Maryanne Amacher - Adjacencies

Maryanne Amacher - Adjacencies Year: 1965 Adjacencies, a graphic score for two percussionists and electronics, was written in 1965. The work directs performers by sending their microphone signals to a changing array of speakers surrounding the audience, combining otherwise distinct worlds of sound. Her improvisatory streak — she referred to some of the indications in “Adjacencies” as “negative notation” — only deepened as Amacher fell in with a cadre of radical American experimentalists, a loose collective that included the saxophonist and composer Anthony Braxton and the keyboardists of Musica Elettronica Viva, known as MEV. When touring with MEV in 1970, Amacher would sometimes bow a “heat sink,” the fan used to distributed excess heat in electronics. When amplified, her “playing” of this unlikely component created a rich and visceral screech that’s still part of underground music lore.