Thursday 14 February 2019, 7.30pm
Please note that Jim O'Rourke will be performing remotely for this event and will not be in attendance at the venue.
KASSEL JAEGER
Presque rien n°2, ainsi continue la nuit dans ma tête multiple (1977) 21'37
Description of a landscape at night that a soundman attempts to define through microphones, but the night surprises the "hunter" and creeps inside his head. It then becomes a double description: The inner landscape transforms the outer night and by composing it, adds its own reality (a fantasy of reality) or, perhaps, a psychoanalysis of his 'nightscape’?
Petite symphonie intuitive pour un paysage de printemps (1973–1974), 25’09
“This electroacoustic music is part of a series that could be called “imaginary soundscape”. Unlike ‘Presque rien ou le lever du jour au bord de la mer (almost nothing or daybreak by the seaside)’, where the landscape narrates itself, here a traveller discovers a landscape which he tries to convey as a musical landscape. Brunhild and I were in the Gorges du Tarn area. We chose to take a small path that was going up a rocky mountain for about ten kilometres.
After a last turn, a totally unexpected landscape opened before my eyes. It was sunset. Before us, a vast plateau spread open with soft curves up to the horizon, up to the sun. The colours ranged from dry grass yellow to purple, in the distance, with the darkness of a few small groves punctuating the space. The almost bare nature was presenting itself to the eye, free from any obstacle. We could see everything. Later, when I recollected this place and the sensations I had experienced there, I tried to compose a music that could revive this memory. The "Causse Méjean" is a high plateau, about 1000 m high, in the Massif Central mountain range. It is dotted by scattered farms. A few people bring their flocks of sheep home. I thought about evoking this solitary and hazy human presence by including snippets of conversations I had had with some of the shepherds. Human language is woven into the musical texture; the sound of the voice says more than its actually meaning. Once, a shepherd told me “... I am never bored. I listen to the landscape. Sometimes I play my flute and then I listen to the echo responding...” Thinking of him, I used the flute and its echo in my music.”
Luc Ferrari. October 18, 2002
“Like most of my peers I was born, grew up, attended schools, passed exams, I failed, I loved, I enjoyed life, I worked hard sometimes;
I continue.
With Pierre Schaeffer, I dealt in my first years in Paris with the relationship between sound and image at the Service de la Recherche de l’ORTF;
German origin, I earned my living as an interpreter - translator;
Following Luc Ferrari’s teaching in matters of life, music and composition andcurrently working with him over the course of our 40 years together, I made my own Hörspiele and radio broadcasts for France Culture, KPFA-FM Berkeley, California - WDR (Cologne Radio), SWF, BR (Radio Munich) Deutschlandradio Kultur Berlin ...
I continue learning.
After and since Luc left us in 2005, I am taking care of the preservation of his vast archives; founded the “Association Presque Rien - Friends of Luc Ferrari”; initiated and organize the biennial competition PRESQUE RIEN by providing artists with original sound material from Luc’s archives; edited a book with his writings and documents Musiques dans les spasmespublished by les Presses du Réel, France; try to find a translator and publisher in English language.
I composed music:
I continue.”
Brunhild Ferrari
David Grubbs is Distinguished Professor of Music at Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. He is the author of Good night the pleasure was ours, The Voice in the Headphones, Now that the audience is assembled, and Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, the Sixties, and Sound Recording (all published by Duke University Press) as well as the collaborative artists’ books Simultaneous Soloists (with Anthony McCall, Pioneer Works Press) and Projectile (with Reto Geiser and John Sparagana, Drag City).
Grubbs has released fifteen solo albums and appeared on more than 200 releases. In 2000, his The Spectrum Between (Drag City) was named “Album of the Year” in the London Sunday Times. He is known for his ongoing cross-disciplinary collaborations with poet Susan Howe and visual artists Anthony McCall and Angela Bulloch, and his work has been presented at, among other venues, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, the Tate Modern, and the Centre Pompidou. Grubbs was a member of the groups Gastr del Sol, Bastro, and Squirrel Bait, and has performed with Tony Conrad, Pauline Oliveros, Luc Ferrari, Will Oldham, Loren Connors, the Red Krayola, Royal Trux, and many others.
