Penultimate Press and Cenatus in partnership with Cafe OTO and Sound and Music present two disparate figures from the French experimental tradition of musique concrète: Two nights featuring musical outsider Ghédalia Tazartès and the next his mentor and friend, the theoretician, producer and musician Michel Chion.
THURSDAY 24 MARCH 2011
Michel Chion
Michel Chion will present the world premiere of Live In Prose, A Symphony Concrète. This piece was composed in the period 2006-2010 and has been previously been only in extracts and drafts in Paris, Montreal Canada and Yokohama, Japan. The entire work is "for fixed sounds".
Michel Chion was born in 1947 in Creil (France). In the 70's he was assistant to Pierre Schaeffer at the Paris' Conservatoire national de musique, producer of broadcasts for the GRM, and publications director for the Ina-GRM, of which he was a member from 1971 to 1976. Parallel to these activities, he composed important musique concrète works in the studios of the GRM including the classic 'Requiem'.
FRIDAY 25 MARCH 2011
Ghédalia Tazartès + Rashad Becker
Ghédalia Tazartès will present an idiosyncractic solo performance for voice and electronics.
His public appearances remain exceptional events as he rarely performs in concert.
If presenting the disparate figures of the academic: Michel Chion and the autodidactic Ghédalia Tazartès wasn’t enough, it gives us huge pleasure to announce Rashad Becker to support Tazartès on the 25th March. Becker is a shadowy figure, generally more comfortable behind the scenes of Good Music (TM). Don’t miss this rare opportunity to experience a performance by a man who many consider to have some of the most finely tuned ears in music. He describes his music as “playing the traditional music of imaginery species”
The autodidact Ghédalia Tazartès, born 1947 in Paris has spent 30+ years within musical practice and experimentation, letting his musical work wander from chant to rhythm, from one voice to another. Utilising magnetic tape recorders, he paves the way for the electric and the vocal paths, between the muezzin psalmody and the screaming of a rocker. He traces vague landscapes where the mitre of the white clown, the plumes of the sorcerer, the helmet of a cop and Parisian an hydride collide into polyphonic ceremonies. Don’t become a black, an arab, a Tibetan monk, a jew, a woman or an animal but to feel all this stirring deep inside of you.”
SAM/OTO is a pilot commissioning project providing grass-roots event organisers with the resources and opportunity to produce bold new programming for Café Oto - London's premier venue for adventurous music.
In spring 2010 we issued a public call for new event proposals that could be of any genre, format or description, with the only stipulation being that they must have a leaning towards experimental/fringe/underground activity and feature artists from outside the UK who have not previously performed at Café Oto.
After receiving almost 200 submissions from all over the globe, four were selected and awarded £2000 towards their development and realisation at Café Oto between January and April 2011.
