BEHRMAN, DAVID - MY DEAR SIEGFRIED (2CD - USED m-/m-)

My Dear Siegfried provides a performance environment in which musicians interact with texts by the two authors Sam Behrman & Siegfried Sassoon and with music software designed to respond to the performers' actions. The texts and the software elements are arranged as a linear thread along which the piece progresses. In QSRL a sensor listens to what the performer is doing and a computer music system provides responses to information the sensor takes in. Viewfinder is a sound installation using software based on homemade synthesizer music of the early 1970s. In 'A New Team Takes Over', homemade synthesizer modules were used in this piece to distort recordings made off the air of press conferences by members of the new Nixon administration following the American election of 1968. 'Touch Tones', from the early days of music done with the help of newly-available, small, inexpensive 'microcomputers,' made use of a kind of primitive artificial intelligence scheme. 'Pools of Phase Locked Loops' was one of four pieces made in response to commissions to the artists of the Sonic Arts Union (Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma and me.) The recording is from a live performance at Radio Bremen in May 1972. (label info)