Jerome Kitzke The Character of American Sunlight innovate 828 Rightly told, all tales are one. Cormac McCarthy The story itself is the name. James Hazard Mitakuye Oyasin. (All My Relations) 1 Mad Coyote Madly Sings (1991) 8:35 2 A Keening Wish (1988) 12:27 3 The Animist Child (1994) 6:44 4 The Big Gesture (1987) 14:00 5 Breath and Bone (1996) 5:17 6 We Need to Dream All This Again (1993) 11:14 7 The Character of American Sunlight (1996) 14:01 --73:05-- Lisa Karrer Guy Klucevsek Jerome Kitzke Bradley Lubman Essential Music The Mad Coyote It would be hard to think of a living American composer whose music is as exuberant, vital, and transformative as Jerome Kitzke’s. The compositions on this album, which was first released in February 1999, provoke strong reactions because they themselves are so strong. Like Walt Whitman’s poetry, his music contains multitudes. In Mad Coyote Madly Sings, we hear outcries for social justice mingled with tremendous joy and tenderness. A simple ritual drumbeat shares space, in We Need to Dream All This Again, with rhythmic and melodic complexity. Breath and Bone, an elegy for a friend who died, conveys the same ecstatic life-affirmation as The Animist Child, which honors a child’s birth. The musicians on this CD are all long-time Kitzke collaborators. Since this recording was made, his compositions have ventured further out into the world, with performances often taking place without his knowledge. His scores are precise and clear enough that even without contacting him, musicians can communicate his intentions. But there is really no substitute for having Jerome by your side as you learn his music, gently encouraging you to “YIP” loud and high, showing you how to drum on the piano lid, demonstrating a bird song or a breathy sigh. Jerome himself is such a kind-hearted gentle spirit that the sheer force of his work can come as a surprise. But for him, there is no reason why the political convictions and social conscience at the heart of all his work cannot coexist with lyricism and beauty. As Frederic Rzewski once said, “Music probably cannot change the world. But it is a good idea to act as though it could.” This CD has already changed the world for many of us, and now, with its rerelease, it can continue to change the world for more listeners. It’s a great pleasure to hear it again. — Sarah Cahill Berkeley, CA April 2013 Jerome Kitzke: Bringing Energy Down from the Gods In searching for a term to encompass and sum up Jerome Kitzke’s music, only one comes to mind. It isn’t jazz, though there are certainly jazzy moments. It isn’t minimalist, or serialist, or free improv, or postminimalist, or Third Stream, or “New York noise,” or totalist. It’s just very deeply human. Embarrassingly human, human enough to make us feel ashamed of not often being completely human, human enough to give us the warm feeling that intense humanity is still possible. It’s partly because of the sense of Kitzke’s presence within his own music. I’ve seen him play in Manhattan so many times, long, lanky form at the piano, his braided pony tail hanging down in back. He’ll rip away at the keyboard dexterously, then suddenly whoop! and start singing, slap the top of the piano with his hands, then grab a rattle with his left hand and shake vigorously while his right never misses a beat. He’s so there his soul isn’t hidden away in the abstract notes, as with so many avant-garde composers. He’s relating to the objects around him, relating to the other musicians, and right in touch with the audience sitting a few feet away. He’s antic, he’s charming, but he’s got an urgent message for you. Yeah, I mean you. Take The Animist Child, for toy piano. Kitzke sits his large frame down at the little instrument. Then, instead of plinking the bell-like notes we expect, he starts slapping the top of the thing and shouting, “cha chikaba, chikaba! cha chikaba, chikaba!” The piece was dedicated to a then-newborn baby, and the gestures sound intended to delight a child. But they are also earthy, primitive, gutsy, while also lined with sophisticated contrapuntal lines and rhythmically intricate tone clusters. And as the piece progresses through falsetto “do do”s and grunting “hey hey”s, the opening melee mellows into serene calm. And that mellowing is the most Kitzkean gesture of all. For, like the ancient Native American chants he occasionally draws on, Kitzke uses music to bring energy down from the gods. Thus his pieces pass from anxiety to calm, from manic activity to sadness, from fear to a sense of oneness. Mad Coyote Madly Sings, based on Allen Ginsberg’s crazy alliterative poem about cold war bomb threats, starts out manic and fearful at once. Cascades of saxophone/bass clarinet ripples alternate with a harsh waltz parody. “Whom bomb? We bomb them!” the vocalists chant in a troubled disarray of changing meters. But finally the drumbeat steadies to 8th-notes and the winds slow their wailing for a wise Lakota saying: “The old men say the earth only endures; You spoke truly, you are right.” A Keening Wish returns us to Ginsberg again, this time a sadder poem about love and loneliness. The opening bass drum is a heartbeat, and the restless chorale for clarinet, bass clarinet, and double bass is marked as “a calm funeral.” But the vocalist Lisa Karrer is insistent - “The weight of the world is love” - and her search to escape alone-ness leads to anxiety in the music until she finds what “I always wanted, to return to the body where I was born.” The denouement is one of Kitzke’s most tranquil passages, a slow, wordless melody for the soprano doubled and paralleled in the other instruments, a musical retreat into the womb. The Big Gesture, a dance for oboe, bass clarinet, and percussion, divides into seven movements whose progression is marked in the score as follows: 1. we exist on a line 2. the line begins to move 3. the line arcs many ways 4. until the line becomes a circle 5. the circle begins to move 6. until the circle draws us in 7. and the circle and we breathe as one The early movements seem nervous; in fact, the third, a frantic oboe solo, is marked in the score, “like an old Christmas tree on fire,” and darned if it doesn’t sound like one, too, brittle and throwing off sparks. By the final trio, through, the instruments have become attuned, alternating between “restless exuberance” and a sweet chant marked “hymnlike holy.” In writing Breath and Bone for accordionist Guy Klucevsek, Kitzke was writing for a kindred spirit, for Klucevsek is as likely to “Hey!” and “Yah!” while playing as Kitzke himself. The “Introduction to Breath” opens with the player laughing his way through anxious meter changes. The “Breath Song” gives way to the mostly non-vocal “Bone Dance” (“with abandon, almost nuts”), and when the “Breath Song” returns, its whistled bird tweeps give way to a “sadly funny” waltz. That’s the emotional center of the piece, and the final “Breath and Bone Chorale” thins to an innocent, disappearing A major triad. We Need to Dream All This Again follows a somewhat different energy curve, portraying as it does, the U.S. government’s duplicitous theft of the Black Hills from the Lakota, Tsistsistas, and Arapaho Indians in the 1870s. Scored for trumpet, clarinet, violin, cello, and percussion, the work opens in a disspiriting, debilitating cold, despite which the protagonists eventually summon the energy for a noble dance. A lot of music that requires instrumentalists to use their voices sounds affected, but when Kitzke elicits some “Hey-yah”s in unison with his melody, or asks the violinist at the end to whistle sadly an octave below his instrument, one feels an impression that the players’ humanity has transcended the abstraction of the written notes. This piece, too, ends in a prayer, almost despairing but fervent. Given Kitzke’s omnipresent concern for the people this continent was stolen from, The Character of American Sunlight has somewhat less benign connotations than you might think. A ghost has taken a train, so the implicit narrative runs, to find the character of American sunlight, whose job is now to illuminate the darkness of American human nature. That darkness first appears at the point at which the four percussionists of Essential Music start a wild jabbering dance, against which the piano maintains an energetic protest, and it reappears at the end where the percussionists have a good couple of laughs. Still, there is some good in the American character, as comes out in the final hobo song of the homelessness. The Character of American Sunlight is one of Kitzke’s most ritualistic works, with bizarre textures of flexatones, water pots, and four harmonicas often blown in unison. You can hardly listen to the work as just a sonic surface; it pulls you into the space where it was performed, demands that you see and participate as well as hear, challenges you to be as present as Kitzke himself. His prayers, his raucous humor, his flashes of anxiety, his heart-breaking sadness remind us what it is - how difficult and how rewarding - to be fully human. — Kyle Gann, 1999 Kyle Gann, a composer, teaches at Bard College and was new-music critic for the Village Voice from 1986 to 2005. His books include The Music of Conlon Nancarrow, American Music in the Twentieth Century, Music Downtown: Writings from the Village Voice, No Such Things as Silence: John Cage, and Robert Ashley. 1. Mad Coyote Madly Sings (text by The Tewa, Allen Ginsberg, The Lakota) The Mad Coyote: Nicole Rose, Theo Bleckmann, Wendy Luck, Jerome Kitzke - voice Michael Lowenstern - bass clarinet Allen Won - tenor saxophone Charles Tomlinson - bass Barbara Merjan - drum set Bradley Lubman – conductor The composer’s epigraph running through the score of this work reads: “At war anew, the raw ugliness of the inevitable gun pierces and shoots, shoots and pierces deeply into our souls made jittery-crazy by the memories of past madness. The memories shake us hard – until we feel the gun at our heads as it fires the bullets of forced acceptance we fend off by saying ‘funk you, we do not accept this!’ We sing crazy and chant ‘Funk you, funk you!’ But their subtle sly weight presses down, down, down, until we feel funked by denial and silence. So crazier we sing, ‘Ahh, funk you, funk,’ so that their gun of suppression is drawn again and fires away in blind bursts, both raw and insistent, but ultimately powerless to the truth, which gives us the blues – a dirge both raw and mournful. We sing to our Mother with hard hearts, bitter hearts, tender hearts, confused hearts, loving hearts, sad hearts, until we cry for her and the tears cleanse our souls, or so we hope, for we always seem to feel and hear the echo of the gun which pierces and shoots into our souls made jittery-crazy by today’s madness. We pray loudly.” Mad Coyote Madly Sings was written in response to the Persian Gulf War and is intended to be a voice crying out against not just that war, but war in general. It reminds us that the madness which causes war, no matter how cloaked in righteousness, can never erase the fact that when a bomb is dropped, we too do the dropping, and when that bomb strikes, it strikes us all, and that ultimately no matter what humans do to each other while on the earth, it will be the earth alone that will survive. This work is dedicated to the redefinition of manhood, based on Paul Fusell’s theory that until this is accomplished, wars will continue to rage and be waged all over the world. This work is also the first main section from Kitzke’s theater work The Paha Sapa Give-Back. Mad Coyote Madly sings, Then roars the west wind! - Tewa HUM BOM! Whom bomb? We bomb them! Whom bomb? We bomb them! Whom bomb? We bomb them! Whom bomb? We bomb them! Whom bomb? You bomb you! Whom bomb? You bomb you! Whom bomb? You bomb you! Whom bomb? You bomb you! What do we do? Who do we bomb? What do we do? Who do we bomb? What do we do? Who do we bomb? What do we do? Who do we bomb? What do we do? You bomb! You bomb them! What do we do? You bomb! You bomb them! What do we do? We bomb! We bomb them! What do we do? We bomb! We bomb them! Whom bomb? We bomb you! Whom bomb? We bomb you! Whom bomb? You bomb you! Whom bomb? You bomb you! - Allen Ginsberg - 1971 The old men Say The earth Only Endures, You spoke Truly, You are right. - Lakota 2. A Keening Wish (text by Allen Ginsberg) The Mad Coyote: Lisa Karrer - vocal soloist Wendy Luck, Johanna Maria Rose - voice Marianne Gythfeldt - clarinet/vocals Michael Lowenstern - bass clarinet/vocals Charles Tomlinson - bass Barbara Merjan - percussion/vocals Jerome Kitzke - flexatone Bradley Lubman - conductor A Keening Wish is a setting for actor and ensemble of Allen Ginsberg’s 1954 poem “Song” from the Howl collection. The composer was drawn to the strength of the poet’s words as they speak of the all-pervasive power of love, which in its unconditional form is a force that cannot be denied. SONG The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction the weight, the weight we carry is love. Who can deny? In dreams it touches the body, in thought constructs a miracle, in imagination anguishes till born in human- looks out of the heart burning with purity- for the burden of life is love, but we carry the weight wearily, and so must rest in the arms of love at last, must rest in the arms of love. No rest without love, no sleep without dreams of love- be mad or chill obsessed with angels or machines, the final wish is love -cannot be bitter, cannot deny, cannot withhold if denied: the weight is too heavy -must give for no return as thought is given in solitude in all the excellence of its excess. The warm bodies shine together in the darkness, the hand moves to the center of the flesh, the skin trembles in happiness and the soul comes joyful to the eye- yes, yes, that’s what I wanted, I always wanted, I always wanted, to return to the body where I was born. — Allen Ginsberg, San Jose, 1954 3. The Animist Child Jerome Kitzke - toy piano/vocals/foot stomps The Animist Child is a stomp on the earth for the beginning of life; a baby born who instinctively embraces the soul inherent in all things. Written for Wendy Mae Chambers and first performed by her in 1994 in New York City, the piece has been subsequently performed many times in Europe and the United States by Margaret Leng Tan, Kathleen Supove, Anthony de Mare, Tom Linker, Isabel Ettenauer, Ms. Chambers, and the composer. The Animist Child is dedicated to Bix Windbiel. 4. The Big Gesture The Mad Coyote: Jaqueline Leclair - oboe Michael Lowenstern - bass clarinet Bradley Lubman - percussion The Big Gesture was originally written as a score for dance with choreography by Cate Deicher. The form of its seven movements is that of a flowing arch – trio, duo, solo, solo, solo, duo, trio, and the story formed by the successive movement titles (see Gann essay) tells of the human possibility of progressing through life from being unformed to formed. The gesture in the title is that thing said or done that conveys the realization of a long sought-after state of mind or way of being. The Big Gesture is dedicated to Helen Tomczyk. 5. Breath and Bone Guy Klucevsek - accordion/vocals Jerome Kitzke - vocals/foot stomps/whistler Breath and Bone is an elegy written in memory of the composer’s good friend and colleague, the percussionist Gregory Charnon (1955-1995). Scored for solo accordionist/vocalist, the work is meant to honor the indomitable spirit of Mr. Charnon, whose sense of humor and courage remained on full display in the face of very difficult times. Commissioned by and written for Guy Klucevsek, Breath and Bone was premiered by Mr. Klucevsek on March 23, 1996 at Merkin Hall in New York City and subsequently performed by him around the U.S., Europe, Australia, and South America. This recording features the duo version, with the composer providing vocals, whistling, and foot stomps. 6. We Need to Dream All This Again (text by Jerome Kitzke) The Mad Coyote: Jon Nelson - trumpet/vocals Michael Lowenstern - clarinet/bass clarinet/vocals Todd Reynolds - violin/vocals Greg Hesselink - cello/vocals Barbara Merjan - percussion/vocals Jerome Kitzke - whistler Bradley Lubman - conductor/vocals Crazy Horse comes to the Hills. Hey hey dillah hey, hey hey di-di-di-lah hey Hey hey dillah hey, hey hey di-di-di-lah Hey yah, hey yah, hey yah, hey yah, hey yah, hey yah, hey yah He is in the Hills to pray. — Jerome Kitzke The composer’s epigraph running through the score of this work reads: “In an unfriendly winter a storm takes hold, and snow falls and the brittle cold accentuates the loneliness of humans. But a strong dream, a peace dream, a hope dream comes a-flaming from the heart of an insistent tireless soul that says: Remember when the people sang of life with guts and verve, with tenderness and love which kept up the dance so that even in cold and silence the heart sang with a great warm bloodiness and purpose that kept the circle whole and ever-turning. Let’s dance and call it praying.” The title of this work was respectfully borrowed from the Bernard Pomerance narrative, of which the author Barry Lopez says, “This story of sacrilege and duplicity in the Black Hills cannot be told often enough, for the modern dilemma reverberates exquisitely within it.” The sacrilege and duplicity Mr. Lopez refers to is the U.S. government’s behavior in their efforts to steal the Black Hills from the Lakota, Tsistsistas, and Arapaho people in the late 19th century. In 1975 the U.S. Court of Claims called the government’s conduct toward the Lakota in all probability “the most ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealings” in U.S. history. Mr. Pomerance’s book is an account told in modern perspective of Crazy Horse, Custer and the battle for Black Hills in the 1870’s. He says, “There are many many sources and firsthand accounts of this period. That is history, it is called, and has its value. In sum I think it needs to be redreamed. Hence, the title. It is an experiment, an exercise. What it is not is history.” The composer also believes that history is not static and must constantly be rethought and redreamed. His short quintet comes from imagery suggested in Mr. Pomerance’s writing, particularly the section called “Interlude: The First Snows.” In it, the surrender-or-die ultimatums given by Washington to the Lakota people in the hard winter after the Little Big Horn battle, are compared to the smothering effect of a strong, steady, long and quietly falling snow. The story in We Need to Dream All This Again resonates in modern times to the extent that the perceptions of history too are not static, and that when, in 1992, a law is proposed prohibiting the use of Crazy Horse’s name to sell a beer, and the name Custer is replaced by Little Big Horn in the Battlefield National Monument’s designation, we can view these not as acts of dreaded political correctness, but signs of hope. Mr. Kitzke’s work is a prayer. We Need to Dream All This Again was commissioned by Present Music and is the second main section from Kitzke’s theater work The Paha Sapa Give-Back. 7. The Character of American Sunlight Essential Music: Phillip Bush - piano/whistler/vocals Charles Wood - percussion/harmonica/vocals John Kennedy - percussion/harmonica/ vocals/vocal solo William Trigg - percussion/harmonica/vocals Mark Suter - percussion/harmonica/vocals The composer’s epigraph running through the score of this work reads: “A ghost comes to catch a train to the place where it can see the character of American sunlight. That light, which ‘long ago gave up its claim on innocence,’ now searches, as it must, to illuminate the darkness of American human nature. Recognizing this, the spirit is pleased and catches the train back home to everywhere.” The essence of these words comes from the historian Patricia Nelson Limerick, writer Henry James, and Drex Brooks’ Sweet Medicine, a photographic essay of Indian massacre, battlefield, and treaty sites. In 1887, James said, speaking of America, “the light of the sun seems fresh and innocent, as if it knew as yet but few of the secrets of the world and none of the weariness of shining…A large juvenility is stamped upon the face of things, and in the vividness of the present, the past, which died so young and had time to produce so little, attracts but scanty attention.” Native nations then and now reject this Eurocentric view. In 1995, Ms. Limerick said of the same light, “Shining on North America, the sun that now lights Brooks’ photographs long ago gave up its claim on innocence. Illuminating the events of the Indian/White wars, the sun came to know quite a few of the most unsettling ‘secrets’ of human nature. To try and forget those secrets diminishes the human spirit…” This work is a simple dance and prayer that we never forget. The title is Ms. Limerick’s. The Character of American Sunlight was commissioned by Essential Music. Previously released on Koch International Classics CD 7456, February 1999 Produced by Judith Sherman (except tracks 3 and 5; produced by Guy Klucevsek and Jerome Kitzke) Recorded September 11, 1996 (tracks 3 and 5) at City Sound Productions, New York City and March 31, April 4 and 7, 1997 (tracks 1, 2, 4, 6, 7) at Baby Monster Studios, New York City. Engineered by Jamie Candiloro (tracks 1, 2, 4, 6, 7) and Guy Klucevsek, Jerome Kitzke, and Corey Folta (tracks 3 and 5). Mastered by Judith Sherman and Jerome Kitzke at Soundbyte, New York City. Executive Producer for Peermusic Classical: Todd Vunderink. All works published by Peer International Corp./Peermusic III, Ltd. (BMI) For A Keening Wish: “Song” by Allen Ginsberg, used by permission of May King Poetry Music. For Mad Coyote Madly Sings: “Hum Bom!” by Allen Ginsberg, Copyright © 1971 by May King Poetry Music. Used by Permission. The CD title is from Patricia Nelson Limerick’s essay “Haunted America.” Cover and inner photos – Jerome Kitzke Composer photo – David Edminster Program notes – Jerome Kitzke www.peermusicclassical.com Peermusic Classical peerclassical@peermusic.com Thanks to: Eugene and Lorraine Kitzke, Regina Kitzke, Mary Shummon, Paul Kitzke, Patrice Wessel Elaqua, Guy Klucevsek, Sue Bernstein, Judith Sherman, James Williams, Susan Napodano Del Giorno and Koch International, Kathleen Masterson, Kyle Gann, Michael Lowenstern, Anonymous 4, Essential Music, John Downey, Mary Johnson, The Mad Coyote, The Millay Colony, Charlotte Black Elk, Gerald Clifford, Allen Ginsberg, Wendy Mae Chambers, Patricia Nelson Limerick, Bernard Pomerance, Cate Deicher, Present Music, Baby Monster, City Sound, Philip Blackburn, Christopher Campbell, innova Recordings, and the American Composers Forum. And a very special thank you to Todd Vunderink, Erin Rogers, Tobin Fowler, Geoffrey Hills, and Peermusic for making this recording possible. This recording is dedicated to my sister Mary Shummon (1949-1999) — Jerome Kitzke Innova is supported by an endowment from the McKnight Foundation. Philip Blackburn, director, design Chris Campbell, operations manager Steve McPherson, publicist www.innova.mu