Performance is part of Wordless Music: 800 Years of Minimalism, a FREE concert on August 15 at 7 p.m. in Damrosch Park which also features Manuel Gttsching in his pioneering electronic composition E2-E4 and early-music group Beata Viscera
On Friday, August 15, Lincoln Center joins forces with New York's Wordless Music Series to present an extraordinary evening of premieres and debuts in Wordless Music: 800 Years of Minimalism, a concert highlighting spiritual minimalist music spanning eight centuries. The program explores the transcendental and ecstatic dimensions of music-making with three performances: music of 13th-century French composer Protin performed by early-music vocal group Beata Viscera in its New York debut; composer Rhys Chatham's A Crimson Grail (Outdoor Version), for 200 electric guitars in its World Premiere; and German composer/guitarist Manuel Gttsching's hour-long electronic work, E2-E4, in its first live US performance, with projections by visual artist Joshua White (The Joshua Light Show). The concert is part of Lincoln Center Out of Doors, the free, summer performance series which this year runs from August 7 through August 24, 2008.
For Rhys Chatham's work, which was specially commissioned by Lincoln Center for this Out of Doors performance, 200 volunteer electric guitarists, including 16 bass guitarists, are needed to join Chatham and section leaders John King, Ned Sublette, David Daniell, and Seth Olinsky (Akron/Family) in a “super-sized" orchestra. Reflecting Chatham's interest in polyphonic and antiphonal music, A Crimson Grail's players will be organized in four sections of 50 musicians each, who will perform along three sides of Damrosch Park, enveloping the audience in order to enhance the work's polyphonic effect.
HOW TO APPLY
Guitarists must be highly-proficient players, read music, and be able to commit to three evenings of rehearsal, August 12, 13 and 14, as well as the performance on August 15. Those interested in being considered for one of the 200 guitar slots for A Crimson Grail should go to Lincoln Center's website: www.lincolncenter.org/wordlessmusic for complete information and an application form. Applications are due by June 15. Decisions will be announced by July 15. All guitarists will need to use their own guitars and amps, but will play strings generously provided courtesy of D'Addario.
Early music vocal group Beata Viscera, formed by soprano Martha Culver and tenor Caleb Burhans (who are members of Alarm Will Sound) opens the Wordless Music concert with works by the 13th-century French composer Protin who pioneered the three- and four-part style that came to be called organum -- the earliest type of Western polyphonic music. The interweaving of simple melodies and musical lines found in early polyphony serves as a jumping off point for music by contemporary composers Rhys Chatham and Manuel Gttsching, who also employ simple melodies stretched out in time to create a hypnotic counterpoint between rhythmic complexity and medieval, chant-like drone.
Rhys Chatham's earliest A Crimson Grail was created for 400 guitars. A commission from the City of Paris for its La Nuit Blanche annual music and arts festival, it had its premiere in 2005 in a critically-acclaimed performance at the Basilica of Sacre Coeur. The work has been extensively revised for the unique requirements of the outdoor setting of Lincoln Center's Damrosch Park and will call on the talents of 200 guitarists. American-born, now Paris resident, Rhys Chatham played the virginal and Baroque flute at an early age and became interested in serialism when he began counterpoint and harmony studies at age 13. He later studied with Morton Subotnick and La Monte Young. Founder of the music program at the Kitchen in downtown Manhattan in 1971, Chatham served as music director from 1971-73 and again from 1977-80, presenting works by more than 250 living composers. He wrote his first composition in just intonation in 1971 and began working as a composer-performer with non-notated music of various sorts, culminating in 1976 with his first forays into hard rock. With his composition, Guitar Trio (1977), Chatham became the first composer to make use of multiple electric guitars in just intonation to merge the extended-time music of the sixties and seventies with serious hard rock. During the 1970s and 80s, he worked on combining the pounding, throbbing rhythms of rock with the aesthetic concerns of post-minimalism. In the early nineties, Chatham began to focus his energy on playing trumpet and developing a personal “voice" on the instrument in the context of techno and trip-hop music. He has received commissions from, among others, Lyon Opera Ballet, BAM, Lincoln Center's Serious Fun!, and Armitage Gone Dance!.
Concluding the Wordless Music concert is the U.S. premiere of composer/guitarist Manuel Gttsching's electronic composition E2-E4. E2-E4 was recorded in real time and with no overdubs by Gttsching (a member of Ash Ra Tempel) on December 12, 1981. Although the album initially sold fewer than 3,000 copies, it was soon discovered by early dance- and electronic-music figures such as Larry Levan and Juan Atkins, and is today generally acknowledged as a influential starting point for early techno and house music. E2-E4 builds from calm and quiet to multiple layers of texture and repetition, culminating in an ecstatic groove. Collaborating with Gttsching for the first-ever US live performance of E2-E4 will be visual artist Joshua White (The Joshua Light Show), who will create a live visual projection designed specially for E2-E4 to be projected on the surface of the Damrosch Bandshell. The projection uses “liquid light" techniques developed at Bill Graham's Fillmore East during the late 1960s.
Wordless Music: 800 Years of Minimalism is presented in collaboration with the Wordless Music Series.
For more information contact All About Jazz.
