by David Hajdu
Adrianne Geffel’s music is . . . Adrianne Geffel’s music is music with no fear. Music with no inhibitions—no category, no name, no shape, no disguises, no adornments, no clothes. It’s naked—a nudie show for the brain. It’s in your face—and up your ass all the way up into your face, going from the inside.
What do I think of Adrianne Geffel’s music? What can I think? How could I begin to answer that?
[Nieve is reminded that he first began to write about Geffel’s music in 1980 and that he appears to be at no loss for words presently.]
That’s right, and I think I’ve said it all.
Dr. Stewart A. Rauschmittel, Ph.D. (visiting lecturer, New School for Social Research):
I have been studying the music of Adrianne Geffel for many years. Indeed, my interest in the strategies manifest in her work precedes the so-called “making” of the work itself. I have examined the broad spectrum of modality narratives negotiated and renegotiated by the music associated with Adrianne Geffel. I refer you to my monograph, Spinning Discourses: Toward a Theory of the Rubric of Disequilibrium in Avant-Garde Text and Pretext, published by the University of California, Santa Cruz. I recommend to you, also, the essay I was commissioned to write as liner notes for the series of recordings issued under my oversight as The Infini Archive of Anomalies of Musique Mechanique. It will give you some understanding of my approach to a set of issues unrelated to Adrianne Geffel and the work connected with her.
The sheer volume of scholarship on Adrianne Geffel since recordings made her music available for close examination speaks at once to the emotional-intellectual capaciousness of the work and to the inversely proportionate illuminative capacity of the musicologists engaged in unpacking it. To unpack work of such a nature properly, I contend, one needs first to grasp it, then unlock it, and open it up. Only at that point can it be unpacked. More challenging, still, is the task of repacking when it’s time to go home, and now everything won’t fit back in.
In my view, Adrianne Geffel may best be thought of as the living embodiment of aesthetic disjunction iterated across cognitive and spatial-economic planes. Perhaps I should qualify that. Is she still living?
[Rauschmittel is told Geffel’s status is unknown at the time of this interview.]
I see. In either event, Adrianne Geffel brings to mind Adorno’s Philosophie der neuen Musik, in which he characterized avant-garde music as constituting what, in German, is referred to as Flaschenpost.
[Rauschmittel is asked what that means.]
As I’ve pointed out, it’s a German term. I would need to look that up.
If you’re curious to know more about my thinking on Adrianne Geffel, you are free to read my writings on the subject. It’s all written in English, so you won’t have to ask what any of the words mean. I’ve written about Geffel and her music in a number of journals, including the Journal of American Musicology, Musicological America, the Journal of Musicological Studies, and Studies in Musicology. I did also write an essay of liner notes for the first album of Adrianne Geffel’s music released by Infini Records, at the request of the label’s director, Harvé Mendelman. However, my essay was not used. In its place, there was a work of writing of a certain character by the producer of the recording, Biran Zervakis, in which he expounded with prolixity on his role in facilitating Geffel’s career in performance and recordings. I don’t feel qualified to comment on that as a musicologist. I suggest you find a psychiatrist.
Thomas Mann, responding to Adorno, wrote of what he saw as a pattern of elliptical self-destruction and self-perpetuation in the cultural economy of the musical vanguard. He called the avant-garde “the vanguard of the army it attacks.” I’m hoping someday to develop an analytical framework to connect that to Adrianne Geffel. As of yet, the connection escapes me.
Carolyn Geffel:
As a mother, I would have to say it stung a bit to go so long without hearing from Adry. She could have written us at any time—she had our mailing address. It used to be her address, too! It still was her address, as far as her father and I were concerned. Our home would always be our daughter’s home, and speaking as the person responsible for the bookkeeping in our household, that’s what I told the IRS when we claimed Adry as a dependent in those years. So, as a mother, yes, I missed her. Even her father missed her, you could say. I picked that up sometimes.
As a businesswoman, I could understand that Adry had to have a lot of serious responsibilities taking up her time as a professional entertainer. Just look at how much I have on my plate every day to take care of all the paperwork for our propane business—and the merchandising and the taxes and everything else Greg says he’s too busy to do, with whatever he’s doing with his time when I’m not looking, though it’s just as well, because I’m very good at what I do. Adry obviously inherited that from me. She’s all me! I’m so proud of her!
Greg and I talked about making a trip back to New York to see one of Adry’s performances in that area where she was performing, if the public was allowed. We weren’t clear on all that. Nina Oberheimer came over to the house one day and showed us an article in a music magazine about Adry, and I used the Xerox machine to copy it, and framed it in our office. Just around the same time, Nina brought us a record album Adry made and we were so proud, we framed that, too. They’re both still hanging in the same place, right under the plaques we won when we were named as a Finalist and Second Finalist for Fuel Dealership of the Year in the Western Pennsylvania district. That was for two separate years—I can show you before you leave.
[Geffel is asked to share her thoughts on the music on the album.]
That’s such a smart question! I can see you’re good at what you do, too! I’d have to take it off the wall and unframe it, and get the record player out, to be able to listen to it. But it could be worth the trouble!
Nina Oberheimer:
What’s the phrase—“the student surpassed the teacher”? That’s the way I’d like to think of the music of Adrianne’s I heard on the records I bought when I read about her career in New York. I’d like to think that way, but I’m not sure I can. I played the records, and I didn’t quite feel like Adrianne had surpassed me. I felt like she had taken another road and went in a completely different direction than the music I studied and devoted my life to teaching. Nothing in my musical education at Clarion prepared me for the sound of those records. Adrianne and I were in two different places much further from each other than Venango County and New York City.
Jon Geldman:
By the time of her third or fourth album—by Oh, Negative, certainly—Adrianne Geffel was so firmly established as a phenomenon of the music world in New York that people nearly forgot the importance of my role in introducing her, until I reminded them. It became exhausting. I reviewed all the records she made, and covered literally every one of her concerts that I could get press comps for. Pulling together all that writing for the book I’m compiling, I was struck by how frequently and how perceptively I’ve written about Geffel’s music.
The competition heated up for me. Since her music was so unique and stood outside the standard categories, writers on every music beat felt free to grab a piece of her, and they all acted like they discovered her. The arrogance was appalling. I remember going to the press event Infini Records set up at the K. Lewitt Gallery for the anniversary of her debut there. You weren’t there, I know. I suppose you were still in school then, though this was in July, so you might have been in summer camp.
[Geldman is prompted to continue with his recollection.]
All the New York press was there. The classical-music writers were all there from Time magazine and Saturday Review, trying to figure out what to make of this woman—good Lord, man, a woman!—playing such volatile music. The rock critics were there from Rolling Stone and the other rags, mumbling about how the fury and brutal force of her music proved she was a punk rocker in disguise. Cultural critics were on the hunt for political subtext and social implications in her music. Susan S
ontag was there, huddled in a corner with Twyla Tharp, but left before Adrianne played, when Leon Wieseltier came in and Tharp glommed onto him. So many people came that there was a mob of about ten or twelve people standing outside the gallery, waiting to get in. The sight of all those people on the streets of SoHo was disorienting.
Adrianne Geffel seemed pretty shaken up herself, in the center of all the hubbub. I worked my way through the crowd to talk to her. I never even got to her. She was pacing around—dancing really, practically—until she was introduced to play. When she did, she just simply exploded at the piano. In my piece on the event, I wrote that she “imploded,” to put a twist on the word. I’ve expanded the piece for inclusion in my anthology, adding some of my impressions of the various critics and others who were there.
Ruth Sirotta LeMat:
The office of the Music Department at the School of the Arts at NYU, where I taught, carried subscriptions to a number of scholarly periodicals, and we in the faculty were permitted to take the older editions for our private use when the new editions arrived. On occasion, I would bring a copy of the Journal of American Musicology home with me. It was turgid but printed on high-quality paper. When my brother’s daughter Stephanie visited, I liked to use the articles for origami. I was cutting out pages one morning, in anticipation of Stephanie’s arrival, and I found a critical study of a recording by Adrianne in the journal. This was the first I learned of Adrianne’s recording career. I was greatly heartened to read of this, and went out the next day to purchase a copy of the album. If you’d care to read the article, I saved it. If you’d like it, I can flatten it out in a book overnight and give it to you.
I thought the album was fresh and original. The music was forceful and, as always for Adrianne but more so than I had ever heard before, profoundly emotive and difficult to process. I found the music to be almost unbearably emotional and challenging. I couldn’t have been more pleased for Adrianne. Listening to that record also led me to wonder how she was doing, generally speaking. The emotionality of the music was very deep and somewhat dark.
I hadn’t had a mailing address for Adrianne since she withdrew from Juilliard. Uncertain how to reach her, I wrote a letter to her and mailed it to her attention, care of the record company. I never received a response. After a month or so, I wrote a second letter and again mailed it to the record company. I did this several times over a period of more than a year, and received nothing in response. I worried that the letters might not have been getting to Adrianne.
I learned the truth and was far from happy about it when I finally saw her again. There was a new venue for music in the Lincoln Center vicinity called Merkin Hall. It’s still there today and remains the same willfully outré hostel for adventurism in the New York concert world. When the hall first opened, one of my composition students was doing volunteer work in the box office, because it attracted a conservatory audience and was thought of as a hot classical-music pickup spot. This student saw that Adrianne was scheduled to be giving a concert, and told me about it. To the best of my knowledge, it was Adrianne’s first performance in a major concert hall, if not her first performance north of Houston Street.
My student had the rehearsal schedule and let me in early on the day of Adrianne’s rehearsal. I was waiting in the lobby for her when a peculiar young man came in and announced himself as Adrianne’s manager and instructed everyone but the technical crew to vacate. I started to head out the door when Adrianne entered. She saw me and simply froze for a moment. I reached my arms out and gave her a big, tight hug, and she nestled her head on my shoulder. She said to me, “Oh, Mrs. LeMat . . .” Her voice was quaking. She said, “Thank you so much for your letters. I’m sorry for not answering you. I just didn’t know what to say. I don’t know what to think anymore. I’m sorry . . .”
Harvé Mendelman:
The PR show we did at the Lewitt Gallery got us sensational press. Time magazine called her the “new Queen of Bleak Chic.” When you say it like I am to you now, it sounds good. You have to know how to pronounce “chic,” like you’re French. If you say it in English—“Bleak Chick”—it’s not as clever. That’s not so bad, either, though. Of all the chicks around the music scene, Adry Geffel was the bleakest.
We at Infini Records recognized this as the opportune time to take Adry Geffel up to the next level and present her in a major venue for a major concert album. Nothing against the lofts and galleries—I liked Milijenko Jervic, and I wasn’t even that much into coke at that time. But a loft does not a concert hall make, and vice versa. My good friend Biran and I put our heads together, and we produced the big concert at Merkin Hall. You would know it as “The Merkin Concert,” which is the title we used on the album. One of the salesmen, a real wisenheimer, told me we should call it “Adry’s Merkin,” assuming I didn’t know that “merkin” meant something besides the name of the guy who paid for the hall. When Karen explained it to me, I told him to cut out the funny business and stick to the money business.
We gave the concert a major advertising push, far outspending the promotional allocation reserved in Adry’s advance budget. It was an investment in her career much more meaningful to those of us responsible for her marketing than mere cash in her pocket. A writer for the Daily News did an article with a nice plug for the concert, and that got picked up by the AP and syndicated around the country. People were phoning in for tickets long-distance, just to see Adrianne Geffel.
Biran Zervakis:
Those were the days of all-enveloping togetherness for my magical Adry and me. We were living together in the home I found for us in Greenwich Village. The writers were all so curious about our relationship—“Tell us, please, would you, are the two of you living as husband and wife?” I’d say, “Now, now—why even try to put a label on any relationship?” I’d say, “But if you must, you can think of Adry and I as living as man and woman.” Our relationship could only be described as something—some . . . thing—that was the relationship between us.
Adry put it all in her music. Just listen to the “Merkin Concert” album we made from the first half of the performance.
Ruth Sirotta LeMat:
I was distraught to have to miss the concert. By the time I learned about it from my student, it was already sold out. I was hoping to be able to hear the rehearsal, but I got booted out by Adrianne’s manager.
Ann Athema:
Geffel gave the record company my name for a comp ticket, so I was able to get in. It actually wasn’t a comp, though, I found out at tax time, when I got a 1099 from Infini Records for fifteen dollars of income. I called Mendelman, and he explained to me the cost of the ticket had been logged as my payment for the art he had commissioned from me for Geffel’s album, So Far, SoHo. I said, “I see. Thank you. Well . . . when you’re ready to package your next release, I have a new artwork that I’ve created specifically with Infini in mind.” I said, “It’s a portrait of your soul—half human, one-quarter rabid dog, and one-quarter pure emptiness—burning in hell while Satan twists his pitchfork into your ass.”
The concert was packed. There was electricity in the air, and lots of new faces I didn’t recognize from the shows in SoHo. My seat was close to the back—thanks again, Mendelman—but that had its benefits, because I could watch the audience, along with Geffel, and it was fascinating to see how people reacted to the unusual music she made. The lights went down, and the room fell quiet. Out from the wings came that Biran, and he started yammering about how grateful he was to everyone who came tonight and how gratifying it was for him to work so intimately with Adrianne Geffel since he first recognized her genius before anyone else understood her . . . I was about to puke. He was still talking when Geffel came out from the other side of the stage. She walked right past him, sat down at the piano, and started playing. She already launched a violent assault on the keyboard before he got to announce her name. He turned in her direction and applauded, but she kept her eyes on the keyboard, and everyone else kept quiet, so they c
ould hear her.
I’ve never quite understood Geffel’s music—you know that. It doesn’t exactly fall easily on the ears. This show was especially odd and severe. I knew Geffel well enough to know she was clearly not in a good place emotionally. She played straight through for nearly half an hour—all the music on the live album. She paused for a moment to catch her breath, and someone in the audience yelled out, “Play ‘Models and Muggers’!”
Geffel took her hands off the keyboard and turned to the audience. She looked all around, squinting and trying to find the person who said that.
About ten rows ahead of me, a young woman raised her hand. She said, softly, “I’m right here, Adry.”
Geffel rose up from the piano and announced to the audience, “Thank you, everyone. We’ll have a fifteen-minute intermission, and I’ll be back to play more music.”
The woman who had called out to her stood up. She and Adry locked eyes, and Adry burst into a smile I had never ever seen before.
CHAPTER 7
Sweet Smells
(1982–1984)
Barbara Lucher:
Have you heard the second part of that concert?
[Lucher is answered in the negative.]
I know you never heard it, because you weren’t there. If you weren’t fucking there, you couldn’t fucking hear it, because the fucking record company didn’t put it on the fucking record. And you know why?
(Lucher is prompted to answer the question herself.]
Oh, God . . . I hate you. Do you want to hear about this or not?
[Lucher is answered in the affirmative.]
Then shut the fuck up and let me talk. The record company didn’t release the second part of the concert because it didn’t meet their approval, and that was because they’re assholes. That’s the story. Next question.
[Lucher is asked to recount the circumstances that led her to attend the Adrianne Geffel concert at Merkin Hall.]