Sunday, 31 May at 7pm
Peter Freeman, Inc.
7, rue de Montpensier, 75001 Paris
Please note that capacity is limited. Access to the performance is by RSVP only.
Three solos for cello, each its own investigation of the volatile resonances of the cello in the gallery.
Alvin Lucier: Glacier for solo cello (2009).
Éliane Radigue: Occam V for solo cello (2011).
Alison Knowles: Rice and Beans for Charles Curtis (2008).
"One can look at seeing;
One cannot hear hearing."
Marcel Duchamp, Box of 1914
Or maybe one can. The room listens to the cello; the cello listens to the room, and to the cellist; the cellist listens to the cello listening to the room, and to the room; the listeners listen to the listening of the cellist, the cello, and the room.
– Charles Curtis
Charles Curtis (b. 1960) is among the premiere avant-garde cellists living today. A graduate of Juilliard, Curtis has woven a unique and storied career through the worlds of both classical and experimental music. Among La Monte Young’s closest and most enduring collaborators, Curtis has devoted much of his musical life to the realization and interpretation of Young's music, from whom he learned just intonation, improvisation, and the Kirana style of Indian classical music. Curtis is the first performer to have worked collaboratively with the late Éliane Radigue on music for an unamplified acoustic instrument without electronic support, creating with her the hour-long Naldjorlak for solo cello in 2005. His long working friendship with Alvin Lucier brought into being more than ten compositions for cello solo, cello and orchestra, and cello with other instruments.