David Gold and I performed in “The Speakeasy Series,” produced by Studio B in Maplewood, NJ, March 24, 2012. Our set: Make a Wish Never Shtup a Nutjob Fa La La La La The Gypsy (by Billy Reid) Don’t Talk To Me Good Night

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I wrote the score for Katie Nelson’s dance “Blunders” back in 1980.  Frankie Mann recorded it; I played all the instruments, including piano, toy piano, ‘cello, organ, and percussion.  Here’s the first page.

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Michele Larsson put together The Big Show in 1978, in connection with an exhibit devoted to Loie Fuller at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, in San Francisco.  I provided music, which was mostly improvised, as I recall; Tony Gnazzo talked and rode an exercise bike; Helen Dannenberg and Michele danced.

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“Lasciate l’Ombre” is a setting of an excerpt from Luigi Tansillo, as quoted by Giordano Bruno in La Cena de le ceneri. A bit of research reveals that Bruno’s citation differs from Tansillo’s original poem.  Duly noted.  My setting is based on the randomized four-pitch diatonic chords that I’ve used in several pieces. My translation […]

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Back in 1988, I used to perform this version of Hamlet’s soliloquy, in which each word is followed by a cartoonish sound effect.  It was, I recall, fun to perform, difficult to memorize, and took a long time to set up.  Here’s how it begins.

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The “Nocturne” is based on the randomized diatonic four-pitch chords I’ve used in several pieces. Seven of these chords were used for the left-hand part. A set of seven numbers gave the number of repetitions of each chord (6215734) and the key of each chord (7623154: BECGFAD). They were then arpeggiated, in the familiar nocturnal […]

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This photocopied dossier collects 49 pages of my music for keyboard.  Let me know if you want one. The pieces are: The Muscatel Suite Pay Attention Gilding the Pyrite The Guidonian Hand Applied to a Tracing of a Plaster Cast of a Yeti Footprint This Honeycomb Matrix of Atoms Known as the Material World Bill […]

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Michael Smith and I used to open every performance of “Doug & Mike’s Adult Entertainment” with this little ditty.  Mike was on pocket trumpet, and I played banjo uke.  We also made a karaoke tape, now included on our DVD.

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The third string quartet consists of five of the erotic sonnets of Piero Aretino, translated into Solrésol. (There’s a preparatory sketch here.) In the first movement, the first four sonnets are offered simultaneously, each played by a different instrument. The translation is isorhythmic, with one beat of rest between words, two between lines, and four […]

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In 2001, White Knuckle Sandwich — Jennifer Duffy (now Perez), Anne Shapiro, and myself — contributed to a program of 10-minute musicals under development at New York Theatre Workshop.  Our selection, “The King of Ukuleleland,” was inspired by the island musicals that proliferated in the early 1900s; it featured my dummy, Eddie Gray, in the […]

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