Liquid Liquid
Rhys Chatham: A Crimson Grail for 200 Electric Guitars

For club-music mavens, the return of New York's seminal breakbeat artistes Liquid Liquid is a reminder that in the beginning freestyle dancers romped and stomped to the rhythms of percussionists. Two hundred electric guitars and basses line the park and plug in for the world premiere of Rhys Chatham's A Crimson Grail for 200 Electric Guitars.

When:
Saturday, August 8, 2009 at 7:30 pm

Where:
Damrosch Park Bandshell (NYC)

Free - no tickets required

Looks like beautiful weather is in store. Check out a video from last night's Rhys Chatham rehearsal, below...

Continue reading "200 guitars and no rain this weekend?"

Akron/Family @ All Points West Sunday (more by Chris La Putt)

APW Day Three: MOST AWKWARD ATTEMPT AT CROWD PARTICIPATION
"We like fun," Akron/Family's Miles Seaton yelled. "Do you like fun?" Well either the crowd truly felt ambivalent about fun or they didn't think the question worth answering. Met with stony silence, Seaton tried again. And again. His one-man chant never inspired the crowd, perhaps because only the most stoned found anything resembling fun in the band's directionless drum circles. [Spin]

Akron/Family was one of the bands that got to play their set, though it was slightly abridged (opposed to others forced to cancel) at All Points West on Sunday after the fest's opening was delayed. A video from that is below.

The band has more August and September shows scheduled around North America. Before those kick off, the group will be in town for two NYC events. First, band guitarist Seth Olinsky will be conducting a section of Rhys Chatham's Crimson Grail for 200 Electric Guitars on August 8th at Damrosch Park, as part of the Lincoln Center's Out of Doors Festival. The next day (8/9), Akron/Family will appear at Other Music (15 E 4th St) for a 7pm in-store performance ("Free Admission / Limited Capacity").

On select upcoming dates, the band will be traveling with Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard and Slaraffenland (who will join A/K on stage to form the "Akron/Family big band"). They'll also be at ATP NY. All tour dates and more, with a look at the sheet music for Crimson Grail and APW videos, below...

Continue reading "Akron/Family played APW (video), playing Other Music, conducting 200 guitars & other 2009 tour dates "

Lincoln Center Damrosch Park bandshell - August 2008 (miro.m)

This year's Lincoln Center Out of Doors (LCOOD), three weeks of FREE music and dance on the plazas of Lincoln Center, will run from August 5 through August 23. The 39th annual edition of the festival will present a wide range of music and dance events by dozens of international, U.S. and local artists, highlighted by New York, U.S. and world premieres and debuts and special commissions. Out of Doors opens Wednesday, August 5 with the worldwide debut of the Asphalt Orchestra, a new marching band developed by Bang on a Can, premiering works commissioned for Lincoln Center's 50th Anniversary from Goran Bregovic, Tyondai Braxton (of Battles), and Stew and Heidi Rodewald. The band will also perform original arrangements of iconoclastic rock, jazz, and classical material--all to movement created by MacArthur Fellowship winning choreographer Susan Marshall. Asphalt Orchestra will kick-off the first five consecutive nights of Out of Doors at 7 p.m., performing in different locations across Lincoln Center's campus, with a varying playlist each night. The opening night concert at the Damrosch Park Bandshell at 7:30 is a double-bill with Out of Doors alum The Dave Brubeck Quartet (marking the 50th Anniversary of the landmark album Time Out) with guest soloist, oud virtuoso Simon Shaheen, and Iraqi-American jazz trumpeter Amir ElSaffar leading the New York debut of his Two Rivers Large Ensemble.]

The Asphalt Ochestra shows also include "world-premiere arrangements of works by: Björk, Meshuggah, Charles Mingus, Colon Nancarrow, Frank Zappa."

And Lincoln Center and Wordless Music are again planning a performance of Rhys Chatham's Crimson Grail for 200 Electric Guitars. It'll be happening Saturday, August 8th at Damrosch Park. Let's hope they've secured a rain location, or this could be an annual thing. Section leaders include David Daniell, John King, Seth Olinsky (Akron/Family) and Ned Sublette. The fest is taking applications to volunteer as a guitarist or bassist for the event. Also on the bill for that is "seminal funk-punk band Liquid Liquid."

Other highlights on the schedule are "a pairing of Malian singer-songwriter Rokia Traoré with Raul Midón", The Derek Trucks Band, and Slavic Soul Party.

Closing out the festival will be the 26th Annual Roots of American Music Festival at the Damrosch Park Bandshell, an event that'll touch on the blues (Four Women: A Tribute to Odetta, Miriam Makeba, Abbey Lincoln and Eartha Kitt), Creole music (The Louisiana Renegades), country (Texas Tornados: Tribute to Doug Sahm), and "Mazel Tov, Mis Amigos: The Lost World of Latin-Jewish Sound" with Afro-Jazz bandleader Arturo O'Farrill.

Full schedule below...

Continue reading "Lincoln Center Out of Doors 2009 lineup - another attempt at Rhys Chatham's 200 Electric Guitars included "

photos by Jason Bergman

Göttsching

"Alright I'm going to be the first to chime in here - how about telling us it was cancelled before sitting through an hour of gottsching. I respect him, don't get me wrong, but I did not go to sit through an hour of dance music surrounded by people thinking they were at bonnaroo. They should have done it unplugged, even with electric guitars, it would have sounded better than nothing." [Anonymous 1]

"i'm so effing pissed off that they made me sit through an hour of monotonous as hell gottsching. it was torture and then only to be told that the guitar performance was NOT going to happen, when the VERY well could have told us that it was cancelled before making us sit through that misery." [Anonymous 2]

Rhys Chatham announcing the cancellation

"There were contingency plans to play the whole thing in the church with a smaller audience but they kept it outside hope against hope (hi Robert Poss). Weather forecasts are more accurate now than Woodstock and I was pretty surprised at the decision." [Hugh]

"sh!t, i was one of the 200 guitarists that was supposed to play in this, and *i'm* pissed about sitting through that show. we gave up 3 nights for rehearsals, were there for soundcheck at 1pm on friday, and then stood in the rain for 4 hours...and then through that endless E2-E4 b.s. show...

there was a contingency in place (the show would have happened at st. paul) but they had to make the decision about the choice of venue at noon due to all the equipment & people involved. i still can't believe, however, that they didn't have a way of dealing with the weather. i'm no electrician, but..." [Anonymous 3]

the crowd

More pictures from last night's short 'Lincoln Center Out of Doors' show @ Damrosch Park below....

Continue reading "Gottsching, Rhys Chatham & zero guitars @ Damrosch - pics"

photos by Jason Bergman

Rhys Chatham: A Crimson Grail (2008) for 200 Electric Guitars (Outdoor Version) (World Premiere)
Commissioned by Lincoln Center for Lincoln Center Out of Doors

Next, composer Rhys Chatham and section leaders John King, Ned Sublette, David Daniell, and Seth Olinsky (Akron/Family) lead an oversized orchestra of 200 volunteer guitarists and electric bassists in the world premiere of A Crimson Grail for 200 Electric Guitars (Outdoor Version) performed not on the Bandshell stage but along the sides of the audience at Damrosch Park, to heighten the work's polyphonic effect. The work, originally composed for Paris' famed Sacré-Coeur, has been extensively revised to suit the dynamics of the Park's outdoor acoustic.

That description describes 1/3 of tonight's free show called "Wordless Music: 800 Years of Minimalism - The Spiritual Transcendent" at Damrosch Park (August 15) (part of the Lincoln Center Out of Doors series). Last night there was a rehearsal at the St. Paul of the Apostle church at 60th and Columbus. Jason stopped by and took a few pictures...

Continue reading "Rhys Chatham & 200 guitars is tonight ++ pics from rehearsal"