Charlemagne Palestine // Two Day Residency PASS

Event information

Charlemagne Palestine is one of music's true iconoclasts - famed for his epic, extended duration works for organ, the distinctive piano playing of his 'strumming music' and his ritualistic 'stuffed animals and cognac' performance style. Palestine's appearance at the Daniel O'Sullivan curated Transmissions Festival provided the impetus for these two days here at OTO and this time Charlemagne will perform both solo and in a new collaboration with Grumbling Fur - the duo of Daniel O'Sullivan and Alexander Tucker - on the second night. The Friday night will open with a trio performance by The Bohman Brothers and Steve Noble. The Saturday night will have L'Ocelle Mare coming over from France for a rare visit to the UK.

CHARLEMAGNE PALESTINE

Charlemagne Palestine (born Charles Martin or Chaim Moshe Tzadik Palestine August 15, 1945, or 1947, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American minimalist composer, performer, and visual artist. Palestine has studied at New York University, Columbia University, Mannes College of Music, and the California Institute of the Arts.

A contemporary of Philip Glass, Terry Riley, Phill Niblock, and Steve Reich, Palestine wrote intense, ritualistic music in the 1970s, intended by the composer to rub against Western audiences’ expectations of what is beautiful and meaningful in music. A composer-performer originally trained to be a cantor, he always performed his own works as soloist. His earliest works were compositions for carillon and electronic drones, and he is perhaps best known for his intensely performed piano works. He also performs as a vocalist: in Karenina he sings in the countertenor register and in other works he sings long tones with gradually shifting vowels and overtones while moving through the performance space or performing repeated actions such as throwing himself onto his hands.

Palestine's Strumming Music (1974) remains his best-known work. It features over 45 minutes of Palestine forcefully playing two notes in rapid alternation that slowly expand into clusters. He performed this on a nine-foot Bösendorfer grand piano with the sustain pedal depressed for the entire length of the work. As the music swells (and the piano gradually detunes), the overtones build and the listener can hear a variety of timbres rarely produced by the piano.[1] A recording of Strumming Music was also Palestine's second vinyl album in the 1970s, reissued on CD in 1991. Since then, several additional recordings (featuring Palestine on piano, organ, harmonium, and voice) from the 1970s—including new recordings of more recent works such as Schlingen-Blängen—have become available.

Palestine's performance style is ritualistic: he generally surrounds himself (and his piano) with stuffed animals, smokes large numbers of kretek (Indonesian clove cigarettes), and drinks cognac.

www.charlemagnepalestine.org

GRUMBLING FUR

Daniel O'Sullivan and Alexander Tucker have been friends and collaborators for a long time. Grumbling Fur surfaced with debut album 'Furrier' (Aurora Borealis) in 2011. The record was an assemblage from a one day recording session involving Finnish psychonaut Jussi Lehtisalo from Circle and Pharaoh Overlord and Dave Smith from Guapo resulting in a suite of psychedelic mantras indebted to Popol Vuh's 'Affenstunde' and 'The Faust Tapes'. Their first outing as a duo manifested in a session for Southern Records' Latitudes imprint in 2012. Their new duo record 'Glynnaestra' - will be released by Thrill Jockey in July this year.


STEVE NOBLE + THE BOHMAN BROTHERS

Steve Noble is London's leading drummer, a fearless and constantly inventive improviser whose super-precise, ultra-propulsive and hyper-detailed playing has galvanized encounters with Peter Brötzmann, Derek Bailey, Matthew Shipp, Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, Stephen O'Malley, Joe McPhee, Alex Ward, Rhodri Davies and many, many more. For this date he shares the stage with The Bohman Brothers and the overcrowded table of extra-musical objects they use for their characteristically inclusive improvisation that takes in Fluxus japery, musique concrete, sound poetry and more.

"It's hard to describe the raw, explosive audio art they perpetrate.Everyday objects and sounds are worked on until they become saturated with lurid suggestion, resulting in a bizarre, hysterical immediacy. The convulsive beauty bears comparison to both composers Helmut Lachemann and James Dillon and to sound terrorisers Bark! and Furt. Nevertheless, in the traditions of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, the Bohman Brothers kitchen-sink realism laughs at the grand claims of lofty art.They will show you fear in a sponge from a drainer." Ben Watson,The Wire Magazine, March 2002.

L'OCELLE MARE

Solo performance by Thomas Bonvalet, formerly of French art rock band Cheval De Frise. Bonvalet uses harmonica reeds and a banjo in combination with a small battery powered amplifier and other ancillary mechanical devices to conjure and physically control acoustic phenomena.