nouvelles & work

sketches from high school 1: tchatzkies

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Ok I admit I haven’t a clue what to name this post so I kind of went literal. Here are a collection of sketches, baubles, trinkets or what have you that Harris recorded in high school. This is the post where he’d be rolling his eyes at me and saying “oh no! what are you DOING!?! Don’t post that up there!!” So Harris, I’m sorry. But some of the folks really DO want to hear these things.

I expect this post will be updated with more later as I find them – or find more complete versions of them.

In the meantime, I bring you:

01. The Quadratic Roots Song – A bluegrass song.

02. Someday When I’m Famous – Judy Penner, someday when you’re famous this will be worth a lot of money.

03. Silver Staff – A “New Wave” song. Harris and Alex Feinman set out to write an ’80’s pop song using every cliche in the book one night during a holiday party.

04. Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man – Well, Rex Harrison really WAS an early rap star, wasn’t he?
 

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Sketches From High School 1: Tchatzkies

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nyu music department: bach on 2000

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Perhaps someone can fill me in on the details of this concert and CD?

Here are two tracks from the concert. The first is Bach’s Partita in E Major with Harris on mandolin. The second is Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor (aka “The Bach Double”) with Juliana Trivers (I believe playing first violin?) Harris (playing second violin?), Wynn Yamami and Ryan Dorin on piano.

 

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NYU Music Department: Bach on 2000

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i don’t wanna grow up from dave sollors

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“I’ve been meaning to share this song I recorded last month while thinking of Harris” – Dave

I Don’t Wanna Grow Up by Tom Waits.

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looking for harris by steve forman

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Steve Forman, a friend and colleague of Harris wrote:

“As it happens I was just starting work on a chamber orchestra piece here when I got the news. I knew that the piece would be inevitably about Harris in some way, and assumed that the logic in that would reveal itself to me as the work took shape as is often the case. But it never did and the piece was extremely difficult to finish because I simply didn’t understand what I was doing. It was clearly not biographical (I didn’t know much about Harris’ past), it had nothing to do with any of the folk music traditions we were both interested in (though it easily could have I suppose.) And it has nothing to the work Harris was doing as an experimental composer. Nevertheless it’s sincere; the reason it was so difficult for me to grasp what the piece was about is because it is an expression of my own inability to fathom what will forever be impossible for me to understand. Like everyone else, I feel privileged to have known Harris, however briefly, and I accept the situation as we all must. But I’ll never sort it out.”

The piece, “Looking for Harris“, will be premiered in Glasgow at Oran Mor on Monday, September 29th by the Scottish Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Peter Cynfryn Jones.

Steve kindly shares his midi demo:

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calarts: bluegrass

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Harris and banjo player Wes Corbett cobbled together a bluegrass group at Cal Arts. The other two performers were jazz musicians Nick Rosen (bass) and Storm Neilson (guitar).
 

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Calarts Bluegrass 2006(?)

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rhythm ranch

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I found this CD in Harris’ collection. The .cda files are dated 12/31/1994.

Rhythm Ranch
Jen Larson, guital and vocals
Tony DeLello, guitar and vocals
Todd Collins, mandolin
Harris Wulfson, fiddle
Ken Forrest, bass and vocals

A note from Jen Larson:
Rhythm Ranch was the name that I came up with for that configuration and that recording date for WKCR. Tony Dilello (guitarist in NYC) made those CD’s for everyone in the group, it was never commercially released. So, in other words, that CD is one of a few copies, and a snapshot of all of us on that particular day.

https://www.facebook.com/JenLarsonMusic/
http://www.myspace.com/jenlarsonnycbluegrass

 

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Rhythm Ranch 1994

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new music 2005

mishka 1 Comment

Here are some more tracks Harris gave me a couple years ago. As you can see from the title, it was a sampling of what he was up to at the time.

01. I don’t know who is performing lookatmeiamafish, it does not sound like the same recording as the January 18th, 2006 performance.

03. Lingring: “Mackie 1604 no-input mixer recorded November 4th, 2005 at home in Valencia. The same recording.” – Harris

06. Woolgathering: “This is a trio for clarinet, violin and ‘cello, played by members of counter)induction at Columbia University on 12/9/2003.” – Harris

08. I love his rendering of Eli Eli.

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New Music 2005

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sweet jeebus, january 31st, 2004

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Harris sent me these tracks a couple years ago. Lauren found an email that I think might go with them:

…and something completely different: my final gig this past saturday
as the drummer in Sweet Jeebus. I’m playing drums on 1-6 and mandolin
(not so well, alas) on 7-12. And I sing on 9.
love,
-Harris

Who played in this group? I think it was Matt Donahue, Juliana Trivers, Ryan Dorin, and Ben Herzog

 

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Sweet Jeebus, January 31st, 2004

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MATT DONAHUE – September 23, 2008
Yes, this is Sweet Jeebus playing downstairs at the Knitting Factory for a Look ‘n Listen Festival fundraiser. I think this was December in 2004. This was Harris’s last show with us as drummer. The lineup was:

Harris: drums vocals tracks 1-6, mandolin vocals 7-12
Me: Vocals, acoustic guitar tracks 1-6, vocals, drums 7-12.
Brad Shank: Electric Guitar
Mark Yokoyama: acoustic guitar, vocals
Ben Herzog: Bass, Vocals
Ryan Dorin: electric piano
Juliana Trivers: Fiddle, vocals
Michael Gomez: lap steel guitar

Needless to say the stage was crowded. Harris’s arrangement of Vincent 1952 is pure genius. He also was the inspiration for the klezmer like ending on chitlin cooking time.

metropolitan klezmer

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metropolitan klezmer

Metropolitan Klezmer between sets at Tonic, early 1999: Debby Karpel, Ismail Butera, Michael Hess, Steve Elson, Pam Fleming, Eve Sicular, Dave Hofstra and Harris Wulfson in the wine cellar on the Lower East Side. photo by Dennis Kleiman

Metropolitan Klezmer‘s Eve Sicular has kindly allowed me to share some music tracks from two CDs on which Harris played:

Yiddish For Travelers, 1997
Harris performs as guest violinist on tracks 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 12, and 13 (5 & 6 below)

and

Mosaic Persuasion, 2000
Harris performs as guest violinist on tracks 9 and 15

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With Metropolitan Klezmer

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Remembering Harris 7.31.08
Our dear musician comrade and friend, Harris Wulfson, died suddenly last week. We remember him fondly, for his sweetness with the violin and all else. His intellect and humor were tremendous yet unassuming. He had a great smile, endless enthusiasm, and an easy sense of irony. And he just loved music.

Harris had a deep devotion to Yidishkayt, and also applied his talents to his many other interests, such as bluegrass, funk, rap, new and electronic music of types I am at a loss to describe. He could play le jazz hot as well as Irish tunes, Yiddish swing or Bulgarian 11/4, and imbue it all with gorgeous, fun spirit. His gifts could also be heard through mandolin, accordion, guitar, and however else he expressed his natural musicality.

Many of our New York-area fans may remember Harris as our genial guest artist and outstanding soloist on Metropolitan Klezmer shows at Tonic, Makor, Fez, Cornelia Street Cafe, and others; he also appeared as a guest Klezbian on occasion (I will soon post pictures just found again from Harris on an outdoor Isle of Klezbos show in front of St Mark’s Church in 1999). We even created a New Year’s Eve klezmer band once at Caravan of Dreams. His most recent public performance with us was at Nuyorican Poets Cafe last year, a special Isle of Klezbos show; we also enjoyed performing together for recent weddings in Manhattan and verdant settings upstate. If memory serves, he also performed in our accordionist Ismail Butera’s project Sharqija, playing Music of the Silk Road.

Harris had a special ear for music of Eastern Europe, and called certain parts of that region the Klez Belt (as one of his friends posted this week). Anyone who has listened to our first two CDs Yiddish For Travelers and Mosaic Persuasion has heard Harris’ violin stylings on several tracks where he was a featured guest. It was a joy to mix studio sessions he had recorded, every take was a fresh delight. In the MP cover art, he is the soulful young fiddler in the red shirt all the way to the right side of the Metropolitan Klezmer band photo. This 1999 picture is by Dennis Kleiman.

Harris was also the person who first set us up with a website, which he could casually encode in a few minutes during early dot com days. His own creative adventures took him in so many directions, he leaves remarkable memories for us all. He was also a deeply principled, dapper, occasionally yet adorably spacey mentsh who was constantly open to learning.

To learn more about Harris, and hear his very moving and innovative original compositions, here is his own website. (He attended graduate studies at Cal Arts as well as CUNY; one email to me included a p.s. reading: “Dr. Harris eventually.”)

He has left us much too soon, but we are grateful for having known him. It is still very hard to believe he will not be here to play with us next time. We miss him deeply and send his family wishes for strength and peace. May his memory continue for a blessing.

All best,
~Eve for Metropolitan Klezmer and Isle of Klezbos

http://metropolitanklezmer.com

a concert of music by harris wulfson ’96

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invitation If you click on the invitation to the left, you will link to the full program. As you can see, I am missing a recording of Canon and A Little Chamber Music. I DO, however, have sheet music and/or notations for everything listed as Harris published his undergraduate thesis.

Since the performance also involved real time delay loops, video and some improvisation, I am hoping someone has a videotape recording of it.

Some notes from Harris on the following recordings:

String Quartet (1996)
The first movement of this quartet is based on the Bulgarian Kopanitsa dance (with its 11/16 meter). The third movement takes Moravian song as source material. The piece is structured on the micro and macro level around the wedge shape formed by the ascending B, C#, D, D# and descending B, Bb, A, Ab.

Love Songs for Viola and Electric Bass
Digital delay with endless feedback and spoken parts.

What is a Work? Quartet for Clarinet and Bassoon
This “Quartet” makes use of a long (two minute) tape delay. The passage recited from Foucault (ostensibly introductory) gets played back over the music, which is twelve-tone.

10 measures for Electronic Conductor/Prelude
The nonsensical (Cagian?) act of conducting in silence to the audience is later revealed to have a purpose. [my note on this: this piece involved video rewinds and playback]
 

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Amherst Thesis 1996

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