GR Music

[Eric Alan Weinstein]

Sign Paul Elwood up for IPW! First to find him a get him
 to send me a tape...

> 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

Eric Alan Weinstein
Centre For English Studies
University Of London
E.A.Weinstein at qmw.ac.uk