Books published by Soberscove Press

In 1970, galvanized in part by the musical experiments of John Cage, Gavin Bryars, and Cornelius Cardew, students at Portsmouth College of Art formed their own symphony orchestra. Christened the Portsmouth Sinfonia, the primary requirement for membership specified that all players, regardless of skill, experience, or musicianship, be unfamiliar with their chosen instruments. This restriction, coupled with the decision to play "only the familiar bits" of classical music, challenged the Sinfonia's audience to reconsider the familiar, as the ensemble haplessly butchered the classics at venues ranging from avant-garde music festivals to the Royal Albert Hall. By the end of the decade, after three LPs of their anarchic renditions of classical and rock music and a revolving cast of over one hundred musicians--including Brian Eno and Michael Nyman--the Sinfonia would cease performing. "The World's Worst: A Guide to the Portsmouth Sinfonia", the first book devoted to the ensemble, examines the founding tenets, organizing principles, and collective memories of the Sinfonia, whose reputation as "the world's worst orchestra" underplays its unique accomplishment as a populist avant-garde project. While seemingly a niche musical anecdote, the story of the Portsmouth Sinfonia engenders wide-ranging conversations that touch upon the legacy of interdisciplinary art pedagogy, the power of popular music, the investment necessary in order to work and learn together, and the effects of destabilizing canonization. The unorthodox journey of the orchestra unfolds here through interviews with original members and their publicist/manager, magazine publications, photographs, and previously uncollected archival material, as well as an essay by Christopher M. Reeves and a foreword by Gavin Bryars.

The marble workers laboring on the decades-long restoration of the Acropolis are the invisible force rebuilding one of the world's most storied monuments. Inheritors of a millennia-old tradition, few carvers exist today; fewer pass the Acropolis entrance exams. Their work is a highly technical, fascinating amalgam of past and present, yet what these master marble carvers do and how they do it was previously undocumented. As the Acropolis restoration enters its final phases in the midst of political and economic crises in Greece, this book of interviews (in English, with Greek translation) conducted by American artist Allyson Vieira presents the marble carvers' stories in their own words. The workers describe their craft, techniques, training and their specific roles in the restoration; and consider how the Greek crisis has changed the way they think about their jobs and their citizenship.

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Ray Johnson (1927-95) studied under Josef Albers and Robert Motherwell at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, and worked as a painter early in his career, exhibiting alongside Ad Reinhardt before embracing pop imagery, collage and mail art, producing thousands of collages and other works on paper. His life and death (by suicide, jumping from a bridge in Sag Harbor, Long Island) were the subject of the award-winning documentary How to Draw a Bunny (2002). 'That Was the Answer: Interviews with Ray Johnson' brings together a selection of interviews and conversations from 1963 to 1987 that offer unique access to Johnson's distinctive thinking and working methods. Throughout, Johnson's responses are marked by his humor and close attention to language. Gathering these interviews for the first time, That Was the Answer serves as an ideal introduction to Ray Johnson as well as a resource for those wanting deeper insight into this artist and his kaleidoscopic body of work.