Description

Through Mysterious Barricades (LP)

with George Maciunas

Author/Editor: Philip Corner

CONTENTS

Voice recordings from a small performance in Italy, early in 2020—homages to/from George Maciunas (1931-1978). Philip Corner’s 1989/1991 piano meditative playthroughs of Couperin’s The Mysterious Barricades (1717). These two elements (voice and piano) superimposed by Recital’s Sean McCann, edited during the first month of the COVID-19 pandemic. Manic exaltation, distorted harmony things. Album cover is a few Corner scores soaked in olive oil and held in-front of the sun. Booklet features passionate writings on the Couperin piece and its meaning by Corner. Philip wrote a new reflection for this LP edition, “The Mesure of the Mystery.” This album is built from the finest ingredients: beautiful piano with stomach-clenching voice stretches, includes a 12-page pamphlet of scores and an essay by Corner. Released September 18, 2020 in an edition of 250; stocked by San Francisco Cinematheque on the occasion of Stan Brakhage’s Passage Through: A Ritual, presented May 26, 2024.

Label: Recital
ASIN: B08JDPZKFW
Number of discs: 1

BIO:
Philip Corner studied at Columbia University with Otto Luening and Henry Cowell, later with Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire and privately with Dorothy Taubman in New York. He taught at the New Lincoln School in New York 1966–1972, the New School for Social Research 1967–1970 and Rutgers University 1972–1992, after which point he moved to Reggio Emilia, Italy with his wife, the dancer and choreographer Phoebe Neville. He has been associated with Fluxus since 1961, was a resident composer and musician with the Judson Dance Theatre 1962–1964 and later with the Experimental Intermedia Foundation. He co-founded with Malcolm Goldstein and James Tenney the Tone Roads Chamber Ensemble in 1963 (active until 1970), with Julie Winter Sounds Out of Silent Spaces in 1972 (active until 1979) and with Barbara Benary and Daniel Goode, Gamelan Son of Lion in 1976 (still active).