Cartesian Reunion Memorial Orchestra

D. Hein, amplified and electric guitars
M. Bayer, amplified violoncello
J. Glenn, electrical bass
W. Houston, keyboards
F. Riddick, keyboards
S. Moshier, vibraharp
Ll. Rodgers, saxophone, clarinet, organ

This was an experimental group based around Lloyd Rodgers, a professor of music at California State University, Fullerton, and a few of his students. CRMO described itself as "a post-modernist electrical chamber ensemble in the grand style"; stylistically it bore some affinity to Peter Schickele's Open Window and to Alex Kline's Quartet Music while philosophically it criticized the ambient culture of self-satisfaction, violence, and conformity.


CRMO
52.4 MB - no password

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Moondog instrumental works circa 1978

One of the truly great eccentrics of the twentieth century, Louis T. Hardin (1916-1999), who became blind at the age of seventeen, spent most of his life impersonating the Norse god Odin as a busker on the streets of New York City. He retired to Germany in 1974. Hardin gave himself his nickname in honor of a pet dog that liked to howl at the moon.

His compositional style was decidedly atavistic, holding to very strict canons in preference to fugues, and yet was an acknoweldged formative influence on Philip Glass's minimalism. His first recordings were released on 78s; the present recording was probably his last, made by Gema in Germany. It includes harpsichord works that sound very Baroque, organ works that remind one of Reger, and works for string quartet that might be a bit Hindemithy.

Moondog, 1978
68.0 MB - no password

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American Gamelans 1981

Lou Harrison and his graduate students performed their own works on the Mills College and CSUSJ gamelans as the closing event of New Music America '81.

Lou Harrison was one of the most interesting innovators to come out of the United States. His work bears some affinity to that of Harry Partch in the experimentation with unusual scales, although Harrison favored Indonesian gamelans in traditional sléndro and pélog tunings. He and his partner, William Colvig, built gamelans for the schools where Harrison taught (the gamelan Si Betty for California State University, San Jose, and the gamelan Si Darius at Mills College) and he and his students performed seven of their own works on these instruments for the New Music America Festival 1981 in San Francisco. One of those students, Larry London, took Harrison's experimentation a step further by constructing a harp in a thirteenth-century Greek scale to play against the gamelan's Indonesian scale. All in all, a very interesting hour of music.

Lou Harrison's American Gamelans 1981
67.9 MB - no password

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