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MUSIC FROM DOWNTOWN NEW YORK
EXTREME GUITAR PROJECT
to Alicia Cappelli-Gouverneur
In May and June 2002, I came to the United States for three solo concerts (at New York University, and the New York and Washington Italian Cultural Institutes) where I performed, among others, some of The Book of Heads by John Zorn. I decided to spend some time in New York City.
Since I was trying to extend my contemporary music solo guitar repertoire, it was natural to get in touch with Zorn’s music and — through his remarkable work as producer — with the NYC avant-garde scene internationally known as Downtown Music.
During my stay in New York, I became involved in this musical scene (thanks to the friendship and generosity of Marc Ribot), in which experimental composers/improvisers coming from avant-garde jazz, rock, as well from the world of academic music, work together to create a common musical language that is impossible to pigeon-hole into one category.
This experience gave birth to the idea of my EGP (Extreme Guitar Project): a “musical photograph” of the Downtown music scene through the commission of guitar pieces. These were inspired both by the unusual possibilities of my amplified classical guitar (modified with the addition of 8 sympathetic strings, and with the enriched sound of live-electronics), as well from the proposal to use a mixture of writing spanning rigorous written structures to free improvisational languages.
Ten composers, whom I first met during my trip to New York, accepted to write a piece for my project. It was also a great occasion for me to stay in touch with a scene which really impressed me.
Today, living in New York for two years and playing music with many musicians in town, I know that the Downtown scene is even more complex and articulate than I thought. But I still admire the spirit of “community” that characterizes the relationship between artists, which I consider to be unique in the world.
I have played many concerts with EGP, and am very glad about its release on a a label like Mode Records. I would like to thank all the composers involved in EGP, because this experience has deeply changed my approach to making and listening to music.
— Marco Cappelli - NYC, December 2005
www.marcocappelli.com
The premiere of EGP (EXTREME GUITAR PROJECT) took place on November 27th 2003 in Napoli (Italy), as part of the Associazione Alessandro Scarlatti concert series, who supported the commissions of EGP together with Associazione TI CON ZERO (Cagliari). The NYC premiere took place on January 30th and 31st 2004, at Issue Project Room.
Definitions, elastic and porous. Extreme. Guitar. Can we agree on what these
things mean? “Guitar” may seem obvious but as we delve into its identity, we discover that it is never a simple naming. As complex and varied as “human,” guitars may be traced back in evolution from Pythagoras’ monochord through zithers, dulcimers, harps, ouds, and lutes to the modern proliferation
of both electronically-enhanced hyper-instruments; highly refined ergonomic instruments made of space-age composite materials; and inexpensive and functional mass-market specials. In the mid-20th century, the guitar was transformed by the radically expansive sonic vocabulary of artists from the realms of rock, blues, jazz and country whose hot riffs and basic sensibilities were filtered through
the technical innovations of the ever-curious tinkerers, the Les Paul’s, the Bigsby’s, the Leo Fender’s. From an Apollonian instrument of rationality, harmony, and measured melodies, the guitar became a Dionysian oracle of vocalized and onomatopoetic sounds, degenerate excess, youthful rebellion, and applied futurism. During the latter half of this past century, especially in the 60’s and 70’s, some of us
experimented with extended techniques, electronics, Cage-ian preparations, deconstruction, alternate tunings, feedback, and even the very essence of guitar with instruments customized, chopped, channeled, mutated, recombined, and reconfigured. Sometimes it was extremity for its own sake, sometimes it was “orchestration.” Now, in this ever-more-reactionary new century, Marco Cappelli and his Extreme Guitar Project harkens back (and forward!) to a beautifully extreme definition of guitar without restraint or boundaries, image reflected in both the repertoire and the hardware. From his own viewpoint honed in geographical distance, he has assembled his vision of “downtown” personalities and musics. From the insider view, he has pulled together an extremely wide range of sources, more a map of greater New York (including its’ outer Tokyo neighborhoods!) than a microscopic look at a particular scene. This is a collection of compositions that reflects myriad approaches, strategies, techniques, intentions, and sonic worlds for an old/new, high/low instrument customized to Cappelli’s desires and needs. Whether acoustic or electronic, strictly composed or impressionistically improvised, his Extreme Guitar Project opens the door wide.
— Elliott Sharp
MARC RIBOT
AND SO I WENT TO PITTSBURGH
The Cappelli classical guitar juxtaposes the traditional (six nylon strings) against the possibility of something ‘other’ (altered tunings, noise, metal strings, etc). Pittsburgh accents this in the most obvious and vulgar way possible, and adds several other juxtapositions: classical guitar content/blues licks,
vocal/instrumental, Napoli/Pittsburgh. M.R.
IKUE MORI
BIRD CHANT
Bird Chant is designed to play with 6 sound files triggered together with the extreme aspects of the guitar. There is a multi-part score which include 12 musical scenes of which six are chosen before each performance to complete the overall structure. Eventually, the composition grows as the player becomes familiar with each of the scenes and freely jumps between them. I.M.
ELLIOTT SHARP
AMYGDALA
...almond-shaped — signs of anger, avoidance, defensiveness, and fear — small mass of gray matter — freeze reaction, sweaty palms, and the tense — mouth display — primeval arousal
center originating in early fishes — limbic
As Walter Benjamin pointed out, the job of the translator is much more than finding the equivalent words in a second language but to realize the original impulse of the source and output it through new eyes, mouth, hands. The gestures, syntax, and vocabulary of Amygdala are very much part of my everyday language on guitar. In this composition, my desire is to plant these strands of musical DNA in these most-capable hands of Marco Cappelli and let them manifest in the body of this new exciting
instrument that he has created. E.S.
ANTHONY COLEMAN
THE BUZZING IN MY HEAD
The Buzzing In My Head was written in July 2003 at the Civitella Rainieri Center in Umbertide, Italy. Some pieces of music come into creation in a laboured, painstaking way. But this one just flowed out...Why? What was that all about? It’s not like the theme was so pleasant...Since April‘03, I’ve been suffering from a fairly serious case of Tinnitus. Sometimes my ears are buzzing, sometimes they’re ringing (sometimes they’re ringing and buzzing). So there’s that ... And then, I’ve always loved Samuel Beckett’s theatre piece Not I with its refrain (quoted in my piece): “What? No! Who? She!”. At some point in the text, there’s the line “...and the buzzing — What? The buzzing?” and that really impressed
me. When I first read Not I, I thought a lot about what “the buzzing” could be, and I found myself thinking about ambience, background, electrical hums and all the acoustical detritus of our world and our lives (see R.Murray Schaeffer’s book The Tuning of the World for more information on this subject...) In August 1987, I was sitting in the train station in Trieste waiting for a train to Ljubljana.
Ligeti’s Lontano was playing over RAI 3 (I had a Walkman with a radio — essential equipment
for my research while travelling in Eastern Europe). And the combination of droning strings with radio static caused me to write (in my journal): “Ligeti — he wrote the buzzing”. I always wanted to write the buzzing, and now — thanks to tinnitus — it’s a lot easier... A.C.
NICK DIDKOWSKY
A BRIGHT MOON MAKES A LITTLE DAYTIME
During his trips to NYC, Marco Cappelli showed me his modified guitar. It is an acoustic 6-string guitar with 8 additional sympathetic strings across the body. After improvising with this guitar for a while, I came up with a tuning for the sympathetic strings that I found very inspiring. It served as a springboard for the three movements contained in this work. Hammertoes challenges Marco to perform and improvise an intricately grooving counterpoint against himself using live electronics. Poker Face Alters Conversation is a meditative movement that begins by presenting the 8-pitch tuning that is at the heart of the work. The composition is treated with an elastic sense of time, which decelerates gradually over the course of each 3-bar phrase. The Ass’s Demise bursts out of the gate with a fast descending
lick and dense riffing. The material is abruptly and suddenly deconstructed, then rebuilt as the forces of improvisation blend back into composed material. The title A Bright Moon Makes a Little Daytime is borrowed from the composer’s son Leo, who was five at the time he noticed this about the night. Used with permission. N.D.
OTOMO YOSHIHIDE
PI -ANODE
Pi – Anode is the work written at Marco Cappelli’s request based on Anode, a work for large ensemble from 2000, which focuses on various sound phenomena started at random by giving some of the musicians restrictions to their performance methods. The work is constructed so that the ears may be surprised by the accidental phenomena. I hope the audience can hear these phenomena not in terms
of a musical language but as a chance happening that is heard through deep listening. The player does not discover the music alone but in a process together with the audience. Here is the essence of this music: althoughit is the work of a soloist, this music could also be called DUO of a player and an audience. O.Y.
ANNIE GOSFIELD
MARKED BY A HAT
I wrote Marked by a Hat in the Spring of 2003. In order to catalogue the many techniques that Marco Cappelli developed for his “extreme guitar”, I met with him, discussed possibilities, and recorded him playing this unique instrument. I was intrigued by the extreme guitar’s 10 sympathetic strings, and created a microtonal tuning for them that centers on E, D, and C, and the quarter tones that surround
these pitches. Because Marco had commissioned many guitarists to write pieces for for this project, I chose to compose a piece that only used the open strings, thus eliminating the potential for flying fingers on the guitarist’s left hand. Marked by a Hat is a “right hand only” piece, played solely on the open sympathetic strings, and demonstrates Marco’s great right-hand technique, his unusual tremolos, and picking techniques. The title, Marked by a Hat, is inspired by the name Marco Cappelli (Marco
= marked, Cappelli = hat) and as a former hat-maker, it conjures up a film noir fantasy of a man marked, or identified, by his hatted silhouette. A.G.
MARK STEWART
UBOINGEE ETUDE #1
When I met Marco in New York we spent hours together improvising — surrounded by any type of “deviltry” I use to build my hand-made musical instruments — in the chaotic space of my “lab” in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. My original project was to write him a collection of 11 Etudes for his original classical guitar but In the end, when it was time to give him the score, I was very busy with the rehearsals for the historic reunion of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, being the band’s guitarist and artistic director. So I came up with the idea to interpret my commission by giving him the score of Etude #1 (which actually was the only one ready...!) and also my handmade “Uboingee”, or “Springs Guitar”: with the recommendation to introduce the written score with one his own Uboingee’s improvisations. I know, it was a quite original way to answer to his request, but...didn’t he ask me for a masterpiece created by my own genius? So: here he goes! M.S.
ERIK FRIEDLANDER
IRON BLUE
I have been a fool for the guitar and guitar players since I can remember listening to music of my own choice. Guitar was my first instrument before I took up the cello in 3rd grade and I find myself still under its sway. During the 70’s and 80’s I spent a lot of time listening to Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, and Steve Howe (to name a few). Iron Blue is a look at the power and expansiveness that I felt then and that I wan to hear now whenever a guitarist sits down to play. It’s written in an open tuning inspired by cello tuning. E.F.
DAVID SHEA
TERRA (FROM: METTA MEDITATIONS)
Metta Meditations is a collection of six movements written as types of ritual duos for one
guitarist who confronts himself internally with the instrument, and externally with the electronics, in the form of sound meditations. The electronic score’s sources are all taken from the same musician and the same instrument. The guitar layers traditional playing with physical transformations of the instrument and its identity as the electronics transform the acoustic sources and play in counterpoint to the live guitarist. D.S.
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