Highly Recommended!!
“Les Barricades Mistérieuses,” the harpsichord gem by French Baroque composer François Couperin, has been a long-running source of exploration for Fluxus musician Philip Corner, who for years has used it as a jumping-off point for piano improvisations. Through Two More-Than-Mysterious Barricades comprises two very different takes on the same piece. The first dates from 1992, in collaboration with dancer Paulette Sears (who provides the ‘singings and screamings’ of the album’s subtitle); it moves from a frenzy of abstraction to a more meditative take on Couperin’s composition, with diversions and tributaries along the way. The second, from 2004, is a rougher beast: recorded with wildly over-saturated levels, the tape machine itself becomes a participant in the performance, with its heavy distortion bringing out stormclouds of overtones from Corner’s piano."
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Paulette Sears / vocals
Philip Corner / piano
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Improvisations after François Couperin. And more-of un-ashamed microphone in(ter)vention with Singings and Screamings
Available as a 320k MP3 or 16bit FLAC download.
Philip Corner (b. April 10, 1933, Bronx, New York). American composer, now resident in Italy, of interdisciplinary works that have been performed throughout the world; he is also active as a performer, visual artist and writer.
Mr. Corner studied composition with Mark Brunswick and musicianship and piano with Fritz Jahoda at the City College of New York, where he earned his BA in 1955, and composition with Henry Cowell and Otto Luening at Columbia University, where he earned his MA in 1959. He also studied analysis with Olivier Messiaen at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris from 1955–57, where he earned a deuxième prix, and studied piano privately with Dorothy Taubman in New York from 1961–75.
