Joan La Barbara + Annea Lockwood + David Behrman
'Abstraction and Engagement'
Music, stories, protests, spiritual journey with
- Annea Lockwood: 'In Our Name'
-electronics, baritone and cello- - Kaija Saariaho: 'Sept Papillons'
-solo cello- (by Ted Mook) - Annea Lockwood / Thomas Buckner: 'Duende'
-baritone and electronics- - Joan La Barbara: 'Gatekeeper'
-solo amplified voice and sonic atmosphere- - David Behrman: Excerpts from 'My Dear Siegfried'
-voice, baritone voice, cello, guitar and laptop-
Performers: David Behrman, guitar and laptop Thomas Buckner, baritone voice Joan La Barbara, voice Theodore Mook, cello
NL / Metaphon & les ateliers claus zijn blij om een uniek dubbelconcert aan te kondigen met muziek van 3 pioneers van Amerikaanse electronische en experimentele muziek: Annéa Lockwood, Joan La Barbara & David Behrman. DAVID BEHRMAN tourde ondermeer met het Cunningham Dance Company in de vroege jaren ’70 en was tevens een assistent van John Cage. Hij heeft vooral interesse in flexibele structuren en het gebruik van technologie. Zijn composities en performances zijn vaak gebaseerd op de interactieve relatie tussen de performer enerzijds en technologie anderzijds. My Dear Siegried is de compositie die hij vandaag zal brengen.
ANNEA LOCKWOOD werd vorig jaar 60 maar reist nog steeds vlot de wereld rond om haar werk voor te stellen. Gebaseerd op natuurlijke geluiden gaat haar werk van geluidskunst over installaties tot performances die meer en meer ook levensverhalen gaan bevatten. Zij komt op deze namiddag 2 stukken voorstellen: “In our name”, een stuk voor stem, elektronica en cello gebaseerd op teksten van enkele gevangen van Guantanamo Bay en “Duende”, een stuk waaran David Behrman meeschreef en waarbij Thomas Buckner zichzelf “high” zingt.
Tenslotte brengt JOAN LA BARBARA "Gatekeeper" een stuk voor solostem en 'sonic atmospheres'. La Barbara's c.v. leest als een droomreeks van samenwerkingen: Morton Feldman, John Cage, Steve Reich, Phillip Glass, ... wellicht allen zijn ze gevallen voor de onwaarschijnlijke inventiviteit van La Barbara's stem.
FR / Metaphon & les ateliers claus ont le plaisir de présenter un double concert unique de 3 musiciens américains, pionniers de la musique électronique et expérimentale dans leur pays. Au début des 70's, DAVID BEHRMAN tourna notamment avec la "Cunningham Dance Company" et fut l'assistant de John Cage. Ses compositions et performances jouent de la relation entre le performeur et la technologie. "My Dear Siegfried" est le nom de la composition présentée aujourd'hui.
ANNEA LOCKWOOD a désormais 60 ans mais voyage encore aux quatre coins du monde présenter son travail. Son art sonore basé sur des sonorités naturelles se balade entre installations et performances qui relatent de plus en plus son histoire personnelle. Ici, elle présentera 2 pièces: “In our name”, morceau pour voix, arrangements électroniques et violoncelle basé sur des textes de prisonniers de Guantanamo et “Duende”, co-écrit par David Behrman et dans lequel Thomas Buckner lui-même chante "sous influences".
Et enfin JOAN LA BARBARA avec "Gatekeeper" pièce pour voix seule et 'sonic atmospheres'. Morton Feldman, John Cage, Steve Reich, Phillip Glass, furent ses alter ego: excusez du peu! Tous confondus par l'incroyable inventivité sonore de la voix de la Barbara.
EN / Metaphon and les ateliers claus are proud to announce a unique double concert with music by and with three pioneers of American electronic and experimental music: Annéa Lockwood, Joan La Barbara and David Behrman. The concert is a part of their European tour.
David Behrman – “My Dear Siegfried”
David Behrman has been active as a composer and artist since the 1960s. Together with Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier and Gordon Mumma, Behrman founded the Sonic Arts Union in 1966. Sonic Arts performed extensively in North America and Europe from 1966 until 1976.
Working at Columbia Records in the late 1960s, he produced the "Music of Our Time" series of new music recordings for Columbia Masterworks, which presented works by Cage, Oliveros, Lucier, Reich, Riley, Pousseur and other influential composers.
Behrman toured as composer/performer with the Cunningham Dance Company in the early Seventies and again from time to time in more recent years. In the Sixties and Seventies he assisted John Cage with several projects. Merce Cunningham commissioned him to compose music for several repertory dances, including "Pictures" in 1984.
Over the years he has made sound and multimedia installations for gallery spaces as well as musical compositions for performance in concerts. Most of his pieces feature flexible structures and the use of technology in personal ways; the compositions usually rely on interactive real-time relationships with imaginative performers.
The Behrman’s piece that will be performed is entitled “My Dear Siegfried. Sam Behrman and Siegfried Sassoon met in 1920 when Behrman, then a young writer working at The New York Times, was sent to interview Siegfried Sassoon at the start of the English poet's postwar American lecture tour. In that tour Sassoon was billed as "England's Soldier-Poet. He had a reputation both as a war hero and an anti-war poet and peace activist. Many years later, each author wrote about this youthful meeting, which inaugurated a long-lasting friendship and a correspondence, mostly conducted via trans-Atlantic letters between England and America, which continued into the 1950's. "My Dear Siegfried provides a performance environment in which musicians interact with texts by the two authors and music software designed to respond to the performers' actions. The dialogue begins with Sssoon's statement. 'I would no longer obey orders. I would no longer participate in war.'"
Annea Lockwood – In our Name / Duende
Born in New Zealand in 1939 and living in the US since 1973, Annea Lockwood is known for her explorations of the rich world of natural acoustic sounds and environments, in works ranging from sound art and installations, through text-sound and performance art to concert music. Her music has been performed in many venues and festivals including: the Possibility of Action exhibition at MACBA Barcelona, De Ijsbreker, the Other Minds Festival-San Francisco, the Walker Art Center, the American Century: 1950 – 2000 exhibition at the Whitney Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum, Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Westdeutscher Rundfunk, CNMAT Berkeley, the Asia-Pacific Festival, Donaufest 2006 Ulm, the Donau Festival Krems, the 7th Totally Huge New Music Festival Perth, and the Ear To The Earth Festival - New York.
During the 1970s and ‘80s she turned her attention to performance works focused on environmental sounds and life-narratives, often using low-tech devices such as her Sound Ball, containing six small speakers and a receiver, designed by Robert Bielecki for Three Short Stories and an Apotheosis, in which the ball is rolled, swung on a long cord and passed around the audience. World Rhythms, A Sound Map of the Hudson River, Delta Run, built around a conversation she recorded with the sculptor, Walter Wincha, who was close to death, and other works were widely presented in the US, Europe and in New Zealand.
Since the early 1990s, she has written for a number of ensembles and solo performers, often incorporating electronics and visual elements. Thousand Year Dreaming is scored for four didgeridus, conch shell trumpets and other instruments and incorporates slides of the cave paintings at Lascaux. Duende, a collaboration with baritone Thomas Buckner, carries the singer into a heightened state, similar to a shamanic journey, through the medium of his own voice. Jitterbug, commissioned by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for the dance eyeSpace, incorporates Lockwood’s recordings of aquatic insects, and two improvising musicians working from photographs of rock surfaces.
On this afternoon two pieces will be performed. In our Name (2009) based on verses by prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay Duende (1997) for voice and electronics
“In our name” is Annea lockwood’s new piece for electronics, voice and cello (Thomas Buckner and Ted Mook), based on the verses of prisoners from Guantanamo Bay. It was premiered in New York in January 2009, and was performed at the Aurora Festival in Sidney during the spring of 2010.
"In our name is an electro-acoustic work for voice and cello (Thomas Buckner and Ted Mook, two superb musicians), utilizing two poems from two former prisoners at Gitmo. This is political art that thankfully avoids the easy-out of most political art, the presentation of a slogan for consensus. The work begins in darkness with dramatic drones from the musicians; then the real playing begins. The first poems are recited and sung, accompanied by cello, and interrupted powerfully by the sound of screaming through the intake of breath; it is severe and effecting. The singing of the poetry is musically successful and powerful..." --Soundtime 02/14/2009
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