200e

Up front, I apologize for my off-topicness....

No cenntenial commisions, 1976 - not ready for primetime yet....

I built my Serge system in the summer of 1976 while living at Serge's
Lab, above a massage parlor on Western Avenue!  It was the summer in
the middle of my MFA studies.  

FWIW, I am indebted to Serge for his wisdom and candor during period
of time.  Perhaps not often mentioned, Serge has a very pedigree
musical upbringing - his grandfather, Alexander Tcherepnin, the
notable Russian piano composer, his father. Nicolai Tcherepnin, who
was a composer-in-residence for the Chicago Symphony, and his mother,
a Shanghai Chinese Pianist who lived in France.  Studies with Nadia
Boulanger (he studied with her during the time when Quincy Jones
Studied with her!), and his ties to the Darmstadt crew makes him one
of the last of a dying breed of the post WWII avant garde.  When it
comes down to it, he was brought up in the ranks of Carlos and Glass,
but came out to California to Calarts, building Mort special custom
boxes, and, eventually creating his bathtub-gin version of the modular
synthesizer....  

For not knowing this young student from Pittsburgh, PA (e.i., me),
Serge was quite generous to let me stay in the back room of the lab
for 2 months, though, to be honest, it wasn't the most pleasant
neighborhood - porno movie theaters and a rather motley crew loitering
on the street nightly.  My only sense of security was the next door
neighbors, who were a metal rock band - they had a shot gun....

Serge was fascinated with all of the little idiomatic statements of my
chatter at the time, such as, 

"that really blows a dead dog!" and 
"lick the street" or 
"that's better that me dragged from the back of a truck!"

He finally came up with one of his own, speaking in his thick French
accent;

"Fuck a Duck on a Crutch!"

Perhaps this says it all about Serge...!


gary



"cuari7" <cuari7@...> wrote:
  
> 
> Wow, Gary, and were you ever commisioned music for the first 
> Centennial of the USA?
> 
> Serge tcherepnin must have been awful' young back then....!
> 
> 
> 
> ;-P
>