Doug Rice went to Penfield High School in the 1970s with a bunch of guys he lovingly calls “the pseudo-intellectuals” — borrowing the term a principal used derogatorily back in the day, when one of them, Andy Laties, ran an underground newspaper.
Rice had lost touch with Laties and Mitch Ahern, both from the class of 1977, over the years, until he was the recipient of a mass e-mailing about an “Ursonate Urchestra” performance at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City. It turned out that Laties, Ahern and several colleagues in the New York and Boston arts scenes had formed an experimental music group devoted to playing a piece by Dada poet, artist and composer Kurt Schwitters.
Sounded interesting to Rice, who just so happens to have opened a performance space in Rochester, the MuCCC (for Multi-use Community Cultural Center). For their part, Laties, Ahern and their cohorts were looking for a place to perform in Rochester. And, since Rice’s brothers Don and Steve were going to be in town for Steve’s 50th birthday next weekend, Rice booked the Ursonate for a performance on Thursday, March 18.
And so it is that the MuCCC stage will host the controlled chaos of the Urchestra’s interpretation of Schwitter’s abstract sound-art poem “Sonata in Primeval Sounds,” also called the “Ursonate” — improvisations and variations with instruments ranging from sax to guitar to some, like the “crutch” and the “electoluxopipeophone,” invented by Ahern and others. And it’ll also host something of a mini-reunion for mid-70s-era Penfield “pseudo-intellectuals.”
“We used to jam together in the Rice brothers’ basement,” Laties recalled. And next week’s show revisits those days, with Steve and Don Rice both joining in onstage. Steve, a Seattle musician, will play keyboards and accordion; Don, who’s worked on Broadway musicals in New York City, plays baritone and alto sax.
So, what’s an electroluxopipeophone? According to an Ahern Web site, it consists of two organ pipes, an Electrolux vacuum cleaner and various hoses and hardware, most found on trash day, and played like an acoustic theremin. The crutch is, well, an actual crutch with an antique toy keyboard and assorted other vintage analogue effects attached to it.
Schwitters (1887-1948) was a German surrealist painter known for his work in collage, as well as sculpture, graphic design and poetry, with many of his works incorporating found objects. Laties calls him “the founder of one of the Dada art movements.” His 1932-published “Sonata in Primeval Sounds” is, in a MuCCC release’s words, “the granddaddy of sound-art poems: an hourlong opus that develops 26 abstract themes in classical sonata format.”
Or in Laties’ words, “It’s a long poem made entirely out of fragments of speech — it doesn’t use recognizable vowels. They’ve identified 26 different phonemes; the piece sort of repeats them, reflects them, reverses them, conjugates them, cuts them up and rearranges them.” The listener becomes an active agent in determining meaning.
The Ursonate Urchestra takes a similar approach: a musical collage, with musicians using found objects to create sounds to contribute to their interpretation of Schwitters’ sonata. And it doesn’t follow recognizable melodic patterns: It sounds akin to free jazz at its very freest, an interplay, occasionally a cacophony, of instruments and voices, sometimes harmonious and sometimes discordant.
“We try to find cast-off objects, including combinations of electronics and percussion, to find unusual sounds,” Laties said. The “Ursonate” is really the only piece the shifting assemblage does — but it’s different every time. “It just kind of deepens and shifts for us,” he said. “Sometimes it takes us 45 minutes to perform it, sometimes it takes us an hour and a half.”
The prime movers in the Ursonate Urchestra include vocalists Laties and Rebecca Migdal; percussionists Eric Blitz and Bob Wilson; bassist Andy Crespo; trombonist, trumpeter and cellist John Landino; snyth players Denis Luzuriaga and Amanda Petrovato; the artist known as GLOVE; and invented-instrument makers Ahern and Pronoblem. They’ve performed around a dozen times around New York City, Boston and western Massachusetts.
And, for one night, Don and Steve Rice.
“I always kind of hoped we’d get back together with them,” Laties said.
Penfield, N.Y. —
