GR Music

[Orlowsky at aol.com]

This is from the Charleston, SC Post and Courier, May 30, 1997.  Remember
Laurie Anderson's comment that she had written Pynchon asking if she could
write an opera based on GR, and he said, sure, as long as the only instrument
used is a banjo?

 "The third and final program of Piccolo's New Composers Series, featuring
the Charleston Symphony Orchestra, played Thursday afternoon to a regrettably
small audience at the Cathedral of St. Luke and St. Paul.

   The music of three living American composers represented various musical
influences and demonstrated that audience-friendly music is still being
written. The program included "The Persistence of Memory" by Jack Gallagher,
"In the Zone" by Paul Elwood and "Mysterious Numbers" by William Duckworth,
all influenced in some way by surrealism.  

* * *

The second, Paul Elwood from North Carolina, came forward with a five-string
banjo and a bow (as in stringed instrument bow). His "In the Zone" is taken
from the third chapter title of Thomas Pynchon's surreal novel "Gravity's
Rainbow."

   The chapter's first two pages are about an American lieutenant in the
American Zone of Germany after World War II dancing a waltz with a young
woman in a bombed-out house. This is the subject of the music that is scored
for the banjo, string orchestra, percussion and piano.

   Using extended techniques, Elwood employs a bowed banjo, getting sounds
similar to Indian instruments; but he picks and strums it, too. The whole
work sounds like an East meets West hoe-down. Elwood is a champion banjo
player and the orchestra under Portnoy played with flair and ear-tickling
energy."

Bob