Maryanne Amacher: Adjacencies

Presented by REDCAT.

Maryanne Amacher is known primarily as an electronic composer, but early on she wrote a handful of pieces for classical instruments using experimental forms of notation. AUDJOINS, a Suite For Audjoined Rooms was a collection of such works, from the early to mid-’60s, for various spatially staged ensembles. Adjacencies, a graphic score for two percussionists and electronics, was written in 1965 and is the only known extant score of that series. The work directs performers by sending their microphone signals to a changing array of speakers surrounding the audience, combining otherwise distinct worlds of sound. Not performed since 1966, Blank Forms collaborated with Amacher scholars Amy Cimini and Bill Dietz to unpack and analyze the score for its posthumous realization. The work was given its 21st century premiere at The Kitchen in 2017 by Ian Antonio and Russell Greenberg of the experimental piano-percussion quartet Yarn/Wire, with sound distribution by Daniel Neumann and Woody Sullender. This performance marks its Los Angeles premiere.

Maryanne Amacher (1938-2009) was a composer of large-scale fixed-duration sound installations and a highly original thinker in the areas of perception, sound spatialization, creative intelligence, and aural architecture. She is frequently cited as a pioneer of what has come to be called sound art, although her thought and creative practice consistently challenges key assumptions about the capacities and limitations of this nascent genre. Often considered to be part of a post-Cagean lineage, her work anticipates some of the most important developments in network culture, media arts, acoustic ecology, and sound studies.