Leon Michener

Leon Michener is a London-born pianist whose music spans recordings of 20th-century classical music through to free jazz. Acquiring a small Moog synthesiser at the age of fourteen by saving a year’s worth of pocket money led to his passion for combining acoustic keyboards with live electronics. After graduating from Trinity College of Music he constructed his Klavikon system, a combination of piano, amplification, found objects, feedback and analog processing. Augmenting the 88 keys with his own inventions and found objects - custom-made microphones, toys, vibrators, and lots of blu-tak allowed him to deliver cascading batteries of percussion, sub-basses and dark abstract soundscapes. He has recorded on numerous labels, including a solo Klavikon album on the Nonclassical record label. His latest research has led him to resurrect and explore obsolete keyboard instruments such as the Clavichord, Dulcitone, and the Yamaha CP80 electro-acoustic piano.

For this performance, he will be playing on an amplified portable Clavichord, prepared with found objects, which has also been “hacked” to include a custom-assembled electro-acoustic-mechanical percussion instrument in its lid.

“Leon Michener has created something truly original” – Observer Newspaper

“An innovative and absorbing concept, carried through by Michener with no mean insight and technical finish” – Gramophone Magazine

“A pianist with extraordinary control of the instrument” – Wire Magazine

Rrose

Rrose is the latest incarnation of Seth Horvitz, an interdisciplinary artist from California (residing in London since 2015) whose 30+ year musical history weaves in and out of dancefloor culture and academic circles. Seth’s work focuses on the limits of perception and the idiosyncrasies of machines, and the Rrose project applies these ideas in order to create a noisy, yet intricately layered and immersive form of techno. From this core, the project extends its tentacles into specific pockets of the avant-garde, leading to collaborations with artists such as Bob Ostertag and Charlemagne Palestine and reinventions of works by 20th century composers such as James Tenney. Rrose’s first vinyl releases on the Sandwell District label came cloaked in mystery, as did the following string of releases on his/her own Eaux label. As a DJ and live performer, Rrose has appeared at warehouses, clubs, museums, forests, ventilations shafts, opera houses, and sweaty basements across Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

http://rrose.ro | http://eaux.ro

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