Vaquero is an under-conductor for this guitar and bass extravaganza. 6-hour rehearsals begin tomorrow. Thus this week our casa will be dominated entirely by an outside force. The sound you hear at this moment is Foxessa's sighs. She remembers when it was like this all the time, and admits to not having missed it at all.
From Playbill, describing this August 15 Lincoln Center Out of doors event:
[ Rhys Chatham, who will lead an army of guitarists through the world premiere of A Crimson Grail for 200 electric guitars (Outdoor Version),” has spent much of his career exploring the border of popular and art music. After studying with the New York minimalist La Monte Young and founding the music program of the downtown experimental space, the Kitchen, Chatham became engulfed in New York’s punk rock moment of the mid-‘70s. As a result, he began composing pieces representative of both the loud, electric energy he experienced at clubs like CBGB’s and the extended, repetitive overtones of composers like Young, Terry Riley and Steve Reich—his breakthrough being 1977’s Guitar Trio, which used three retuned guitars (along with a bass guitar and drums) playing as a loud, harmonic wall of sound, and revolutionized the sound of New York’s underground rock scene for the next decade. Chatham also started adding additional guitarists for his compositions, and by the time A Crimson Grail debuted as an indoor piece in Paris’ Sacré-Couer Basilica in 2005, he was using 400 of them. The very nature—and the needed expansive setting—of creating a piece for so many players (most of whom were chosen through an open volunteer application process), speaks to the communal longings present in Chatham’s music. ]
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8 comments:
Very interesting event. It is an incredible undertaking.
It's walking on eggs. If it works, there will be nothing any better. If it fails, there will be nothing worse.
It will work. Rhys has been doing some version of this for years, with always successful results. Vaquero was integral to this though, back in the day, when Rhys still lived here and not in France. Vaquero tuned all the guitars. By ear, with tuning fork. Nobody else could or even knew how.
He did it in France with 400 guitars. The French Ministry of Culture provides handsomely for composers and other living artists and their productions. Not like here.
The problem is travel. It is so difficult these days. The producer of the event is stuck in Chicago, due to a canceled flight, and can't make the first meeting and rehearsal today.
Love, C.
I hope that not all 200 guitarists will be in tu casa at the same time!
They shall remain safely corraled on the Upper West Side!
He didn't get home until after 11 last night. He immediately sat down and ate voraciously.
Life is so weird this week. I spent all day cooking yesterday, because he needs to eat his major meal of the day before he leaves, which can be any time from 2:45 to 3:30. Rehearsals run from 6 to 10. But since he's a wing commander he's got to on site earlier than that, and then there are conferences after.
So I did a week's worth of cooking yesterday, so it can mostly be whipped out and warmed out at demand.
I'm not letting him eat that junk they'll order in -- pizza and cheap chinese and all that fat and salt laden stuff. He gets enough unhealthy eating on his travels and in New Orleans! Nor is that stuff good for his waistline. So cookcookcook I do. :)
I cook because I can!
Love, C.
I don't care whether it sounds sexist or not, I love being married to a great cook! We had eight kids over for her youngest's b.d. last night; I thought I would burst by the end. Except that it seems like there's always room for more good food.
wow! That's all i've got to say.
You gotta love those French. Once while in Paris, I sent a couple of pairs of well-worn worn jeans to a drycleaner because I didn't have time to go to the laundromat...when I picked them up, they were wrapped in beautiful floral paper and tied with a ribbon!
This sounds amazing, so many guitars!
Ms T -- The French attention to detail, particularly detail of clothing construction and decoration, as well as to accesories such as perfume and scarves and so on, is just astounding -- and perfect too. You see this still in effect, as a positive legacy, in the French Caribbean, whether for Carnival costumes, or just how the women dress and present themselves in daily life. I always feel so frumpy and inadequate -- they are so effortlessly chic and groomed.
Graeme -- Those guitarists have flown in, with their guitars and amps, putting themselves up -- all at their own expense! So you can imagine the level of commitment, and how that will translate into the performance. An audience of at least 10,000 is expected.
K -- We cook because we can, and we are so glad that we can! My regret is our place is just impossible to have people over. I love to entertain and proffer hospitality, and I just can't do it here. That was what I loved about living in New Orleans -- I had the room and capacity to have people over and cook, cook, cook. While Vaquero entertained them in various ways. :)
Love, C.
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