Drone Records

KIVA - same

Format: do-CD

Label & Cat.Number: Pogus Productions 21054-2

Release Year: 2010

Note: four tracks by this performing group existing 1975-1991, "an experimental group dedicated to notionless music" that refused to publish any of their improvisation-recordings during their lifetime

Price (incl. 19% VAT): €18.00

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"CD 1: 11 April 1991 (Track 1): Keith Humble, piano, Jean-Charles Francois, percussion, John Silber, trombone, violin, Mary Oliver, violin, viola. 11 April 1991 (Track 2): Keith Humble, piano, Jean-Charles Francois, percussion, John Silber, trombone, violin. CD 2: June 1985 (Track 1): Keith Humble, DX7, electronics, Jean-Charles Francois, percussion, electronics, John Silber, trombone, violin, electronics. Two Poems of the Absurd & Two Poems on the Absurd (tape collage by John Silber of KIVA performances) (Track 2): Keith Humble, DX7, voice, electronics, Jean-Charles Francois, percussion, voice, electronics, John Silber, trombone, violin, voice, electronics, Mary Oliver, violin Eric Lyon, computer vocoder manipulations of John Silber's sounds.

The research-performance group KIVA was created in 1975 by the American trombonist John Silber and the French percussionist Jean-Charles François as part of a research project at the Center for Music Experiment at the University of California San Diego. During the period of its existence (1975-91) various members (often graduate students from UCSD) joined the two permanent musicians, John Silber and Jean-Charles François, to contribute to the groups artistic production. Two personalities had an important impact on the development of the KIVA aesthetical posture: the Korean dancer Hi-ah Park between 1978 and 1985, and the Australian pianist and composer Keith Humble between 1984 and 1991. The important contribution of the KIVA project to the artistic field can be defined as an emancipation of the classical performer from the role of interpreter of written music to one that involved being fully an actor of artistic creation through the direct production of sounds on instruments and related objects. This has been often characterized in the musical world as ?improvisation?. But the group would not adhere to the overtones associated with this word, implying spontaneous behavior or social interactions without specified aesthetical content. For KIVA the refusal to use any notation on paper was the occasion to access the complex and chaotic nature of sound objects. Through an everyday work in progress, the group was able to elaborate an original language constituted directly from working on sound matter. KIVA described itself as an experimental group dedicated to notationless music, mixed media, extended instrumental techniques. The group KIVA has always refused to publish its work through recordings. Every working session of KIVA was recorded on audio format, but this only constituted a tool for the reflection of its members. The real artistic object was always considered to be the contextual circumstances of a given performance, the reenactment, always different, of the working out of already elaborated sound materials. In this sense no particular instant can be regarded as constituting a work object of the KIVA experience. But the context today has changed, since two of the main important members have died (Keith Humble and John Silber), the other protagonists are getting old, and so are the few who have been fortunate to listen to KIVAs performances. The publication of a CD of selected performances of KIVA today makes sense, in that it documents an important historical moment and provides the artistic community with sonic references of this ephemeral type of work." [label info]

www.pogus.com

"Pogus keeps finding material in archives all over the world interesting music from many moons ago. Here they present a double CD by Kiva, a 'research/performance' group Kiva, which was started in 1975 by trombonist John Silber and percussionist Jean-Charles Francois, who both worked at the Center for Music Experiment at the University of California San Diego. Graduate students played along with them. Two persons became important, the Korean dancer Hi-ah Park and pianist Keith Humble. Kiva was about the 'emancipation of the classical performer from the role of interpreter of written music to one that involved being fully an actor of artistic creation through the direct production of sounds on instruments and related objects'. Yet they didn't want to call this improvised music. But I would. This is hardcore improvised music. Kiva apparently recorded everything and we get here three out of four pieces of such improvised concerts. One is supposed to have some sort of electronics, which I
somehow don't hear back in this recording, but perhaps its there. Otherwise these three pieces are explorations of trombone, percussion and piano. Not unlike AMM at times, but maybe also a bit more straightforward in their approach. Its actually quite nice altogether, but also quite a long sit through. The fourth pieces is a sound collage of Kiva playing music, set along tape manipulations of Antonin Artaud's poem 'Pour En Finir Avec le Jugement De Dieu' and vocal improvisations of Silber and Francois. An entirely different piece, even when it comes from the world of improvisation too, but it distinctly different. This is not music to just put on and do the dishes, this is something that requires ones full attention, and perhaps best had in one piece at a time." [FdW / Vital Weekly]