#malcolm goldstein

[ozkar-krapo]

Malcolm GOLDSTEIN

"Early Electronic / Tape Collage Music"

(LP. Alga Marghen. 2008 / rec. 1963-67) [US-CA]

MALCOLM GOLDSTEIN - Early Electronic / Tape Collage Music

Staggering concrète tape cut-ups and electronic collage from 1960’s downtown NYC by Canadian composer, improvisor and violinist, Malcolm Gol

[ozkar-krapo]

V/A

"Musicworks #46"

(cassette. Musicworks. 1990. rec. 1987-88/90) [CA/US]

[ozkar-krapo]

Yasunao TONE

"Anagram for Strings / Geography & Music"

(12"/LP. Slowscan. 2005 / c. 1961/79) [JP]

[menandwomanofhistory]

Malcolm Goldstein

[dustedmagazine]

Malcolm Goldstein — Full Circle Sounding (Kye)

Full Circle Sounding is a welcome release by the overlooked and underrated American composer, violinist and improviser Malcolm Goldstein, an important, if understated figure in the field of avant-garde music and dance for the past 50 years or so. If there are hints of John Cage in that description, they are somewhat apposite, not just because the great composer worked closely with Merce Cunningham and his dance troupe, but because Goldstein shares Cage’s interest in the transformative power of music and how that can be expressed in improvisation and atypical compositional strategies. 

On the dance front, the first of the four pieces that make up Full Circle Sounding is entitled “Judson Piece #6 (With Improvised Violin Extensions),” indicating unequivocally Goldstein’s work with New York’s famed Judson Dance Theater.  It would be fascinating to see how a dancer would try to fit his or her body’s movements to the music, such is its austerity and deliberately anti-melodic structure. Goldstein’s approach the violin is certainly Cageian, so there is a history there, but in his viscerality and physicality he also prefigures the more atavistic approaches later pursued by Keiji Haino or John Butcher. The violin, such a grandiose instrument throughout history, is here transformed into a vehicle for the expression of emotions such as rage and despair, as Goldstein scrapes and bends the strings, producing notes that pierce and broil, often cut off as soon as they take form. Electronics are added to introduce even further disorientation via pregnant drones and background rumble, but the violin remains the central focus, both instantly familiar and removed from any recognisable context. “Judson Piece #6 (With Improvised Violin Extensions)” is certainly difficult, but also unremittingly imposing. Again, one feels for the dancers, whilst simultaneously envying them for having such strident, unavoidable music to work with. 

Despite only comprising four tracks, Full Circle Sounding is an excellent snapshot of Malcolm Goldstein’s persistent vision, stretching as they do from pieces composed in the mid-1960s to the present day. “But One Bird Sang Not”, from the 1990s, is a Bosnian folk song reimagined via New York avant-garde idioms. It draws a line between the earlier anti-Vietnam War protest intentions of “Sheep Meadow”, which opens side two, and the calamity that hit Southern Europe in the wake of the dissolution of Yugoslavia. “Sheep Meadow” also feature electronics, but here their presence is more robustly felt alongside Goldstein’s angry violin excursion, imbuing a folkish gravitas to a work that could otherwise have felt stiflingly academic. Indeed, Goldstein is far removed from the austerity of modern composition, instead relying on an approach that favours the immediacy of emotion and physicality over the strict rules that govern much of the intellectual side of the avant-garde. With his use of the violin, it would be tempting to compare him to such minimalists like LaMonte Young and Tony Conrad, and whilst Goldstein shares much with the latter in particular in terms of brute sound, a fairer comparison would be with Conrad’s erstwhile pal Henry Flynt and his excursions into hillbilly minimalism, such is the visceral nature of the New Yorker’s approach. Hell, he at times on the violin sounds like Neil Young in full Crazy Horse flow, at others like Coltrane or Ayler at their free-blowing best.

Full Circle Sounding is a time capsule of a record, capturing a still-vibrant artist in mid-flow through the decades and shining a light on his music and its curious meld of the experimental and the immediate. Malcolm Goldstein deserves more attention, and here’s hoping this is the album to achieve that. 

Joseph Burnett

[jgthirlwell]

10/29/14  The incredible out-violinist Malcolm Goldstein played at Issue Project Room as part of Graham Lambkin's Kye label showcase. The 78 years old Goldstein's playing swooped from subtle lyical control to scrabbling frenzy and all point s in between, as he accompanied musique concrete tape collages and played solo. Graham Lambkin also performed in a duo with James Rushford on a theatrical piano piece in the blackness, and they presented a tape work by Henning Christiansen, a Danish composer and member of the Fluxus-movement.

[issueprojectroom]

Malcolm Goldstein is a violinist whose "Soundings" improvisations have received international acclaim for having "reinvented violin playing", extending the range of tonal/sound-texture possibilities of the instrument and revealing new dimensions of expressivity. Listen to him perform James Tenney's 'Koan' before he helps to close the Kye showcase with a solo performance on Sunday, October 26th.

[contemporaryscore]

Variations V Thirty-seven remarks re an audio-visual performanceDated: September-October 1965 Instrumentation: Any number of musicians with photo-electric cells and at least 13 electronically amplified sound-sources. Premiere: July 23, 1965 at the Philharmonic Hall in Lincoln Centre, New York City Performer(s): John Cage, David Tudor, Malcolm Goldstein, Frederick Lieberman and James Tenny (musicians); Robert Moog (electronic devices); Stan VanDerBeek (films); Nam June Paik (distorted television images); Beverly Emmons (lighting); Merce Cunningham, Carolyn Brwon, Barbara Lloyd, Sandra Neels, Albert Reid, Peter Saul and Gus Solomons Jr. (dancers); Billy Klüver (technical consultant). More details below. Choreography: Merce Cunningham: Variations 5 (1965)