A Conversation Piece
10 performers in a living room tableau with a piano and numerous other props (1976)

This “piece for persons engaged in conversation” began life in a 1969 college multimedia class called “Intermedia” and featured five players. A year later, I added nine more performers. A year after that, I filled a Living Room tableau with 24 conversationalists. Five years of attrition reduced the number of players to this more manageable allotment of ten.

Misery Loves Accompaniment
singer, spinning chorus of 6, piano, playback (1979)

Never performed, due to the mandatory demise of one of the featured participants.

 

McGuffy’s Diner
tolerant waitress and 5 raucous customers armed with percussion instruments (1975)

First performed by members of Zobus, a New Jersey rock band, at a Delaware Valley Avant-Garde Festival. It was performed a few more times, too, but, unlike wine, never seemed to improve with age.

Redoubt
3 automatous readers (1976)

What’s going on here? As far as I can tell, three automatons – Amm, Jad and Epho – gradually develop personalities before turning themselves off. An oddly effective piece that predates artificially intelligent computers by a couple of months at least. I first used parts of it in “Radio Alley,” a 1975 piece for the Lynn Dally Dance Company. (I was the company’s composer-musician and baker, but that’s another story.)