Here are some photos from the recent ISSUE Project Room concerts from early October 2019. See the post from September (below) for the complete program.
The show started with a duo of Jonathan Kane on drums and Zeena Parkins on electric harp and electronics, followed by a flute solo by Rhys Chatham (me). After the solo, we played a commissioned piece entitled The Sun Too Close to the Earth.
I’ll be posting photos from the commissioned piece shortly, as well as announcements concerning upcoming Rhys Chatham concerts.
For now, I’ll post photos of the flute solo, taken by Cameron Kelly McLeod:
RHYS CHATHAM: THE SUN TOO CLOSE TO THE EARTH / JONATHAN KANE & ZEENA PARKINS: ON, SUZANNE
October 4th & 5th, ISSUE is pleased to present the world premiere of The Sun Too Close to the Earth, an expansive new work by iconoclast composer and multi-instrumentalist Rhys Chatham. Commissioned by ISSUE and presented as a part of the French Institute Alliance Française’s (FIAF) thirteenth annual Crossing the Line Festival, the piece spans Chatham’s aesthetic concerns across thirty years of composing for electric guitar ensembles, as well as the minimalist and free jazz traditions that grew out of NYC’s downtown music scene.
The Sun Too Close to the Earth is a fully notated composition, combined with improvisational elements, written for a nine-person ensemble with electric guitars in special tunings, horns, keyboard, and percussion. The ensemble features many ISSUE friends and luminaries within the Downtown NYC experimental music scene, including Jonathan Kane, Anthony Coleman, Ernie Brooks, and Karen Haglof, as well as Jaimie Branch, Anna Roberts-Gevalt, Sarah Register, Reut Regev, and Jen Baker.
In this piece, Chatham draws from his roots composing for electric guitar ensembles of widely varying forces, incorporating the overtone drenched minimalism of the early 1960s with the relentless elemental fury of the Ramones — the textual intricacies of the classical avant-garde colliding with the visceral punch of punk rock. The Sun Too Close to the Earth combines these influences with Chatham’s more recent experience as a wind player, deploying extended playing techniques inherited from the glory days of the minimalist and free jazz period of New York’s East Village in the early 1970s.
Until now, Rhys has kept the two strains of composition in separate camps. With The Sun Too Close to the Earth, Chatham blends these two bodies of work into one, to arrive at a “post-urban” music that reflects the artist’s concern for the ravages of climate change and the senseless destruction of our planet.
Chatham also performs the North American premiere of his 20-minute solo work Le Possédé for bass flute. The piece continues Chatham’s explorations of the possibilities offered by the early minimalist period of downtown Manhattan. During the early 1970s, Chatham played in La Monte Young’s Theater of Eternal Music, with Tony Conrad in an early version of The Dream Syndicate, and in trio formation with Charlemagne Palestine and Tony Conrad. Chatham draws on these experiences to arrive at a musical vocabulary which is reminiscent of this exciting period in New York, transforming the sound in a way that could only happen in the present decade.
Renowned experimental musicians Zeena Parkins and Jonathan Kane also perform the world premiere of On, Suzanne, dedicated to ISSUE’s founder Suzanne Fiol. Inspired by the poem Some ‘American Sentences’ On Suzanne by the late Holly Anderson, the event marks the first ever collaboration of these two legends of Downtown NYC music.
PROGRAM:
On, Suzanne
Harp: Zeena Parkins
Drums: Jonathan Kane
Le Possédé
Bass flute: Rhys Chatham
Intermission
The Sun Too Close to the Earth
Electric guitars: Karen Haglof, Anna Roberts-Gevalt, Sarah Register
Electric bass: Ernie Brooks
Drums: Jonathan Kane
Electric keyboard: Anthony Coleman
Trumpet: Jaimie Branch
Trombones: Jen Baker, Reut Regev
Conductor: Rhys Chatham
I’ve been in the south of France since the beginning of July. Here is a photo, taken by Isabelle Forestier, from just outside my music studio in the foothills of the Pyrenees near Céret, France!
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted. This is because I’ve been working on a new piece commissioned by the Issue Project Room and the French Institute Alliance Française, the performance is scheduled for next October, see below for details.
The piece has been progressing well, so I thought I would take time out come up for air and tell you about some upcoming concerts taking place in September and October:
Saturday, 7 September 2019 – The Old Hairdresser’s Pub – Glasgow, Scotland
Photo: Phil Mackie
A solo performance of Pythagorean Dream by the Paris-based New York composer on electric guitar, trumpet and bass and alto flutes from the New York, with Glasgow based Maria Rossi aka Cucina Povera in support. Glasgow The Old Hairdressers, 7 September, 8pm. £12
La Bâtie // Rhys Chatham – Pilot on Mars
10 September 2019 – Geneva, Switzerland
Turn in your spleen for some blues! Pilot on Mars, a Swiss trio featuring dancer-turned-singer Pascal Gravat, guitarist Bastien Dechaume and keyboardist Joe Baamil write songs based on poems from the Beat Generation, record them in New York with US bigwigs, and produce radically electric blues albums for our listening pleasure. To open for them, the band has invited Rhys Chatham all the way from the Big Apple. The avant-garde artist who witnessed the early beginnings of minimalist music with La Monte Young and Tony Conrad will threaten to blow up our electricity bill – we haven’t forgotten his orchestrations for 100 or 200 guitars. At La Bâtie, Chatham will conduct a temporary ensemble of local musicians composed of six guitarists, a drummer and a bass guitarist. If that doesn’t inspire you to take up guitar lessons again…
4 & 5 October – Issue Project Room – Brooklyn, USA Commissioned work: The Sun Too Close to the Earth
October 4th & 5th, ISSUE is pleased to present the world premiere of The Sun Too Close to the Earth, an expansive new work by iconoclast composer and multi-instrumentalist Rhys Chatham. Commissioned by ISSUE and presented as a part of the French Institute Alliance Française’s (FIAF) thirteenth annual Crossing the Line Festival, the piece spans Chatham’s aesthetic concerns across thirty years of composing for electric guitar ensembles, as well as the minimalist and free jazz traditions that grew out of NYC’s downtown music scene.
The ensemble features many ISSUE friends and luminaries within the Downtown NYC experimental music scene, including Jonathan Kane, Anthony Coleman, Ernie Brooks, and Karen Haglof, as well as Jaimie Branch, Anna Roberts-Gevalt, Sarah Register, Reut Regev, and Jen Baker.
Here is a quick update for
what is going on in March in terms of music:
On March 16 and 17 I will be in Toulon teaching master classes at the Conservatoire Toulon Provence Méditerranée. It the largest music conservatory in France. I am composer-in-residence there this year.
Rhys at Toulon Opera
Toulon is a lovely city in the south of France just by the sea. I forgot how beautiful it is, the last time I spent any time there was when I first came to France with Karole Armitage, it must have been back in the late seventies. We did some performances in Châteauvallon, where there was a big dance festival every year, and the hotel was in Toulon. I had very fond memories of that time and, as it turns out, the mayor of Toulon has recently spruced the city up, even the seedier parts, and now its filled with little cafés restaurants and craft shops of all kinds. I could really get into this!
Anyway, at the conservatory I’ll be giving a brass masterclass on the 16th, and the 17th will be devoted to electric guitar.
The following week, I’ll
give another guitar master class for the
conservatory students on the 27th, and then we’ll have some student performances
of some of the pieces we have been working on.
The performances will be free to the public.
Inside the Toulon Opera. Talk about Baroque, wow!
Orchestres électriques – directed by Rhys Chatham
G3 for 10 electric guitars, electric bass and drums
Here is Part 1 of the conference I gave in January at Conservatoire Toulon Provence Méditéranée, the largest music conservatory (in terms of number of students) in all of France. The lecture had a packed house! This is the first part of the lecture, which is about 18 minutes in length.
It’s in French, but don’t worry, even if you only took high school French, you will be able to understand it because it is ME speaking French with my “charming” American accent! Here is the description:
New Music, New York Conférence – Rencontre avec Rhys Chatham: La musique dans le “downtown” new yorkais des années 70 et 80. Rhys Chatham est le fondateur – et un temps directeur artistique – du programme musical de The Kitchen à Manhattan, lieu emblématique d’un certain brassage stylistique.
À l’occasion de cette conférence exceptionnelle, il nous parle de la scène musicale new yorkaise des années 70 et 80, du CBGBs à The Kitchen, du Max’s Kansas City à Artist’s Space en passant par The Mudd Club, du point de vue d’un compositeur et performer proche de musiciens tels que John Cage, Lydia Lunch, Laurie Anderson, James Chance ou encore Arto Lindsey.
due to USA work visa issues. The concert (see below) has been rescheduled for March. An announcement on this page will be posted with the new date.
For February’s post I’ll share some photos from a recent concert with the percussionist Will Guthrie that we did at the Opera House in Toulon.
Then I’ll tell you about an upcoming duo performance with the French composer Ghédalia Tarzatès that will be presented in Los Angeles at the Laxart Gallery on Friday 15 February as part of the Frieze Music events.
Rhys Chatham & Will Guthrie Toulon Opera 26 Jan 2019
On 26 January 2019, Conservatoire Toulon Provence Méditerranée (TMP) presented a new work of mine at the Opera de Toulon (pictured just above) entitled Talisman, which is a duo for the percussionist Will Guthrieand myself at the Opéra de Toulon. I played transverse flutes (alto and C), electric guitar and trumpet, with Will on various percussion instruments.
Here are some lovely photos of the performance, taken by Olivier Pastor:
Coming up this month (February 2019):
Rhys Chatham and Ghédalia Tarzartes at Laxart.
I am preparing for a duo concert in LA with Ghedalia Tazartes. It’s on Friday, 15 February at LAXART Gallery, at 8:30pm. The show is free, so first come first served! The event is part of Frieze Music.
Here is the link for the address and other details:
Here is the blurb from the site in case you don’t have time to visit it:
This gig features two legendary underground figures each of whom, in his own way, is a shaman of the avant-garde.
If Tazartès’ earliest recordings, Diasporas (1979) and Total Eclipse of the Sun (1984) brought him into the orbit of musique concrete, he would define its outer most reaches. Composing with recorded material was the means to highly idiosyncratic ends as the mainstay of this material was tracks of him chanting. Over the years, Tazartès has emerged as a vocalist whose chants share an affinity with any and all cultures for whom it is sacred expression.
A denizen of Paris since 1987, multi-instrumentalist and composer Rhys Chatham needs no introduction. His activities, from playing with La Monte Young’s Theater of Eternal Music and Tony Conrad’s Dream Syndicate to serving as The Kitchen’s first music director would define New York’s lower east side post-Minimal experimental music scene. This concert is Tazartès and Chatham’s’ second meeting after their stunning debut at Les Jardins de Simones.
I’ll write more in the coming days but here are a few quick announcements about upcoming concerts, as well as contact and booking information:
Due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control, I am no longer working with Front Porch Productions, at least for now, so if you would like to contact me or book any of my solo, duo or guitar orchestra projects, if you are in the States, please contact us directly at this address: rhyschathamnews@gmail.com
If you are in Europe, I am working with Pascal Tippex at the Tippex Booking Agency, you can contact us directly at this address: pascal@julietippex.com
For upcoming concerts,
I will be playing the Pythagorean Dream Solo at La Ferme d’en Haut-Fabrique culturelle Villneuve d’Ascq (near Lille) Saturday, 19 January 2019
Tickets are reasonably priced at €8. Here is the website: La Ferme d’en Haut-Fabrique culturelle website
In January-March, I will be composer in residence at the big music conservatory in Toulon France, which is called Conservatoire TPM Toulon Provence Méditaerrainée.
New duo concert with Will Guthrie, plus a conference:
I’ll be doing a conference/talk there on Saturday, 26 Januaryat 6 p.m. entitled “New Music, New York”, where I’ll speak about some of the material that will be included in the book I am working on.
That evening, I will be presenting a new work at the Opera de Toulon (pictured just above) entitled Talisman, which is a duo for the percussionist Will Guthrieand myself at the Opéra de Toulon. I’ll be playing transverse flutes, electric guitar and trumpet, with Will on various percussion instruments. I believe that the entrance is free if tickets are reserved in advance, but I will be posting more on that as the date approaches.
Here is the website for the concert with Will at the Opera:
Later in the year there will be three additional concerts in the south of France presented by students of TPM. I’ll be participating in the performance either as conductor or as an instrumentalist. There will be a concert in Châteauvallon at Scène Nationale Olliques on 26 February. On Saturday 16 March, we will be playing at TPM in Toulon, and finally on Thursday, 28 March, we play in Sainte-Maxime in the Côte d’Azure, just next to Saint Tropez.
That’s it for now, I’ll be back soon if more updates.
Here we are in December of 2018, the Christmas lights are going up already all around Paris, and everybody is busy thinking about presents, visiting family and the like.
New Music, New York book project
I’ve been busy working on a book about my early years as a concert producer at the Kitchen in New York. For more about that project, see the November entry below. I’ll be continuing this work on the book in December and probably well into the new year to come.
For December’s news, BBC Radio 3 has asked me to make a mixtape for their program entitled Late Night Junction.
BBC Radio 3, Late Night Junction broadcast
I decided to do a mix of (primarily) the music that formed me as a composer as I was growing up, so it’s quite an eclectic mix of music from Stravinsky to Bernstein, John Cage to Morton Subotnick to Maryanne Amacher to Perotin and Giles Farnaby… all the way up to Michael Nyman! I even threw in some of the rock pieces that informed my music, and as a tip of the hat to the newer generation, I included a piece by my friend Oren Ambarchi.
The program will be aired on BBC Radio 3 at 23:00 on Thursday, 6 December. The mix will be available shortly after the broadcast at this address: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001flk
In January-March, I will be composer in residence at the big music conservatory in Toulon France, which is called Conservatoire TPM Toulon Provence Méditaerrainée.
I’ll be doing a conference/talk there on Saturday, 19 January entitled “New Music, New York”, where I’ll speak about some of the material that will be included in the book I am working on.
That evening, I will be presenting a new work entitled Talisman, which is a duo for the percussionist Will Guthrieand myself at the Opéra de Toulon. I’ll be playing transverse flutes, electric guitar and trumpet, with Will on various percussion instruments. I believe that the entrance is free if tickets are reserved in advance, but I will be posting more on that as the date approaches.
Later in the year there will be three additional concerts in the south of France presented by students of TPM. I’ll be participating in the performance either as conductor or as an instrumentalist. There will be a concert in Châteauvallon at Scène Nationale Olliques on 26 February. On Saturday 16 March, we will be playing at TPM in Toulon, and finally on Thursday, 28 March, we play in Sainte-Maxime in the Côte d’Azure, just next to Saint Tropez.
We are presently booking the following programs:
I’m looking forward to the concerts I mentioned above in the south of France and teaching the master classes at TPM, but I am definitely up for doing more performances, here is what I have on the “menu” at present, if you are interested in mounting any of these performances, I’m posting our contact information at the end of this post:
Solo program: Pythagorean Dream
This is my solo performance, gohere to learn more about it and for a link where you can listen to the music. There are versions of Pythagorean Dream that can be any length from 30-minutes to an hour, depending on your production needs.
New Duo with Rhys & Ghédalia Tazartès
Rhys with Ghedalia Tazartes at “Le jardin de Simone”.
Earlier in the fall I played a private concert in duo formation with Ghédalia Tazartès. We decided to work on a record together and have almost finished recording it, just one more 6-minute piece to finish, and then the album will be ready!
We are lining up performances of this duo for next spring, so if you are interested in having us come to your venue, by all means contact me at rhyschathamnews@gmail.com and I’ll put you directly in touch with our agent.
Duo with Will Guthrie
This is an evening length work and a brand new project and a brand new piece which we will be premiering at TPM this January. As mentioned above, Will Guthrie will be on drums and percussion and I’ll be playing transverse flutes, electric guitar and trumpet, with Will on various percussion instruments.
Photographs and recordings will be available starting in February, but in the meantime, if you are interested in this project, write us!
Duo with Charlemagne Palestine
Charlemagne Palestine and I have been touring a duo, with Charlemagne on piano, voice and other instruments, and me on my usual electric guitar, flute and trumpet + electronics setup. We have a 3-CD boxed set out on Sub Rosa. We would love to play this duo in a venue near you! You can check out the music here.
Les 100 guitares
Les 100 guitares au Havre Photo: Jean-Luc Nail
As you probably know, I have a full range of pieces for 100-200 electric guitars that we’d love to perform in a venue near you. The description of those pieces can be found on this site under the heading of “Projects”.
I have a new piece for 100 electric guitars that we performed last summer in La Havre, France. The performance went well, in fact it was spectacular! We performed the piece on the beach just by the Atlantic Ocean, and we were surrounded by bonfires, it was for the Midsummer Festival in Le Havre. They even had flames spread across the stage, it was fantastic, and speaking of flames, I almost went up in one! I got so excited conducting the piece that I didn’t watch where I was going and stepped in one of the bonfires and almost literally went up in flames. What a way to go! In any case, the piece went well, the city of Le Havre rented a hundred 100-watt Marshall amplifiers for us to go through, so there wasn’t any problem hearing us over the sound of the surf.
I learned a lot through doing this new piece, so I’m re-working the score so that it can be played in an indoor location. The piece doesn’t need to be played through Marshall amplifiers, that was just an extravagance. It will work fine with normal 50-watt guitar amps and the piece doesn’t even need a sound system. I mean, who needs a sound system if you’ve got 100 guitar amps on stage?!?!
Guitar Trio project
In this project, I comes to the city where Guitar Trio will be presented and teach the work to local musicians in one or two workshop rehearsals.
It’s been a busy period filled with composing, rehearsals and concerts so I’m happy to report that in November, I’ll be here in my studio in Paris, France and working on a number of projects.
Book about the Kitchen and the NY downtown music scene in the seventies and eighties.
Video exhibition/showing at the original Kitchen in NYC on Mercer Street.
I’ve been working on a book about my years at the Kitchen Center in New York, having founded its music program in 1971 and producing many concerts there throughout the 1970s.
It was an exciting period that marked the beginning of the careers of such composers as Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Charlemagne Palestine and Steve Reich, all of whom lived in the vicinity of the same downtown area of Manhattan called Soho (short for south of Houston Street). It was a period when composers coming out of a classical European tradition were breaking away from the characteristic atonality of the music we were making back then and exploring new avenues of music making ranging from electronic and psycho-acoustic music, aleatory techniques coming out John Cage’s work and that of the Fluxus movement, to what seemed to be a reinventing of tonality within the context of music for small ensembles with what later became known as minimalism.
Once tonality found its way back into the spectrum of classical music in downtown New York, composers coming out of this tradition began pushing aleatory techniques to the limit, which lead them to break away from the rigidity of notated music, inspiring some of them to experiment with improvisation. Having done this, and having realized there was already an established current of music working with improvisation – namely African-American art music, otherwise known as jazz – the respective musicians and composers began to mix things up and started playing with each other and in each other’s performance venues, until it got to a point where it was sometimes difficult to tell who was doing what!
After people had just got used to the idea of downtown art music and jazz becoming amalgamated, some of the younger composers arriving on the scene were thinking, “Hey! Why don’t we do this with rock?!” And then we saw a period during the late seventies where minimalist music got amalgamated with punk rock, of all things.
It was an interesting period, to say the least.
The book I’m working on explores what happened from the perspective of someone coming out of a western European classical music tradition , as well as someone who had produced many of the concerts as well as playing in them. All to say I’m telling the story in my own words.
Tom Johnson & Rhys Chatham at the original Kitchen, circa 1972.
So I’ll be working on that and posting some of the sketches for the book on my Facebook page.
I also have some new musical projects in the works.
New Duo with Rhys & Ghédalia Tazartès
Rhys with Ghedalia Tazartes at “Le jardin de Simone”.
Earlier in the fall I played a private concert in duo formation with Ghédalia Tazartès. We decided to work on a record together and have almost finished recording it, just one more 6-minute piece to finish, and then the album will be ready!
We are lining up performances of this duo for next spring, so if you are interested in having us come to your venue, by all means contact me at rhyschathamnews@gmail.com and I’ll put you directly in touch with our agent.
Les 100 guitares
Les 100 guitares au Havre Photo: Jean-Luc Nail
As you probably know, I have a full range of pieces for 100-200 electric guitars that we’d love to perform in a venue near you. The description of those pieces can be found on this site under the heading of “Projects”.
I have a new piece for 100 electric guitars that we performed last summer in La Havre, France. The performance went well, in fact it was spectacular! We performed the piece on the beach just by the Atlantic Ocean, and we were surrounded by bonfires, it was for the Midsummer Festival in Le Havre. They even had flames spread across the stage, it was fantastic, and speaking of flames, I almost went up in one! I got so excited conducting the piece that I didn’t watch where I was going and stepped in one of the bonfires and almost literally went up in flames. What a way to go! In any case, the piece went well, the city of Le Havre rented a hundred 100-watt Marshall amplifiers for us to go through, so there wasn’t any problem hearing us over the sound of the surf.
I learned a lot through doing this new piece, so I’m re-working the score so that it can be played in an indoor location. The piece doesn’t need to be played through Marshall amplifiers, that was just an extravagance. It will work fine with normal 50-watt guitar amps and the piece doesn’t even need a sound system. I mean, who needs a sound system if you’ve got 100 guitar amps on stage?!?!
So I’ll be working on this piece also, and will have plenty to occupy me over the next couple of months.
After that, in January, I will be composer-in-residence of the music conservatory in Toulon, which evidently is the largest conservatory in France. Associated with this residency, I’ll be doing a number of conferences, workshops and concerts. I’ll be sure to post the dates as they become available.
That’s it for this month. I love performing, so do be sure to write us if you’d like to have any of my projects in a venues near you!
Robert Longo and I will again collaborate on the Eisenstein version of G3 (Guitar Trio). The date will be Friday, 28 September at 9pm.
The performance will be at the Captain Petzel Gallery in Berlin in the context of the opening of robert’s show there, entitled “Everything Falls Apart”.
and here is who will be playing:
Electric guitars: Rhys Chatham, Robert Longo, Knox Chandler, Julia Reidy, Robert Engelbrecht, Alexa Disaster.
Electric Bass: Alex Kozmidi
Drums: Olve Strelow
Most recent performance: my solo performance of Pythagorean Dreamon Saturday, 22 September 2018 at the Fort Process Festival in the UK in East Sussex.
On this festival, among many wonderful acts, there was one of my favorite composers of electronic music, Ned Rush!
Every summer, my partner and I move our respective studios, my partner with her brushes and easels, me with my computers, Abbleton Live, Logic, Sibelius and Finale, and we go to the south of France and stay in a hamlet about 30km from Céret.
We had a great summer, which I spent working on a book about my years as a music producer at the Kitchen Center in New York during the seventies. I’ve been posting individual segments of the book on my FaceBook page.
In order to set a context for the issues that downtown composers were working on during the seventies I went all the way back to the birth of the twelve-tone row, tracing its development through serialism and post serialism. then moving on to early minimalism in New York, and finally recounting my adventures in Morton Subotnick’s electronic music studio at New York University, when the studio was on Bleeker Street in Manhattan.
I left things there, and next week I hope to take things up again by writing about the first concerts we did at the Kitchen, when it was on Mercer Street.
After returning to Paris Ghédalia Tazartès and I have been working on a duo set, which we recently performed for the first time at a private and informal concert here in Paris.
I first met Ghédalia in New York, I think the last time I saw him in the flesh was at a concert at CBGBs in the late 70s, so when we first got together to work up a set, I wasn’t sure what to expect, and it was for SURE that HE didn’t know what to expect, as the last time he saw me it was with an electric guitar band at CBGBs!
Happily, our first rehearsal was absolutely magical, it was as if our music were made for each other and as if we had been playing together for years.
Fortunately, Benoît Lesieux was there to record it, here is a link to what he filmed:
