Search - Malcolm Goldstein :: Sounding the New Violin: Cage, Oliveros, Etc.

Violin music unassuming anything;an alternative literature

scarecrow | Chicago, Illinois United States | 01/29/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"These are Violin solos that reside I think away from the academic mainstream,or high drawer establishment venues ones now currently intoxicated with popular culture,obsessed with being loved.

Malcolm Goldstein was shall we say there at the creation of the post- war, post Cage avant-garde, and is an incredible improvisor as well as creator of music himself in any venue. I don't see him playing Elliott Carter or John Adams, no there are others for that. But here is a nice proper collection of pieces that one would not generally find within most concert venues, perhaps the odd place, anti-academia place, a bar as we have them in Chicago or Los Angeles that have doubled as concert venues for new music. The Oliveros piece is wonderfully inventive, melodic in import, she as well brings to her written works her performative experiences, as Goldstein himself. The"Eight Whiskus" of John Cage a latter work utilizes a process of playing notes within a prescribed time, a combination that interested him a take on hymnkus, hence the suffux to the title. It has the typical Cage, well-early Cage interest in pure open beauty, of the drawn bow non-vibrato. The "Trinity" of Ornette Coleman has more freedom and what happens here is that what someone writes and how he himself would play it might be a world apart. The Tenney piece has a minimalist like repetition, that grows gesturally thin after a time. Tenney's music is either right on target(in concept and interesting timbral devices) or it misses, or what wa thought is not what in reality is."