Concerts by Composers:
No. 05: Works by Arnold Dreyblatt, Dary John Mizelle, & Alison Knowles

In the late 1970s and early 1980s the Experimental Intermedia Foundation held a series of exciting concerts of avant-garde and electro-acoustic music at Phil Niblock’s loft in the SoHo district of New York City. These concerts were then packaged into a series of hour-long radio programs entitled “Concerts by Composers” and distributed to interested radio stations around the United States. This fifth program in the series features music by Arnold Dreyblatt, Dary John Mizelle, & Alison Knowles. The first pieces of music heard are two excerpts from Arnold Dreyblatt’s “Nodal Excitation” as performed by his Orchestra of Excited Strings. It is one in a series of compositions that Dreyblatt has composed for a variety of similar, mostly string, ensembles. This particular work calls for two altered double basses, hurdy gurdy, and modified miniature piano. The composer offers a more detailed description of the orchestration in his introduction to the piece. This is followed by a composition by Dary John Mizelle scored for double bass and computer tape and performed by Diana Mizelle. The program concludes with the third act of the “Gem Duck Opera” by Alison Knowles. One of the early members of the Fluxus group of artists, Knowles opera, or mixed media work, was inspired by a catalog of shoe parts, pages of which were Xeroxed and projected upon the stage during the course of this distinctly avant-garde opera. The program is hosted by Bérénice Reynaud, with each segment being introduced by the respective composer.

The production and distribution of this program was originally funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, & the Beards Fund.