Jerome Kitzke |
The Paha Sapa
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UI was a composer for five years before I had any formal musical training in
harmony, rhythm, formal structure, orchestration, and notation. From
1970–75 I blissfully created works without ‘knowing’ what I was doing, and
in one case, created an orchestral piece by writing out the individual instrumental
parts before the score, which, trust me, is about as ass backwards as
it gets when it comes to the practicalities of music composition. There was
something, though, about these early years being unfettered by rules and
strictures that fed my sense of freedom and wonder at not just the sound of
music, but also the way in which musical notation could be represented on
paper. Early on it became clear to me that I could do whatever I wanted
with notation as long as the symbols and the way I placed them upon the
page possessed an intrinsic clarity and logic that was easily understood by
the performers. At about the same time that I was creating my ass backwards
orchestral piece, I discovered the work of composer George Crumb,
whose music not only sounded, but looked otherworldly and beautiful as
well. The lovely thing about a Crumb score was that the staves that turned
into spirals and circles and crucifixes did not exist as gimmickry, but clearly
aided the performers in capturing the theatricality or drama of a given
moment in sound in a way that would not likely be achieved by any other
notational means. To me conventional notation already possesses visual
beauty, but the distance beyond convention that Crumb and many others,
including myself, have taken it, has often raised the musical score page to
the level of visual art. For example, in 1988, ten pages from my piece In the
Throat of River Mornings were displayed at the 101 Wooster Gallery in
Soho in New York City as part of the gallery’s Hear Art exhibition.
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JEROME KITZKE’S music has been played around the world by a wide variety
of soloists and ensembles. Pianist Sarah Cahill will premiere There is a Field in
the fall of 2008 and the KRONOS Quartet will premiere Winter Count, with actor
Jennifer Kathryn Marshall, in the spring of 2009. Current commissions are held
with pianists Anthony de Mare and Lisa Moore, DuoSolo, and Present Music, who
will premiere Mr. Kitzke’s evening length theatrical musical work Buffalo Nation (Bison bison), with a text by Kathleen Masterson, in the fall of 2010. He lives in
New York City and his music is recorded on the Koch, New World, and Innova
labels. His work is published by Peer Music in New York City and Hamburg.
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