the influence
of
> Cardew's Scratch Orchestra (in which Eno also played, I believe) by the
> composer Gavin Bryars, then in the Fine Arts dept of Portsmouth College of
> Art, later the founder of Leicester Poly's Music dept, along with John
> Farley,. who couldn't play a note. In addition to Bryars, many able
> musicians were involved: not only Michael Nyman and Michael Parsons, the
> Scratch's co-founder, but also Steve Beresford, Alan Tomlinson et al. Plus
> people from other disciplines, such as Barry Flanagan.
>
> Whatever else these various groups were about, others might be the
> Spontaneous Music Ensemble (John Stevens & Trevor Watts et al) or the
People
> Band (which included Johnny Dyani), and they were both of their period and
> different one from another, they were also both not a joke and very far
from
> earnest. Recovering a sense of wonder might be part of it, I suppose. That
> and the idea that proficiency should come about through need, as a
response,
> not through a priori imposition.
>
> A brass band I heard struggling with Astor Piazzolla a few months ago in
the
> square of a small Italian town had an alien enchantment, which is a little
> of what I mean. Eugene Chadbourne playing Bach on the banjo might be
> relevant here as well.
>
> CW
> ______________________________________________________
>
> I am always doing what I cannot do yet in order to learn how to do it
> (van Gogh)
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