LYRIC IMAGES

The videoballet,“Journey” was set to the music of “Lyric Images.” "Lyric Images" itself was the first work I created for a live electronic music ensemble (which later would morph into Electric Diamond). The work was premiered at the Guggenheim Museum in the Spring of 1979. With an instrumentation of Lyricon wind synthesizer, two Crumar keyboards, and percussion. Lyric Images is a 4 movement symphonic work. The recording is from a pirated tape of that performance, secreted into the auditorium. It is but a pale reflection of the colossal sound we created. Using a Mutron Biphase (anyone remember that device), we developed a stereophonic phase shift of swirling overtones that bathed the audience in an immersive ocean of sound. At the time of its premiere with its raucous rhythms, improvisations, and lyric sweep it was both hailed by some critics as the music of the future and reviled by others. (My favorite decried that it augured the “beginning of fascist Classical music.”) Liz Geyer Gottlieb, a former member of the New York CityBallet, was inspired to create a videoballet to the score -- one of the first ballets ever created for directly for the medium of video. With years of MTV behind us it is hard to imagine the time when creating dance directly for the camera was still a revolutionary idea.

Renamed Journey, Lyric Images became the score for this dramatic pas-de-deux of two lovers at the end of time. It won major awards at Festival of the Americas International Film and Television Festival Julian Montaner and Regine Maximilien are the dancers.