| PRESS - "THE LABÈQUES MINIMALIST DREAM HOUSE" |
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Piano duo Katia and Marielle Labeque to appear at Kings Place London Latest Issue: No 62 October-November 2011 |
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Curated by journalist Igor Toronyi-Lalic, the festival marks fifty years since the first of Yoko Ono’s monthly loft shows in 1960-61. The three concerts Minimalism: Dawn, Minimalism: Europeans and Experimentalists, and Minimalism: Rock ‘n’ Rollersdig into the psychedelic beginnings of the minimalist movement, tracing its development from the movement’s forefathers: Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, John Cage and Colin McPhee, to Steve Reich’s Piano Phase, and other two-piano pieces by Arvo Pärt, Gavin Bryars and Philip Glass.
The concerts also feature works by Cornelius Cardew, Yoko Ono’s curator La Monte Young, James Tenney, Henry Flynt, and Terry Riley, as well as song arrangements of Radio Head, Brian Eno, Aphex Twin and Sonic Youth. Katia and Marielle Labèque will be joined nightly on stage by long-time friends and collaborators Nicola Tescari, David Chalmin andMassimo Pulpillo who will play some classic Minimalist-inspired rock and some equally classic-rock-and-world-music-influenced minimalism.
The ever-adventurous Katia and Marielle Labèque have long been champions of proto-minimalist maverick Eric Satie. 'Satie is so independent,' says Marielle 'so anti-conventional and very mean.' The pair, famed for their diverse and unconventional approach to repertoire, have recently worked on songs by the Beatles and dabbled in jazz collaborations, bringing them into the spirit of the sixties and the murky routes from which minimalism was born. 'Now we have our rockers,' Katia explains, 'it is the perfect time for us to look to the minimalists.'
Fifty Years of Minimalism is the most complete British celebration of the genre in all its waves.
Minimalism at 50, Kings Place, London As this beautifully executed programme illustrated, minimalism is a broad church. Isn’t minimalism the music that puts audiences to sleep? That may be its reputation in the centres of European tradition, but there was nothing soporific about this opening concert of a festival celebrating minimalism’s 50th birthday. Intelligently curated by Igor Toronyi-Lalic, the festival has given Kings Place some much-needed artistic kudos and stolen a march on the offerings at London’s other concert halls, which tend to take a more puritan view of new music. As this beautifully executed programme illustrated, minimalism is a broad church. At its best it makes you think about musical processes without inferring any dogma. At its worst, as in Terry Riley’s Mescalin Mix and La Monte Young’s 283 is for Henry Flynt, it behaves like a disruptive child whose only concern is to break rules. Those two relics of the pioneering 1961 Chamber Street concert series in New York demonstrated how primitive and anti-musical the movement’s beginnings really were. And yet the ever-so-subtle modulations of Steve Reich’s Piano Phase of 1967 were a reminder of how quickly it grew up. This rendition by Katia Labèque and Nicola Tescari had the finesse that minimalism needs and rarely gets. It was certainly a coup for Toronyi-Lalic to land Katia and her sister Marielle as his key players, for the Labèques not only drew a bigger audience but also attracted other high-quality players – period instrument exponent Chi Chi Nwanoku, multi-disciplinarian Matthew Barley and rock musicians David Chalmin, Massimo Pulpillo and Raphaël Séguinier. These three, plus Tescari, supplied magic and mystery in their own smoky compositions, where the link with minimalism seemed minimal and the temptation to get up and dance was strong. For Riley’s In C, minimalism’s 40-minute international anthem, classical and rock joined hands in a performance that had heart and soul – as much a sophisticated jam session as an exquisitely rehearsed party piece. Led by soprano Olivia Chaney, the musicians were clearly having as much fun as their highly concentrated audience, and the beauty of it all was that, despite the constantly recurring pulse, there was none of the repetitiousness which is minimalism’s curse.
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