Erika Duke - cello
Amy Knoles - percussion
Robin Lorentz - violin
Vicki Ray - piano, electric keyboard
Dorothy Stone - flute
Marty Walker - clarinet, bass clarinet, narration 

Produced by: James McKissick

James Sellars was born in 1940, Fort Smith, Arkansas.  At age 17, James Sellars left his native Arkansas to study composition at Juilliard and the Manhattan School of Music, where his principal teachers were David Diamond and Ludmila Ulehla.  He later took a Ph.D. at North Texas University, and presently divides his time between New York and Hartford, where he is on the composition-theory faculty at The Hartt School.

Coming Together - Coming Together was written in November and December of 1971 in response to an historical event.  In September of that year inmates at the state prison of Attica, New York, revolted and succeeded in taking possession of a part of the institution.  Foremost among their demands was the recognition of their "right to be treated as human beings."  After several days of fruitless negotiations, Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered state police in to retake the prison by force, justifying his action on the grounds that the lives of the guards whom prisoners had taken as hostages were in danger.  In the ensuing violence forty-three persons, including several of the hostages, were killed and many more wounded.  One of the dead was Sam Melville, a prisoner who had played a significant role in organizing the rebellion.  In the spring of 1971, Melville had written a letter to a friend describing his experience of the passage of time in prison.  After his death the letter was published in the magazine Ramparts.  As I read it I was impressed both by the poetic quality of the text and by its cryptic irony.  I read it over and over again.  It seemed that I was trying both to capture a sense of the physical presence of the writer, and at the same time to unlock a hidden meaning from the simple but ambiguous language.  The act of reading and rereading finally led me to the idea of a musical treatment.  The text is as follows: "I think the combination of age and a greater coming together is responsible for the speed of the passing time.  It's six months now, and I can tell you truthfully few periods in my life have passed so quickly.  I am in excellent physical and emotional health.  There are doubtless subtle surprises ahead, but I feel secure and ready.  As lovers will contrast their emotions in times of crisis, so am I dealing with my environment.  In the indifferent brutality, the incessant noise, the experimental chemistry of food, the ravings of lost hysterical men, I can act with clarity and meaning.  I am deliberate, sometimes even calculating, seldom employing histrionics, except as a test of the reactions of others.  I read much, exercise, talk to guards and inmates, feeling for the inevitable direction of my life."- Frederic Rzewski 

Frederic Rzewski was born in 1938, Massachussets.  Educated at Harvard and Princeton, and studied with Randall Thompson, Walter Piston, Roger Sessions, Milton Babbitt and Elliot Carter.  In 1960 he traveled to Italy to study with Dallapiccola.  He is currently a professor of composition at the Royal Conservatory in Liege, Belgium. 

Road Movies - The title Road Movies is total whimsy, probably suggested by the "groove" in the piano part, all of which is required to be played in a "swing" mode (second and fourth of every group of four notes are played slightly late).  Movement I is a relaxed drive down a not unfamiliar road.  Material is re-circulated in a sequence of recalls that suggest a rondo form.  Movement II is a simple meditation of several small motives.  A solitary figure in an empty desert landscape.  Movement III is for four wheel drives only, a big perpetual motion machine called "40% Swing".  On modern MIDI sequencers the desired amount of swing can be adjusted with almost ridiculous accuracy.  40% provides a giddy, bouncy ride, somewhere between an Ives ragtime and a long rideout by the Goodman Orchestra, circa 1939.  It is very difficult for violin and piano to maintain over the seven-minute stretch, especially in the tricky cross-hand style of the piano part.  Relax and leave the driving to us. - John Adams

John Adams was born in 1947, Worcester, Massachusetts.  After graduating from Harvard University in 1971, he moved to California, where he taught and conducted at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music for ten years.  His innovative concerts led to his appointment firstly as contemporary music adviser to the San Francisco Symphony and then as the orchestra's composer-in-residence between 1979 and 1985, the period in which his reputation became established with the success of such works as Harmonium and Harmonielehre.  In 1985 Adams began a collaboration with the poet Alice Goodman and stage director Peter Sellars that resulted in two operas, Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer. 

Girlfriend - “Girlfriend is a state of mind”.  - Julia Wolfe 
Julia Wolfe creates journeys like unfolding dramatic landscapes, a music meant to be entered into by the listener.  Her work is distinguished by an intense focus on sound, the power of sound, the ways in which sound is related to memory and experience, the possibilities for new harmonies between familiar chords and micro tonal tunings or sounds found in nature and the urban world. - Deborah Artman

Julia Wolfe was born in 1958, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  She received her Master of Music from Yale, where she studied with Martin Bresnick and has held a followship at Princeton.  She has received awards from the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Library of Congress, Cary Trust, Meet the Composer, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.  Her pieces have been performed by the Sydney 2000 Olympic Arts Festival, the Next Wave Festival at BAM, the Kronos Quartet, the San Francisco Symphony.

Foreign Objects - Composed while hospitalized from a car accident, on a small battery powered Casio VL -Tone synthesizer.  The title is based on a remark John overheard during surgery.  This short and surprisingly lighthearted piece has been a favorite Ear Unit encore for many years.

John Bergamo was born in 1940, Englewood, New Jersey.  In 1959 John attended the Lenox School of Jazz in Lenox Mass. Under a scholarship, John studied with Max Roach, Percy Heath and Kenny Dorham.  In 1962 John earned a M.M. degree from Manhattan School of Music, followed by three summers in Tanglewood.  In the fall of 1964, he joined the Creative Associates at the State University at Buffalo.  Since 1970, he has coordin-ated the percussion program at California Institute of the Arts.  He has also worked with John McLaughlin's Shakti and Frank Zappa's Abnuceals Emukka OrchestraI.