April, 2022 – “Music in the Fault Zone” at Mills. Featured in the grand festival subtitled “Experimental Music at Mills College (1939 to the present)” Rosenboom played a part in the Challenge trio recreation – with James Fei and William Winant – and performed his solo work falling into the domain of what he calls propositional music.
Joining the Music Department of Mills College in 1979 and staying in the position till transitioning to CalArts in 1990, Rosenboom headed the Center for Contemporary Music (CCM) for several years – organizing the CCM seminars with invited speakers (of various expertise – from Iannis Xenakis to Heinz von Foerster), using the facilities of the center as a platform for the development of HMSL and for collaborative compositional and performance work. One such collaborative project was the Challenge group (1986-89) – a trio comprised of Anthony Braxton, William Winant, and Rosenboom himself. Given that the body of work created by the group wasn’t well-documented for retrospective appreciation, the performance of the excerpts of “Composition No. 107” written by Braxton – adapted it for winds (Fei), percussion (Winant), and piano with electronics (Rosenboom) – became a unique commemoration of the project.
The concluding day of the Festival at Mills was opened by the recent and recently re-envisioned work of Rosenboom. Starting with “Choose Your Universe” (2019), he proceeded with “Earth Encomium” (2017) and “Nothingness is Unstable” (2017) — accompanied by the video narrative “A Summary of History of Humans in the World.” The Summary critically surveys the history of human culture from ancient times to the modern day. Trying to identify the causes of the recurring disarray in human socio-cultural existence, the author makes the claim that commodified ignorance – the self-enchantment with illusions of a political or mystical kind, runs as a red line throughout the entire course of human history. The solo performance was finalized with an exploration of dynamic systems’ behavior in the work “Music for Unstable Circuits” composed in 1968 and revisioned in 2018.
Photo credit: Robbi Sweeny
Program of the festival:
https://performingarts.mills.edu/broadcasts/2022/fault-zone/index.php
