It was through Foster Reed’s New Albion Records that I first became aware of the San Francisco Bay Area as the site of adventurous approaches to “new music.” The label was launched in 1984, over a decade after both composers and listeners had basically exhausted their appetites for the Second Viennese School and the complex abstractions of composers like Anton Webern. Due to the increased attention to choreographers such as Merce Cunningham, listeners became more accepting of the New York School composers led by John Cage and including Morton Feldman, Christian Woolf, and Earle Brown.
By the early eighties, the New York School influences began to shift into the genre that we now call “minimalism.” One of the better known representatives of this genre was “Grand Pianola Music,” which John Adams composed in 1981 when he was teaching at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM). When this piece was first performed in New York, the reception was more than a little hostile. To some extent this marked a significant difference in tastes for modernity between the east and west coasts.
Ingram Marshall in his studio in Hamden, Connecticut (photograph by Clem Marshall, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
In that context one may fairly say that New Albion provided a platform for a “West Coast School,” which received little attention from record labels based in New York. Reed’s label released music by Cage (who was born in Los Angeles) and Feldman, as well as Cage’s colleague Lou Harrison, the experimental ventures of Somei Satoh, Terry Riley’s adventurous approaches to repetitive structures, and Ingram Marshall. Marshall was one of the first composers to benefit from New Albion: The catalog number of the first album devoted entirely to his compositions was NA002!
That album was also one of my first New Albion purchases. I was almost immediately hooked by its opening track, “Fog Tropes,” an intriguing work for six brass musicians playing against recordings of fog horns and other ambient sounds. On the New Albion recording the brass sextet was conducted by Adams. This was followed by the five-movement “Gradual Requiem,” for which Reed himself played the mandolin part. Marshall provided the other parts, which included synthesizer, voice, and the Balinese flute used in Gambuh performances. Marshall similarly provided all resources for the final track, entitled “Gambuh I.”
Marshall died last year at the age of 80 on May 31, 2022. At the end of next week, San Francisco Performances (SFP) will present a special tribute concert. The performers will include an ensemble from SFCM, pianists Timo Andres and Sarah Cahill, oboist Libby Van Cleve, and guitarist Benjamin Verdery. Adams will conduct the ensemble and Andres in a performance of “Flow;” and the program will conclude with Edwin Outwater conducting “Fog Tropes” with SFCM brass players. Van Cleve will begin the program with an English horn performance of “Dark Waters,” followed by the guitar solo “Soepa.” Cahill will give a solo performance of “Authentic Presence.”
This performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 15. It will take place in Herbst Theatre, whose entrance is on the ground floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue, located on the southwest corner of McAllister Street. This venue is excellent for public transportation, since that corner has Muni bus stops for both north-south and east-west travel. All tickets are being sold for $35, and they may be purchased through an SFP secure Web page. As available, single tickets will be sold at the door with a 50% discount for students and a 20% discount for seniors. Single tickets may also be purchased by calling 415-392-2545.
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