THE CREATIVE MUSIC ALLIANCE PRESENTS AMM FOR A TWO-DAY CONCERT SERIES AT BARD COLLEGE ON APRIL 26 AND 27 Concerts feature pioneering British electroacoustic improvisational trio
ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, NY-The Creative Music Alliance at Bard College presents the pioneering British electroacoustic improvisational trio, AMM, for a two-day concert series on Thursday, April 26, and Friday, April 27. Both concerts begin at 8:15 p.m. in the Multipurpose Room of the Bertelsmann Campus Center; tickets are $8 for each concert or $12 for a two-day pass.
Thursday's program will feature individual members of AMM. John Tilbury, a leading interpreter of Morton Feldman and Cornelius Cardew's piano music, will speak about and perform their works; Keith Rowe, inventor of the prepared guitar, will play a solo selection; and Eddie Prévost will conduct an ensemble of Bard student musicians. Friday evening's performance will feature a full set by AMM.
AMM was a pioneer in combining the disciplines of jazz, electronic composition, and the found-object aesthetic of 1950s pop art, with the political and musical theories of the avant-garde. Today they rely heavily upon the role of chance, free improvisation, and 35 years of shared musical dialogues to continue to discover new sounds and compositional Bard College News Releasematerial. The New York Times notes that, "AMM has the rare power to inspire awe."
Founded in England in 1965 by Keith Rowe, Lou Gare, and Eddie Prévost, AMM's ties with the experimental avant-garde were strengthened with the addition of composer Cornelius Cardew in 1966. Disregarding typical conventions of music composition-notation, melody, harmony-they forged a new musical aesthetic based on the communal exploration of timbre among the musicians and exploited technological quirks and ideas of acceptance and simplicity borrowed from the art world of the mid 1960s. During the 1960s they were at the forefront of the European avant-garde and free-improvisation circuit. John Tilbury joined the ensemble in 1980 after Cardew and Gare left in 1976. Their distinctive performances-powerful assemblages of sound in flux with periods of silence-are hallmarks of the trio's longstanding intent to explore new worlds of sound.
This performance represents the culmination of an eight-concert series presented by the Creative Music Alliance (CMA) at Bard College, an organization that has brought creative and improvisational music to the Hudson Valley over the past three years. A rare American performance by AMM is "a must-see for all those interested in the evolution of modern music and the aesthetics of improvised music, as performed by the premier ensemble of this genre," according to Nicholas Krapels, director of the CMA at Bard.
For further information, call Krapels at 845-757-2120 or e-mail [email protected].
About the Performers:
"Keith Rowe has found a whole new vocabulary for the electric guitar"-Financial Times. Rowe's legendary accomplishments with the guitar span over a quarter of a century. Trained as a painter, he has brought many of his artistic concerns and insights to the guitar. Most of this work has been developed within the medium of AMM. Over the years he has been concerned variously with the indeterminate music of Cornelius Cardew, the "people process" music of the Scratch Orchestra, and dance and various free improvisation ensembles, which have taken him to many parts of the world. In 1997 he formed the Music in Movement Electronic Orchestra.
"One of those extraordinary pianists thrown up every so often by the advance of the avant-garde"-La Stampa. Tilbury studied piano at the Royal College of Music in London and later in Warsaw on a Polish government scholarship where he studied with Zbigniew Drzewieki and co-founded the Warsaw Music Workshop with Zygmunt Krauze. In 1968 he was a prizewinner in the Gaudeamus International Competition in Contemporary Music in Holland and since then has specialized as a performer of 20th-century music, including music by Cardew, Cage, Bedford, Nono, Feldman, Wolff, Riley, Takahasi, and more recently, younger English composers Skempton, Smith and White. He is currently writing a biography of Cornelius Cardew.
"One of the pioneers of contemporary improvising music as well as being one of its most gifted percussionists"-the BBC. In addition to AMM, Eddie Prévost worked with composer Cornelius Cardew and performed many of the avant-garde works of the 1960s. Since then he has been engaged almost entirely within the field of improvisation and free-jazz performing, throughout Europe and North America. He performs on occasion with a wide range of musicians including Jim O'Rourke, Marilyn Crispell, and David Jackman's Organum; and the ensembles GOD, E.A.R.; and Supersession with Evan Parker, Barry Guy, and Keith Rowe. His first solo recording, Loci of Change, was made in 1996. Prévost's new trio, featuring young British improvisers Tom Chant and John Edwards, released its debut CD, Touch, in 1998. Prévost has a degree in history and philosophy and writes and lectures on improvisation. His book "No Sound is Innocent" was published by Copula.
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