Frames of Reference
Frames of Reference takes a snapshot of a particular time, genre, movement, aesthetic or theme – offering up 18 boxes to a curator in which to capture the essence and spirit of a significant moment of innovation in the history of modern music.
These boxes can be filled with audio, video, text and imagery and represent either personal and intimate memories or key figures and events. Much of the content is drawn together from the bowels of the internet, plucked out of the ether and given a new context in which to be understood. What you end up from each curation is not a full and comprehensive history but a sense of the moment; providing you with an aesthetic flavour and a gateway to discovering more.
Editions
The New York School curated by Anton Lukoszevieze
The New York School, in music, was mainly a group of 4 composers who were colleagues in 1950’s New York City. John Cage, Morton Feldman, Earl Browne and Christian Wolff. Their work consisted of composed contemporary and experimental music that was a radical departure from previous contemporary music, especially that of the European canon. Other younger composers coming out of Cage’s class at the New School for Social Research and from the downtown scene can be included, La Monte Young, Dick Higgins, Jackson Mac Low, Richard Maxfield and George Brecht. Other notable young composers included James Tenney, Philip Corner and Malcolm Goldstein, who all composed music for and performed with the Judson Dance Theatre throughout the 60’s. Indeterminacy, graphic notation, improvisational elements, conceptualism, electronics, open forms and the use of noise are all elements contained in their work.
Musician and artist Anton Lukoszevieze is one of the most diverse performers of his generation and is notable for his performances of avant-garde, experimental and improvised music. He is well known in the UK for his use of the curved bow (BACH.Bogen) to develop new repertoires for the cello. He is the creator of Apartment House, an experimental music ensemble and a member of the radical noise group Zeitkratzer.
Chicago House curated by Geeta Dayal
House is a feeling,” or so the famous saying goes. How do you define house music? One way is to start at its origins - inner-city Chicago, in the mid-1980s. Detroit was the legendary birthplace of techno, but nearby Chicago is where house was invented. House was an underground genre that owed much to disco’s legacy and the popularity of cheap, portable synthesizers like the Roland TB-303, but also to the massive surge of top talent: DJ Pierre, Adonis, Mr. Fingers (a/k/a Larry Heard), Marshall Jefferson, Farley “Jackmaster” Funk, to name just a few. In Chicago venues like the Warehouse and the Music Box, this emerging sound flourished, fostered by ace DJs like Frankie Knuckles and the late Ron Hardy, and furthered by labels such as Trax and DJ International. House wasn’t one sound, but a whole panorama of sounds - encompassing everything from the soulful, lyrical melodies of Larry Heard to the twitchy, futuristic acid of Phuture. This “Frames of Reference” is a starting point for exploring the roots of a fascinating genre that is still thriving today.
Geeta Dayal is the author of Another Green World, a recent book on Brian Eno (Continuum, 2009). She has written extensively about music, culture, and technology for many major publications, and maintains a blog at www.theoriginalsoundtrack.com
