mIEKAL aND
2009-10-25 12:58:40 UTC
Maryanne Amacher (1943-2009)
http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2009/10/maryanne_amacher_1943-2009.html
The music world lost one of its most bizarre characters today, and I
say that with the utmost affection. Maryanne Amacher was an amazing
composer of sound installations, who occasionally taught courses at
Bard. I first encountered her in 1980 at New Music America in
Minneapolis. She had, as was her wont, fitted an entire house with
loudspeakers, and the staff was in a state of jitters because at
opening time she was still obsessively running around and changing
things. She was a tireless perfectionist. Years later I interviewed
her for my history of American music. A Stockhausen student, she was
absolutely inscrutable, so intuitive that pinning facts down was an
insult to her spirit. My first ten questions having elicited no
specific information, I finally asked whether her original sound
sources were acoustic or electronic in origin. Her perplexed answer:
"I really can't say." She was vagueness personified. Yet she was an
incredible artist, and my son thought she was the best electronic
music teacher Bard had. She typically wore bright red overalls and
aviator goggles, and I'd be astonished if her wiry frame weighed 90
pounds. After one semester with her, one of my colleagues - an
artistic and sympathetic soul, but I understood his frustration -
said, "I feel like I'm on the set of You're a Good Man, Charlie
Brown." She lived in a huge old house in Kingston that was cluttered
wall to wall with papers, tapes, and technical equipment, among which
one walked gingerly through narrow paths. You closed doors carefully,
too, for fear the entire soggy house would fall down. But she was some
kind of genius, and her spatially intricate sound installations,
better appreciated in Europe than here, had to be heard live: there is
no way to adequately document them on recording. As with La Monte
Young, you felt that her ears were picking up things yours couldn't.
She lived for her art. I heard a few weeks ago that she'd had a
stroke, then from Pauline Oliveros that she was in a nursing home, and
today she passed away. I do hope her work is well documented, because
it is absolutely inimitable. We will never hear her like again.
--Kyle Gann
Maryanne Amacher & Thurston Moore at Tonic
Amacher Archive Project
http://www.maryanneamacher.org/Amacher_Archive_Project/Amacher_Archive_Project.html
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http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2009/10/maryanne_amacher_1943-2009.html
The music world lost one of its most bizarre characters today, and I
say that with the utmost affection. Maryanne Amacher was an amazing
composer of sound installations, who occasionally taught courses at
Bard. I first encountered her in 1980 at New Music America in
Minneapolis. She had, as was her wont, fitted an entire house with
loudspeakers, and the staff was in a state of jitters because at
opening time she was still obsessively running around and changing
things. She was a tireless perfectionist. Years later I interviewed
her for my history of American music. A Stockhausen student, she was
absolutely inscrutable, so intuitive that pinning facts down was an
insult to her spirit. My first ten questions having elicited no
specific information, I finally asked whether her original sound
sources were acoustic or electronic in origin. Her perplexed answer:
"I really can't say." She was vagueness personified. Yet she was an
incredible artist, and my son thought she was the best electronic
music teacher Bard had. She typically wore bright red overalls and
aviator goggles, and I'd be astonished if her wiry frame weighed 90
pounds. After one semester with her, one of my colleagues - an
artistic and sympathetic soul, but I understood his frustration -
said, "I feel like I'm on the set of You're a Good Man, Charlie
Brown." She lived in a huge old house in Kingston that was cluttered
wall to wall with papers, tapes, and technical equipment, among which
one walked gingerly through narrow paths. You closed doors carefully,
too, for fear the entire soggy house would fall down. But she was some
kind of genius, and her spatially intricate sound installations,
better appreciated in Europe than here, had to be heard live: there is
no way to adequately document them on recording. As with La Monte
Young, you felt that her ears were picking up things yours couldn't.
She lived for her art. I heard a few weeks ago that she'd had a
stroke, then from Pauline Oliveros that she was in a nursing home, and
today she passed away. I do hope her work is well documented, because
it is absolutely inimitable. We will never hear her like again.
--Kyle Gann
Maryanne Amacher & Thurston Moore at Tonic
Amacher Archive Project
http://www.maryanneamacher.org/Amacher_Archive_Project/Amacher_Archive_Project.html
--
To join or leave the Silence mailing list, please go to https://list.mail.virginia.edu/mailman/listinfo/silence.
You can find searchable list archives at http://list.mail.virginia.edu/pipermail/silence/