iMMERSE! with Charlie Morrow

PHILIP CORNER: Our latest iMMERSE is Charlie Morrow interviewing composer, calligrapher, conceptualist, trombonist, pianist, teacher, Fluxus member Philip Corner. He has been one of the biggest influences on the New York scene since the 1960s. His vision stretches across many disciplines & decades to the present & beyond. He’s a modest craftsman with a sharp critical mind and a keen visual as well as sonic sensibility. He learned calligraphy as a G.I. in Korea where he explored Korean theater, music, art & cuisine. The Korean experience coloured his studies at Ecole Fontainebleau & on into his graduate studies at Columbia University. Charlie Morrow & Corner have been friends since the 1960s & have collaborated on many musical adventures. Corner was one of the first artists on Morrow’s New Wilderness Audiographics label. 

Shelley Hirsch is a formidable extended vocalist long on the global avant garde scene. She is unique in that she combines a riveting gymnastic orality, a very unique dadaistic meta-language with  warm, deep stories emerging from her life, most impressively remembering her early days growing up in East New York, Brooklyn. In spring 2002, my iMMERSE collaborator, bart plantenga, interviewed her for his book, Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo: The Secret History of Yodeling Around the World. For bart, Shelley’s piece “Haiku Lingo” is proof of yodeling in the modern world, that the yodel is useful in the repertoire of avant garde vocalists. In musical terms, she is able to sing and articulate across the break between head and chest voice. She is NOT a yodeler in the folk sense but is among the finest multi-voiced extended vocalist heirs along with clever abstract vocalists like Cathy Berberian, Joan LaBarbara and Yma Sumac. Leon Thomas, the jazz singer who worked with Pharaoh Sanders and John Coltrane, brought his own abstract yodel to free jazz.  But what makes Shelley different is her fusing of dynamic coloratura with deep, often witty, storytelling that wends it’s way through her periodic ululations. Her poetic tales are sometimes reminiscent of Laurie Anderson’s stories while bringing much needed humor to the oft self-serious, rarefied world of avant garde music… Shelley and I have often crossed paths over the years. First time was in 2003, when Rhys Chatham and I curated the  New Sounds New York, 3D Morrow Sound Cube artists. Shelley was right there in full musical color with the chilling piece,  Please Stop Scratching that Gash! (2003).  Credits & samples interview: Shelley Hirsch & Charlie Morrow
 excerpts from
"O Little Town of East New York"
• Shelley Hirsch & David Weinstein
\High speed story telling cut-up • Shelley  & Joke Lanz 
 Improvised Writing/Voiced • Shelley & Hans Tammen 
Pal Swim Sloterparkbad 2008 • bart plantenga 
Production & montage: bart plantenga
 S02E02 of iMMERSE 2026 This is iMMERSE! episode 2 of season 2, also see #1 Charlemagne Palestine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtLiXvpEqZg&t=16s Photo of Shelley Hirsch courtesy of KAPUT Magazine Welcome to iMMERSE!  

Composer & host Charlie Morrow in conversation down memory lane with Charlemagne Palestine, Brooklyn-born polymath artist & musician, early champ of NY- minimalist music but also a self-described MAXimalist, stuffed animal aficionado, percussionist, carilloneur, [church] organist – & entertaining storyteller.  © photo: Plamen Hubenov. He got his start singing Jewish traditional songs but quickly moved at age 12 to performing for more unorthodox performers such as the Beats, playing back up percussion for the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Kenneth Anger, Tiny Tim. He also emerged as a sought-after carillonneur @ NY’s St. Thomas Episcopal Church & others.  He has collaborated with Tony Conrad, Morton Subotnik, Simone Forti, electronica duo Pansonic, Michael Gira, Janek Schaefer, Rhys Chatham, David Coulter … He is often accompanied by his menagerie of stuffed animals. Palestine has performed all over the globe & has put out LPs on renowned labels such as Staalplaat, Baroni, New World Records, Sub Rosa, Algha Marghen. He moved to Brussels in the late 1990s. Subject matter: “Palestine: My name & the should-be country,” carillons, mutual friends, Moondog, Tony Conrad, Allen Ginsberg, Dutch Schultz, the Jewish Mafia, Queens, Laguardia, Tiny Tim, bongos, weed dealer, Moses Asch, Folkways,  gamelan, Charlemagne – holy Roman emperor, Charlotte Moorman, Morton Subotnik, Jerome Rothenberg, Vito Acconci, Belgium, tramping around, Pansonic, Mike Vainio, CM Hausswolff, Magoos Bar in Tribeca, David Toop, dimensional sound, Johnny Ray [“Little White Cloud That Cried”], Children’s Hour television program, falsetto, CBS documentary studios, NYC record libraries, Warhol, Taylor Mead, Jack Smith, Dick Higgins, Herbert Marcuse & Disney, drone organ works, Sibelius Museum – Finland …

Finnish actor Santeri Karl-Henrik Kinnunen, the son of 2 actor-parents, found early immersion spending time on a farm as a Helsinki city child. There he became utterly fascinated by horses, learning to ride & go somewhere else with his thoughts & dreams, immersed in the countryside. Kinnunen is a veteran of the Helsinki City Theatre & has acted in the KOM Theater as well as the Finnish National Theatre. He is also a veteran of many Finnish film & television productions. His second immersion was losing himself to rediscover himself in his acting roles in stage productions such as MacBeth & in films such as A Charming Mass Suicide, Matti: Hell Is for Heroes, & Hellsinki. But his strangest pleasure as a professional actor is as a voice actor for which he supplies the Finnish voice of Buzz Lightyear in the Toy Story series & Captain John Smith in Pocahontas. He finds it fascinating that he can find immersion using his voice even if they’re only the disembodied voices of animated 2-dimensional characters…

The Swede Anders Kreuger is a curator, writer & educator. He has been the director of the renowned Kohta Gallery in Helsinki since 2019. Prior to that, he was the senior curator at HKA, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp, the director of the Malmö Art Academy, & was a member of the Programme Team for the European Kunsthalle in Cologne. He was a founding member of the Nordic Council of Minsters Information Office in Vilnius, served as the director of the Nordic Arts Center in Helsinki & has served on the editorial board of the London-based art journal Afterall as well as the Ghent journal A Prior.   He has also worked as an independent curator, organizing numerous exhibitions throughout Europe.  He has taught at the Royal Academy of Art in Copenhagen, Royal College of Art in London, & other European art academies. Served as an advisor to the Raqs Media Collective at Manifesta 7 in Bolzano. Anders Kreuger regularly writes essays for catalogues & journals, & has edited numerous publications. He has been deeply & personally immersed in words, reading, & language since his childhood experiences immersed in reading children’s books. As a curator he thrives on how words affect his work as a curator & loves working with, for & through people as his way of constructing a situation that allows the viewer to become immersed in an exhibition.   I met Anders in Helsinki through Martti Aiha, the acclaimed Finnish artist known as Mara, a long time friend of my wife, librettist Maija-Leena Rems. Mara, sadly recently deceased, was on the founding board of Kohta Gallery. Anders & I had many conversations about shamanism & the influence of the oldest ideas on the contemporary world. Growing from this shared interest, Anders created the gallery show, Charlie Morrow, A Gathering which included Winter Solstice Celebration with musicians around the world. Currently, he is curating the Yes & No Tation gallery show which is paired with Sound Circus, a public event.  Subjects discussed: Telepathy, AI, immersion, written language, thought before language, reading minds, inducing immersive states, seeing images in objects, shamans, origin & development of language, Chomsky, galleries, curation, museums, cave paintings, dream singing, desire to connect, Stalin, Finland, comparative linguistics, arbitrariness of the linguistic sign, Cratylus, Andaman Islands, Navajo, Elias Canetti, Fascism, Trumpianism, color theory, Kandinski, & so much more…

Harri Koskinen is a man of many talents.  Born in 1970 in Karstula, Finland, with a populations of a population of 3,625 is located in Central Finland. Harri studied design came to Helsinki city to st at the Institute of Art & Design. He's best known as a leading innovator of Nordic design for, among other things, his award-winning Block Lamp, the familiar light build inside a rectangular brick of glass, which is exhibited in New York’s Museum of Modern Art. He has designed furniture, packaging, pots & pans, turntables, hotel rooms internationally & many other immersive spaces, but most importantly for us here at iMMERSE!, the Genelec 8000-series of speakers for cutting-edge sound systems. Soon being released, Genelec headphones.  I met Harri in New York City in the first years of this century.  He had designed  a traveling show of Finnish design and engineered the installations. Typical of Nordic society, Finnish designers have worked together for decades to build on their shared values of several generations. Similarly, Finnish architects and orchestra conductors generate a wave of multigenerational forces. Sweetly, the meaning of architect Alvar Aalto’s family name. Mr. Wave. Later, Harri gave a home to a MorrowSound 3D showroom system in his Helsinki design company offices. We have collaborated on the show Sound Glass Space 2012 in the Akusmata Gallery in Helsinki and on a floating chair for listening to 3D sound.  Harri’s design includes sound, light and physical materials. How fitting that he named his company, Friends of Industry ltd. Topics discussed: first immersive experience, biking through woods, Finnish countryside, milk cans, playing bass, LPs, ACDC, Genulec speakers, design of sound systems, art, glass

Robert Thurman's words were the first I ever read about Tibetan Buddhism, describing the inner explorers of its practices as "psychonauts" and its mental tools for liberation "spiritual technology." Few have done as much to advance the understanding and practice of Tibetan Buddhism in the West and I consider him one of my greatest heroes and teachers.  • Scott Snibbe    Robert Thurman, an American author, professor, translator & popularizer of Buddhism, takes a deep dive into immersion through a Buddhist portal, sharing with us, stories & ideas of returning to the essential origin of oneself. Being the father of famed actor Uma Thurman is totally inadequate to describe who he is and where he’s been. Born in New York City to the stage actor Elizabeth Dean Farrar (1907–1973), a stage actress, & AP editor & UN translator Beverly Reid Thurman, Jr. got his BA from & also did his graduate studies in Sanskrit at Harvard. He eventually built a house in Woodstock, NY where he lived with his first wife & two children for some time. He has seen much of the world, traveling around Turkey, Iran & India, & moving back to NJ in the US, he became a Buddhist monk, study with Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama to become the first American-born Tibetan Buddhist in 1965. He was the cofounder & president of the Tibet House in New York, established to preserve Tibetan culture. He is also the author of many books on Tibetan Buddhism including his popular translation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead.  Thurman & I exchanged numerous stories of immersive experiences & ideas. This was our first conversation in roughly 60 years. We had met in summer 1960 in New York City through a mutual friend, Bruce Bennett, Thurman’s Harvard classmate. Bennett and I were studying organic chemistry in Columbia University summer school. I was studying Organic chemistry as a pre-med. Although, I never went to medical school, organic chemistry and fluid mechanics are seminal to my work as a composer and sound designer Bruce, a fine saxophone player, took me with him to meet Thurman in Thurman’s parents’ apartment south of the Columbia campus on the Manhattan upper west side. Thurman was then part of the scene around Timothy Leary at Harvard and working with psychedelics.   I was 19 years old, Thurman and Bennett were 20. A few years later Thurman lost one eye in a horrid accident while changing a car tire.  This caused him to change his life. He spent five years traveling in Turkey and Tibet, a journey which would prepare him for a life of scholarship and spiritual growth.  What follows is a 33 minute excerpt of our 75 minute talk, the discussion of immersivity. It begins with Thurman speaking about his friend the Dalai lama. Topics discussed: Buddhism, immersivity, essential origin of the self, Tibetan Book of the Dead, NYC, Bruce Bennett, Timoty Leary-psychedelics, travel, scholarship, meditation, Dalai Lama, the Sami, reindeer, Helsinki, Himalayas, chanting, sound artist, death, clear light, transparent light, nothingness, void, emptiness, aliens, god, hell, freedom, Joseph Cornell, consciousness, life force, 4 points, of confidence, Alexa AI, musicians losing themselves, remembering one’s birth, dream chanting, dogs. • Photo: A. Jesse Jiryu Davis  

An internal conversation between the creator of iMMERSE!, Charlie Morrow & the producer of  iMMERSE!, bart plantenga. They’ve been working on the iMMERSE book-podcast-exhibition project for some years now & it was time to take stock of what they’ve learned & experienced... The fact is the subject of immersion, losing yourself in a context, a space, an altered consciousness remains fascinating. The podcasts are the offspring of the original iMMERSE! book ideas that came to the surface in 2019 as they reconnected after years of little to no contact. They hit upon a collaboration that continues full steam as they discover the depthless depths of immersion... samples used Sea • Delia Derbyshire   A State of Vibration • Wreck This Mess Mikro Kosmos -  Archea [Béla Bartók] • Charlie Morrow Mikro Kosmos - Amoeba [Béla Bartók] • Charlie Morrow   Train to the Plane • Charlie Morrow  Haiku Lingo • Shelley Hirsch & David Weinstein Silence Drawn 4’33” • Paloma Jet & Wreck This Mess HEADPHONICS  01 • Ryoji Ikeda Snake Oil Symphony • Daniel Steven Crafts beach day may 2018 • b/art Cymatic Frequency • Coldcut & Hans Jenny Wave Music III - 60 Clarinets & a Boat • Charlie Morrow 4'33" End Groove Conditional (Various) • b/art Zäuerli • Jodelquartett Säntis Beethoven Amalgam Piano Trio Opus 70 No. 2 & Grosse Fuga 1.1 • Charlie Morrow  Trafficante Onosphere • b/art subjects: immersion, Jerome Rothenberg, dentures, under water, undertow, drowning, marching band, bass drum, Dutch coast, dunes, nostalgia, memory, birds, writing, serotonin, cymatic frequencies, silence, chewing on a bone vs gossip vs science, cochlear implant, SPL – sound pressure level, ears always exposed, mental earplugs, death, drowning, yodeling, Robert Thurman, Tibetan Buddhist Death tales, fallling dreams, lucid dreams, NY Yankees, transistor radio, Mickey Mantle, power of sound, power of words, lifeguard, echo, echo location, soak in the bathtub, enveloped in warm water, Descartes, Plato’s Cratylus, vibration, sense of smell, sight dominance, venue audio aesthetics, Kachun Yu, Halcyon Period, climate change, unstable earth, the valley as recording device, sampling, plagiarism, Beethoven was a sampler, notating folk music, Colin Turnbull, the Ik Tribe, coccoon of specialness, jingoism, the People, immersed in your own uniqueness, Infinite Distraction Syndrome IDS ...

Lotta Wennäkoski is a Finnish composer based in Helsinki. She has won praise and has been described as a lyrical Modernist and post-Expressionist. She studied violin in Budapest in her youth. She also studied music theory & composition at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki as well as the Royal Conservatory of The Hague under Louis Andriessen.   Wennäkoski launched her career composing for radio plays and short films. Her breakthrough was her performance at the Musica Nova Helsinki festival in 1999. Her work consists of orchestral, chamber and vocal works, many of which are performed worldwide. Notable works include Sakara for orchestra (2003), the flute concerto Soie (2009), which was one of the recommended works at the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers in 2012, Verdigris for chamber orchestra (2015), commissioned by The Scottish Chamber Orchestra, & the harp concerto Sigla (2022) for Sivan Magen & the Finnish RSO, which was awarded the Gramophone Award 2023 for the contemporary music category. Wennäkoski was the artistic director of the Tampere Biennale festival in 2008 & 2010, composer-in-residence of the Tapiola Sinfonietta in 2010–2011 & designed the program of the Avanti! Summer Sounds festival in 2017. Meanwhile, Heikki Nikula is no slouch either. He’s a Finnish musician from Seinäjoki, a small city in the southwest of Finland. He plays numerous wind instruments, percussion & harp but is most known for his work on bass clarinet. He is one of the only proponents of the bass clarinet as solo instrument & has a special fondness for free improvisation. He graduated from the the Sibelius Academy & joined Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra in 1991, for whom he continues to perform. He also works with the renowned Finnish chamber orchestra Avanti! & the Free Okapi ensemble. He has also performed on numerous Finnish film & series soundtracks inc. the Battle for Finland. He has recorded 2 CDs of solo music for the instrument – Hoepnadium & Piping Down the Valleys Wild. He has been a member of the Helsinki Filharmonia since 1991, & is one of the original members of the renowned Finnish chamber orchestra "Avanti!." Sound collage backdrop: b/art & Wreck This Mess  

CM Hausswolff: Immersion at the Junction of Electronics & Nature 32 "I was thinking about immersion & that word – when you become engulfed with something, when you sink into something & you feel that you are a part of something." Carl Michael von Hausswolff [also known CM Hausswolff & personally known as Mickey] was born in Sweden in 1956. He’s unusual in that he readily admits he is a NONmusician musician, untrained in any instrument, but still able to make music with available electronic gadgets. He is both a soundsmith & visual artist, working intuitively in the area of where sound meets light. He uses  recording devices such as the video camera, tape deck, radar, sonar. He investigates electrical currents and frequencies & how these relate to architectural space. His electronic voice phenomenon [EVP] recordings,  proposes conjuring up voices of the dead through radio signals much like Moriconi proposed.  His work has appeared at prestigious platforms & festivals such as Manifesta, documenta, the Venice Biennale, & many others. His list of audio and visual work is long, esoteric and intriguing with provocative titles like "800 000 Seconds in Harar," "The Wonderful World of Male Intuition," & "There Are No Crows Flying Around the Hancock Building.”   He is also a curator and, if that isn’t enough, he is King Michael l, one of several Kings of Elgaland-Vargaland. This conceptual or conjectural nation, co-created with Swedish artist, Leif Ellgren is a state of mind, an art project – that covers a great deal of territory. Although they first met in the late-70s, they came to know each other in the 1990s, when Charlie was based in Copenhagen for a time. They met in Gothenberg at Radium, an art gallery at the time. It would later evolve into a magazine, an independent record label establish in 1983, an organization that presented a film festival, a computer music festival, screenings, and exhibitions & also had their own recording & video editing studio, which paralleled the work Charlie was doing in New York with the New Wilderness Foundation established in the Ear Inn where they hade their own studio, cassette label & magazine. Samples Playlist Boo Wa Wa Wa • Charlie Morrow Day • CM von Hausswolff  Brigati Music • Charlie Morrow Song of the Youths • Stockhausen Flooded Lamphun Temple & Confused Hawks • CM von Hausswolff Hour of Changes • Charlie Morrow  Water Drums • Baka Pygmies Koilinen • Pan Sonic Ramayana Melukat • CM von Hausswolff Amplified Piano • Charlie Morrow NY USA • Serge Gainsbourg Selection of topics covered: immersion, ski slope ambience, flotation tanks, EVP, Vienna, rock ‘n’ roll, Radium label, academic training vs DIY, sine wave generators, Stin Hensen, Stockhausen, drone music, Guatarri & Deleuze, rhizomes, non-musician musicianship, nature as inspriation, MAGA, minimal music, joy of collaboration, Fripp-Eno, meeting in NY in late 70s, artfulness of life, Sweden, Lamonte Young, Steve Reich, Pansonic, oscillosopes, color field work, Lord Byron’s poetry, open to influx of information, acceptance, Sufism, Finland, Finnish Sisu or perseverance, Leif Ellegren, EVP, drones, facing fear, humility, computer music, American exceptionalism ...  mix by b/art - Wreck This Mess