American poet and composer Jackson Mac Low is best know for his readings that incorporated systematic chance operations and random elements, a method uninfluenced by musicians like John Cage. He often collaborated with colleague and partner Anne Tardos. These three albums, all offered by Ubu and posted with permission from Tardos and the Mac Low estate, give a fascinating perspective on his life work.

Doings is a good place to start. The performance pieces on this album falls into three categories; spoken works, instrumental works, and compositions that involve both voice and instruments. The opening excerpt from “Merxmix 2000″ is a nice introduction to the artist’s use of fragmented speech. It is followed by a short but pleasant flute quartet. The album offers both Mac Low’s solo compositions and those performed in collaboration with Anne Tardos. The artists’ spoken works are certainly odd. They are often electronically altered and have a “word association” quality. “Free Gatha 1 and Free gatha 2″ is a nice example of Mac Low and Tardos performing together.

Music by Jackson Mac Low and Anne Tardos is a live performance from November of 1999. Besides the voices of Mac Low and Tardos, the performance features Andrew Bolotowsky on flutes, soprano Mary Hurlbut, and Violinist Theresa Salomon. There are three collaborative works by the composers and one solo composition by Tardos. These are long pieces with the shortest one being slightly over ten minutes. It makes for involved and fascinating listening. This album also gives you a good look at Anne Tardos’ talent especially on her piece “Three Cycles”.

Finally, Open Secrets has some repeat tracks from Doings but over-all it is a better perspective of the composer’s output. Again Tardos plays a significant role and the tracks are fairly evenly divided among multi-track vocal pieces and instrumental chamber works. I especially like “Lucas i to 29″ and “Wind/Instruments”. Jackson Mac Low and Anne Tardos are new artists to me but these three album makes a good case for viewing these experimental musicians as important to the contemporary music scene in the last part of the 20st century.

The three albums are available in 128kbps MP3. if you enjoy the music and poetry, you might want to check out the books and CDs that are available to purchase from the estate’s web site.

Download
Doings: Assorted Performances Pieces
Open Secrets
Music by Jackson Mac Low and Anne Tardos