Adrianne Geffel

by David Hajdu

  Before they released me, one of the artists from the group show I had done came to visit—Armutt Canterell. His real name was Armond, but he signed his paintings Armutt—like R. Mutt, Duchamp’s non de plume. I know. But—listen, it was the Seventies. He came by, and I showed him my complete collection of untouched canvases. I said, “Armutt—I think a person with your highly developed sensibility would appreciate this work.” One by one, I showed him the canvases and explained what each of them was. I looked him in the eye and said, “You understand what I have achieved here, don’t you, Armutt?” I never cracked a smile, and Armutt nodded solemnly.

  The next day, he came back with the dealer from the K. Lewitt Gallery, where our group show had been. He looked over all the canvases, one at a time, as I explained them—“This is avarice and charity, locked in the eternal battle for the human heart, and this is every mother’s son and every father’s daughter, ever, in group therapy.” Geffel was playing her music in the corner. He said, “I’d like to show these. Would you be interested in having a show of your own at K. Lewitt?”

  I said, “Perhaps. But the music you’re hearing is integral to my concept. That’s the great avant-garde composer Adrianne Geffel over there. Can you bring a piano into the gallery?”

  CHAPTER 5

  A Geyser on Grand Street

  (1978–1979)

  Sandor Kalman (former chief curator, K. Lewitt Gallery):

  I knew Adrianne Geffel very well, of course. I discovered her. This is well known. I discovered many of the artists and also the musicians. Richard Prince, I discovered. Chuck Close, Steve Reich, Richard Serra—they were workers in a moving company when I discovered them. They had a truck. They carried boxes and furniture—whatever you needed moved, they moved it. That’s what they did. No one knew they were artistic. Chuck Close, an artist? Steve Reich, a musician? They were movers, and then I discovered them. They moved all the furnishings from our original location on 135 Crosby Street to our much better space at 82 Spring Street. They did very good work for me for a very nice price, and I recommended them to everyone. Before that, no one ever heard their names.

  I discovered them all: Robert Smithson, Cindy Sherman, Chris Burden—Jeff Koons, of course—we are very good friends. I gave them their start, I gave them money, so they would have a few dollars while the accountant worked on the books. That could take a very long time, and there was not always much money left for the artist. I took care of them out of my own pocket. Many times, I gave them ideas for their art. Artists don’t like to talk about that. That’s fine—I don’t do what I do for recognition. I’m satisfied with the commissions. But it’s not always what it looks like.

  Chris Burden, I never got along with. I wanted to shoot him, but I didn’t have a gun. And what did he do? He went ahead and found someone with a gun, and asked him to shoot him. The man missed. He just got a little of his arm. But he used my concept.

  Adrianne Geffel, I introduced to the world. I gave Adrianne Geffel her premiere at my gallery, with the artist Ann Athema. I gave Ann Athema her first solo show at the same time. So many things, I started. So many more I could have started, but somebody did them first.

  And that’s all I can tell you about Adrianne Geffel. She was very grateful to me. She admired me very much. For that alone, you could say she was not unusual. But I was very happy to have the opportunity to introduce her. That led to so many things over the years, and now this book. It’s amazing to think—you and I would not be having this conversation right now, if I weren’t here with you.

  [Kalman is asked to recount how he came to present Adrianne Geffel in a gallery setting.]

  I remember, I first got the idea to put music in a gallery after seeing Steve Reich perform in a gallery. That’s how the concept came to me. Ann Athema was happy with the idea to have Adrianne Geffel play at her show. We had no piano, of course—it was an art gallery. It wasn’t the Copacabana. So we used an electric keyboard that Reich brought for us to use. He charged us only for the moving.

  Ann Athema:

  Armutt, because he changed his name, thought I should change my name, too. Armutt thought everyone should find a new name and become a new person. He would say, “In the future, everybody is going to change their identity every fifteen minutes.” I said, “I see, and now you’re Andy Warhol. In fifteen minutes, could you please become someone more original?”

  Armutt came up with the name Ann Athema for me. Like “anathema”—get it? Hardee-har-har-har. Armutt was the great avant-garde punster. There was a fellow named Bob Sheff around then—he was a Texan and played blues piano in a bar band. Armutt renamed him Gene Tyranny—T-Y-R-A-N-N-Y—and he became a thing. Armutt was trying to find somebody to call Kurt Vile—V-I-L-E—but no one went along with it, because they didn’t get the reference. Years later, I saw that a singer was going by the name Kurt Vile, but it turned out that Kurt Vile was the guy’s real name. Armutt was furious.

  I liked becoming Ann Athema, actually—it was ludicrous. I thought of going with Irma Neutica, but Armutt was working with a drag artist he was grooming to call Irma La Douche, so Irma was taken. Working in public under the guise of Ann Athema allowed me to function without creative pressure, protected by the armor of irony.

  Geffel was a different creature entirely. I was a nest of insecurities and anxieties hiding behind a joke name, making joke art. Geffel was pure truth and openness. Her emotions were her music, and her music was absolute emotion. I never experienced anything like that.

  We arranged for Geffel to play at the opening of my show at K. Lewitt, and she ended up playing at the gallery every night for a month or more, I believe. I thought she would be a good fit, because the whole idea of art and music then was to do things that didn’t fit together. Trisha Brown was walking up the side of the building in an alley down the street. Larry Rivers was painting while he was playing the saxophone and making a plaster cast of his dick at the same time. No, if you want to know—I wasn’t there to see that, luckily. But I do know people who have seen the plaster cast, and a lot more people who have seen the dick.

  I told the gallery I wanted no canvases on the walls at all. I would describe the art, and that would be the art. The gallery people were ecstatic, in the diffident and alienating way gallery people experienced ecstasy, and I saved a lot of money on canvases. Before the doors opened, Geffel paced around the gallery, looking over the empty walls, humming to herself. She said to me, “I hope you know, Koshka, I can’t promise to match the spirit of your artwork.”

  I said, “I know, Geffel—I’ve heard you play. That’s why you’re here.”

  She made that odd little smile of hers, and she said, “Hey, Koshka—thanks.”

  The opening of the show was fairly well attended. There were twenty or twenty-five people there—all the people who went to every opening, to ogle one another and be seen by one another. The director of the gallery introduced me, and I walked slowly all the way around the room and pointed to empty spaces on the walls. I said, “This is one of the earliest pieces in this series. It is the secret of life, pretending to be the secret of death.” I gazed at the wall for a moment and walked a few feet, and I said, “This is the earliest childhood memories of everyone here tonight superimposed over the worst fears of everyone coming here tomorrow.”

  When I had covered all the wall space, I thanked people for coming and told them to enjoy the art while they listened to the music of an important new composer. I introduced Geffel, and she started playing a little electric keyboard the gallery rented from Steve Reich. Within a few minutes, everyone in the galley had gathered around her, watching her and listening intently.

  Geffel was terribly nervous, and that only made the music more . . . like Geffel’s music.

  Jon Geldman (music critic):

  If you’ve read any of my writing on Adrianne Geffel, you know I rank her among the most important musical artists I’ve ever deemed to be worthy of my consideration. I wrote about her frequently from the time
of her debut at the K. Lewitt Gallery to the night at Weill Hall at the end of her career. You’d be interested to know I’m in the process of collecting the pieces for an anthology of my work on Geffel and her music. It will be titled Geldman on Geffel or, potentially, Geffel by Geldman—which do you like better? Tell me.

  [Geldman is told each title has its attributes.]

  I agree with you—they’re both so good, I’m sure I’d do well with either one. I can’t give you the publisher at the moment, because I don’t have a contract for the book signed at this stage. But I’d be happy to show you the manuscript—I brought a copy for you. I know you’d find it informative.

  You’ve never seen Adrianne Geffel perform yourself, have you? You said in your email that you’ve never met her. I find that curious and sad. You’ll learn a lot from my writing. I’ll share it with you, and you may want to pass it along to the publisher of the book you’re trying to do. I’ll give you the name and contact information for my literary agent, as well, when I have that lined up.

  The first time I saw Adrianne Geffel perform was practically the first time anyone saw her, just one day after the opening of the gallery show with Ann Athema. I was writing for the SoHo Weekly News as a freelancer. There was no staff to speak of and very little money—just the privilege of writing for countless dozens of other moneyless lovers of art and music, ideas and sex of every variety, including new varieties being invented on the spot. The atmosphere was utterly free—everything was free, thank God, because we were all impoverished. But bountiful in creative thought and over-stuffed with excitement about the expanding world of the arts and our role in it.

  I was friends of a sort with the art critic for the paper, Julian Hough, and he reviewed the art show of Ann Athema’s. He liked the artwork, to the extent that Julian liked any art. If you’ve read the review he wrote, it was Julian who coined the term Athematics for the work. The day after the opening, I bumped into Julian at the SoHo News office. I was there for a few hours, waiting for a check for a review I had done several months earlier, and Julian came in to hand in a piece. He said, “Oh, Jon—I saw a show last night at K. Lewitt. The artwork was somewhat interesting. It’s neo-conceptual and post-minimalist. The art world will be calling it Athematics. There was music, as well.”

  I said, “Is the music neo-conceptual, too? Because I’m really not much of a neo person. I’m far more proto.” Julian thought I was being serious, and I probably did, too. We were all so seriously serious.

  Julian said, “That’s not a bad question,” which is what Julian would say to let you know he thinks it’s a terrible question. It’s not bad—it’s terrible.

  I said, “Well, if the music is truly post-minimalist, I like it already.” I had heard quite a lot of minimalist music at that point, and I was more than ready for the post. I was up for a little maximalism, and that’s exactly what I found when I arrived at the K. Lewitt.

  I went on the first day I heard about her, on the second night of the show. When I walked in, there was a group of people standing all around Adrianne Geffel while she played. I had to jostle my way through the crowd to get to the front, so I could see what Geffel was doing—“Excuse me, SoHo News—I need to get through—SoHo News . . .” I was not above flaunting my credentials. I got just a foot from the keyboard, to Geffel’s side—on her right, which I did strategically in order to observe how she employed the upper registers—and I didn’t move until her time was up, an hour and a half later and Sandor Kalman had the keyboard unplugged. I don’t think I breathed for an hour and a half, and it didn’t appear as if Adrianne Geffel took a single breath, either. Every so often, she would begin to quiet down for a moment—it felt as if she were winding up her musical thoughts, and everyone would applaud, and, instantly, that would rev her up again. I know you’ve never seen her, so I doubt you can fully grasp her artistry, unless you’ve read my writing on the subject.

  I can read you an excerpt from the essay I wrote about that evening. It was published in the next issue of the SoHo News, though in the visual-art section, because Geffel was appearing in a gallery. Julian Hough complained that I got space that he should have gotten to cover art, but I held my tongue. Why be petty?

  I’ll read you a bit of the text. This is the documentation of what I experienced that night, as I wrote it—expanded and revised for inclusion in my collection:

  I have seen the future of the avant-garde, and her name is Adrianne Geffel.

  One day, I’ll look back on this review and marvel at my good fortune for being the first critic to hear, to appreciate, and to acknowledge Adrianne Geffel for the potency and originality of her art. I witnessed her performance last night at the K. Lewitt Gallery, where she is appearing, ostensibly, to provide an aural counterpart to the neo-conceptual art of Ann Athema.

  Adrianne Geffel’s music offers not merely aural counterpoint to the so-called “Athematics” of Athema’s canvases, but dramatic contrast to it. It is robustly emotional and emotionally robust, assaultively combustive and combustively assaultive, thoroughly great and greatly thorough.

  It will no doubt take this critic years to come fully to terms with Geffel’s heterodox art, as I witness future performances that I could never imagine now. Readers interested in how musical art evolves and how that evolution can earn its due recognition, with that very evolution facilitated by critical nurturing, will be intrigued to read future pieces by me on Adrianne Geffel’s music, as I come to write them.

  Shall I go on? It’s just about two thousand words, with the material I’ve added.

  [Gelman is told that a printed version of the article would be sufficient.]

  I see. Well, I’ll send you a copy of it, with the rest of the text to my book. You and your publisher will find it well worth reading, and publishing.

  Milijenko Jervic (longtime loft owner/host):

  Call me Milo, please. Why be formal? Life is too short! When a man calls me Mr. Jervic, I know he is an attorney or an accountant, and we won’t be having a lot of fun together. All my friends call me Milo. Let’s be friends!

  I would like to tell you but I cannot recall if I read an article about Adrianne Geffel first and then I heard her play the piano or if Darius read me an article about her out loud to me first and then I heard her play. Darius enjoyed reading to me, and I enjoyed listening to him read. He was a beautiful reader and beautiful in every way. He loved Adrianne Geffel! We went to hear her together at the K. Lewitt Gallery, and we could not believe what we were hearing. Ooooh . . . the best!

  I said to him, “Darius, what is this music? I don’t understand.” He said, “Milo . . . who cares? What does that matter? She is a phenomenon. We must have her to our loft!” And so we invited her to come to our loft and play, and that was the beginning of the very famous Adrianne Geffel concerts in my loft.

  Adrianne loved to play my piano. I have a very wonderful Bösendorfer grand piano that I purchased to decorate the loft when I bought it in 1974. As you can see—look around us—the space is very large. I need things that are beautiful and very big to fill it.

  [Jervic rises from his chair and walks to the far side of the loft to point out the piano.]

  Before I bought the building, this floor was a factory for making zippers. It was out of business by the time I bought it. I rented the two floors below us to artists, and I moved in here, and this is where I had the famous parties. We didn’t use the piano for the first ones. I used my very fine stereo system from Germany. I told people, “Can you believe, this used to be a zipper factory?” They said, “Milo, there’s more noise from zippers here tonight than there was in the factory!” It was true! The best!

  Then, Darius moved in here, and he knew all the painters and sculptors and musicians and intellectuals. They all came to the parties. The musicians loved my Bösendorfer. The intellectuals loved the musicians. The musicians invited other musicians, and the parties became concerts. People came just to hear the music, and for the drugs. Darius knew everything ab
out all the latest drugs, and enjoyed trying them and sharing them. All the most wonderful musicians were here, and they played for each other. I don’t know all their names—Darius would be able to tell you every name. But he’s been gone for eleven years. We loved each other very much. He also loved the drugs, too-too much.

  The concerts were so wonderful—the best! Everybody listened very carefully. You would not hear the sound of a single zipper. A documentary film was made about music in SoHo during this time, and the producer came here to shoot and interview me. He told me, “Mr. Jervic, do you know you are the father of the SoHo loft-music scene?” I said, “No, no—call me Milo!” He photographed my piano, with no one playing it. He asked me, “Is this the same piano that Adrianne Geffel played? Was it right here in this spot when she played it? What was she like?”

  I will tell you what I told him. Adrianne Geffel was beautiful! She was like magic! Her music, I never cared for—I don’t understand what that was that she was playing. But I knew it was very serious. Everyone told me. But Adrianne—she was magnificent. She was a very pretty girl—not a fancy person, but beautiful and strong, like a peasant girl from my country [Estonia]. I saw girls in my country who were barely not children anymore but lived with death and sacrifice, and they would sit quietly by themselves. That was Adrianne Geffel.

  I don’t know how many concerts she gave here—thirty, forty, probably more in those two or three years. The first time, she was nobody—she played a little toy organ in the K. Lewitt Gallery, that was it. By the end, she was a celebrity.