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| Creative Music Newsletter Review of October. | |
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########################################## CMS Update
Issue Number 16 - January 2002 ########################################## Dedicated to keeping you informed of the worldwide network of musicians who made the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, New York, the twentieth century's premier study center for creative music. Motivated by the spirit of music as a unifying force among all people. =============================================
1. Larry Chernicoff ===================================================== He was there at the beginning, and he is still contributing to the message and the mission of the Creative Music Studio. Larry Chernicoff is an unsung CMS hero, whose role in the community has been vital and multifaceted. In the late sixties, pre-CMS, Karl Berger was teaching a class in improvisation at New York's New School for Social Research (now called New School University, see http://www.newschool.edu/), in a position that had recently been vacated by John Cage. Larry Chernicoff was one of Karl's first students in that class, as a guitarist and vibraphonist. There and then began an association that has lasted over thirty years. Throughout the early years of CMS, Larry was always there. Whatever work needed to be done to develop the fledgling community, Larry would take it on. He taught himself graphic design to fulfill the need for posters and other marketing pieces that had to go out on a weekly basis to announce CMS's ongoing concerts and sessions. At other times he was called upon to teach music theory ("music facts," Larry would say) as one of the lineup of guiding artists. Larry took to heart Karl's advice to "find your own voice" and to "just play your own music." This has provided Larry's direction all these years as he has led the Larry Chernicoff quintet and continued his evolution as a composer. The quintet, which he has maintained on and off for nearly twenty years, includes other CMS stalwarts Tom Schmidt and Don Davis. After several years in the corporate world, Larry is now in a place where he can devote more energy and focus to his composing and performing. I've been listening to a recording of one of Larry's compositions, which he recently sent me. It's his Seven Variations on a Lydian Theme, for clarinet, bassoon, cello, violin, and bass--one version being a "compser's cut" output to E-Mu sampler and the other a live performance at Searles Castle in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. I have no idea whether Larry has ever thought of his work in the context of motion-picture soundtracks, but the visual images that his sounds evoked came to me readily and vividly. This is really beautiful stuff, and I'm sure that we can look forward to more from Larry. There may even be a Karl Berger/Larry Chernicoff collaboration in the works. A recent quote from the Rogovoy Report (http://www.rogovoy.com/136.shtml) sheds even more light on Larry's outlook and his musical sensibilities: "'If music is truly the world's one common language, then it's obvious that the period of human history that we have entered calls for music that reflects the higher aspirations of our hearts,' said Chernicoff. 'And that means returning to beauty, and moving away from the harsh, snarling, angry sounds and lyrics that have been sold to the public by the music industry for the last decade or so. The actual sound of the music is its message, and much of what has been pushed over the radio and TV airwaves in the last few years has carried a very strong message of negativity to the whole world. And most of it emanates from the USA. So I think it's a time to reflect in our music what may be a rising tide of positive humanity and heartfelt emotion that I sense in the country and around the world.' "Chernicoff also takes comfort and inspiration in the famous quote by Leonard Bernstein, 'This will be our response to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.'" ===================================================== Arborville Publishing bsweet@arborville.com Trade permanent links with us. Mail to bsweet@arborville.com |
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