Language ,as a Music; Feb. 28, 2005.

Visitng Pittsburgh, I was invited by Dr. Alan Shockley to perform "Language ,as a Music" for the University of Pittsburgh's Dept. of Music Theory Group.
This performance took place February 28th, 2005, in Rm. 132 of the Music Dept.
This time, on my own, the piano piece from Part 2, "Argument" and the Irving Berlin song from Part 4, "Red Hook" were played from Open Space CD 10.
The performance went well, though this time greeted by a smaller audience. Nonetheless, those attending the performance were fixed on the reading, very attentive, focussed, and even laughed at certain passages (the term "semantic adultery" was provocative in this way.)
As with my first performance, the whole thing timed in at about 1 hr 15 minutes.
Afterward, I met one of the attendees, Steve, of the performance at a concert (of Bartok quartets) and he gave me great feedback regarding the delivery of Part 1, "Thesis"; his idea regarded the 'interpretation' of that first section, and the question came up "how much interpretation is enough, or too much?" There were sections of "Thesis" that, Steve suggested, could be read with a slight accel., esp. where certain words and phrases were repeated. But then again, not too much accel. When performing this work next time, I shall be sure to practice that first section more. Everyone loved "Red Hook," and the Berlin song; I was requested to read this section again later, which I was glad to do.

Language ,as a Music; Dec. 3, 2004.

This first performance of Language ,as a Music featured me, speaker, Marcus Macauley, piano, and Chelsea Bonagura, soprano.
The concert took place at the Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY, at 8pm on December 3 2004.
The audience was a good audience, and featured the author of the work, Benjamin Boretz. Also in attendance were Ellen Koskoff, Ivan Latko, Nathan Schmidt, Marco Alunno, David Plylar, and Josh Mailman.
Not many comments about the performance afterward, but Boretz did mention that my reading...what was the wording...emphasized 'meaning'...or maybe, just what I thought the meaning was. Ellen Koskoff and I talked briefly about the "sound" of the words, and how listening to just the sound, regardless of meaning, was nearly a poetic experience (my remembrance, maybe not her words). I mention to her that, at first, I had thought Boretz meant, metaphorically, that language could be "like" music, "sounding" musical....
The performance weant well, and everyone was pleased with the live performance, by Marcus and Chelsea, of the "Argument," part 2, and the opening to "Red Hook," part 4. I was most worried, by the way, of how "Red Hook" would come off, since this part of the piece seemed most difficult, but after this first performance I felt that the first section, "Thesis," deserves yet more attention regarding delivery.