Sonic Arts Union: 9 Evenings–Theatre and Engineering
Director Julie Martin in person
In 1966, ten New York artists and thirty engineers and scientists from Bell Telephone Laboratories collaborated on a series of innovative dance, music and theater performances. Presented at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City, 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering is recognized as a major artistic event of the 1960s. The performances represented the culmination of a period of extraordinary creative energy in art, dance and music in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and they also pointed to the future, as artists began to use new technology in their work.
Variations VII by John Cage
dir. Barbro Schultz Lundestam, US, 2008, video, 41 mins, color
“Variations VII,” performed at 9 Evenings, was the next to last in John Cage’s series of indeterminate works that he had begun in 1958. The piece uses sound from telephone calls placed around
New York City, contact microphones on the stage and on household
appliances, electrodes on one performer to capture brain waves, 20 radio bands, two televisions, two Geiger counters, oscillators and pulse generators. This film documents the only complete performance of “Variations VII.”
Bandoneon! [Bandoneon Factorial], a Combine
dir. Julie Martin, US, 2009, video, 38 mins, color
Bandoneon! [Bandoneon Factorial], a Combine is David Tudor’s first
full concert work as a composer. Tudor played the bandoneon as the input into a complex sound and visual modification system that moved sound from speaker to speaker and controlled lights and video images, creating a work that animated the entire Armory space. Bandoneon! documents the performance with film and vintage photographs as well as interviews with the performers, engineers and Tudor’s fellow composers.
The Sonic Arts Union was a pioneering composer collective, active between 1966 and 1976, presenting original live electronic music by its members, performed by the composers themselves. Although both artistically and organizationally significant and influential, the Sonic Arts Union is underrecognized in music history, as is the important work of its members. Robert Ashley, David Behrman, Alvin Lucier, and Gordon Mumma made significant musical innovations in the 1960s and 1970s and continue to be active today. IHP presents four concerts showcasing the music of each of these composers, with Ashley, Behrman and Lucier appearing in person. In addition to the concerts by Sonic Arts Union members and ensembles, we are presenting programs that further expand the work and legacy of the Sonic Arts Union including films, workshops, talks and panels in IHP’s Ibrahim Theater and performances at Vox Populi Gallery.
Sonic Arts Union has been supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through the Philadelphia Music Project.
