Subotnick/Grantham split release

Morton Subotnick/Donald Grantham - American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Composers Award

LP released in 1983

Parallel Lines recorded by Stephen Bradley, Baird Hall, SUNY at Buffalo, November 1979

Seven Choral settings recorded by Dorothy Ann Leiser and Bobby Roberts, Austin, Texas, April 1982

La Noche recorded by Dorothy Ann Leiser and Bobby Roberts, Austin, Texas, May 1982

MORTON SUBOTNICK
PARALLEL LINES
Laurence Trott, piccolo soloist; members of the Buffalo Creative
Associates; Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor

PARALLEL LINES is one of Subotnick's "ghost" pieces for live soloist and electronics. The ghost series is a unique method of blending electronics with live performances so that the effect of the electronics is not audible unless the performer is making a sound. The electronic ghost score is a digital control system which activates an amplifier, a frequency shifter, and a location device. These process the instrumental sound according to the plan of each composition. The ghost electronics were made possible by a Creative Arts grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, and were designed by Donald Buchla to the composer's specifications and constructed by John Payne at the California Institute of the Arts.
Other ghost pieces include "Last Dream of the Beast" for singer and tape, "Liquid Strata" for piano, "The Wild Beasts" for trombone and piano, "Passages of the Beast" for clarinet, and "Two Life Histories" for male voice and clarinet. The composer writes:
"PARALLEL LINES was commissioned by Laurence trott and the Piccolo Society. The title has to do with the way in which the 'ghost' electronics interact with the piccolo. In previous 'ghost' pieces the electronics were used to produce an acoustic environment within which the solo manifested itself, but in this case the 'ghost' score is a parallel composition to the piccolo solo. The ghost score amplifies and shifts the frequency of the original non-amplified piccolo sound. The two ('ghost' and original piccolo sounds), like a pair of parallel lines, can never touch, no matter how quickly or intricately they move.
"The work, a continuation of the butterfly-beast series, is divided into three large sections: (1) a perpetual-motion-like movement in which all parts play an equal role; (2) more visceral music, starting with the piccolo alone and leading to a pulsating 'crying out,' and (3) a return to the perpetual motion activity, but sweeter." (from the liner notes)

DONALD GRANTHAM
SEVEN CHORAL SETTINGS OF POEMS BY EMILY DICKINSON
University of Texas Chamber Singers; Morris J. Beachy, conductor

1. Without A Smile -- Without A Throe
2. For Each Ecstatic Moment
3. A Spider Sewed At Night
4. One Need Not Be A Chamber To Be Haunted
5. The Spider As An Artist
6. Father, I Bring Thee Not Myself
7. This Is My Letter To The World

LE NOCHE EN LA ISLA
William Rhodes, baritone vocals; Wayne Barrington, French horn; David Garvey, piano

Tracklisting:

Side 1

1. Morton Subotnick - Parallel Lines {15:37}

Side 2

1. Donald Grantham - Seven Choral Settings of Poems by Emily Dickinson {10:21}

2. Donald Grantham - La Noche en la Isla {9:14}

(1) or (1)