Rhys Chatham

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Rhys Chatham (2011)

Rhys Chatham (born September 19, 1952 in New York ) is an American composer and musician ( guitar and trumpet ).

Chatham belongs to the second generation of post-minimalism , also known as totalism . This direction took up the minimal music of the 1960s and 1970s; Their distinguishing feature is a significantly increased rhythmic and tonal complexity compared to this, with an otherwise repetitive arrangement structure. Chatham was best known for his fusions between rock music and minimalist elements, and later for his improvisational works for solo trumpet.

Life and career

Chatham was already in contact with the American minimalism scene as a teenager and initially worked as a piano tuner for composers such as La Monte Young . At the age of 19 he became music director of the alternative cultural center The Kitchen in Manhattan . At the same time he was a student of Morton Subotnick and Tony Conrad . During this time his first compositions were created, which were heavily influenced by minimalism. In the following years he also worked with musicians from the alternative rock scene such as Brian Eno .

A turning point in his career came in 1977 when he came across the burgeoning punk rock scene and especially the representatives of the music genre known as No Wave (which he presented with Keshavan Maslak at the Moers Festival in 1981). From then on, his activities focused on fusions between rock music and minimal music. His best-known work to date, Guitar Trio for three electric guitars, was written in 1978. The piece experiments with the feedback sounds of the guitars, which repeat only a single note over the entire length of the piece (30 minutes). In the late 1970s and early 1980s he experimented with large electric guitar orchestras in works such as Drastic Classicism and Die Donnergötter (both 1982).

Chatham began playing the trumpet in 1983, and in the years that followed he concentrated on this instrument. In the 1990s, he mixed beats from various styles of electronic dance music (especially jungle and drum and bass ) with improvised trumpet solos, alienated by feedback effects, in numerous compositions . These works also found their way into the commercial electronics scene and some of them were released on the Ninja Tune label.

In 2005 he composed the piece A Crimson Grail for 400 electric guitars for the Nuit blanche festival in Paris . In the following years he toured Europe and North America with the original version of Guitar Trio . These actions caused its popularity to resurface in the second half of the 2000s.

Performances 'G3 in Europe'

  • Festival Desgressions - March 7th 2007, Barcelona, ​​Spain
  • L'Ecole Régionale de Beaux Arts - April 25th, 26th 2007, Valence, France
  • Cosmic Club - August 10, 2007, Oslo, Norway
  • ZXZW Independent Culture Festival - September 22, 23, 2007, Tilburg, The Netherlands
  • Festival Soy - October 29, 2007, Nantes, France
  • Galleria Toledo - March 26th 2008, Napels, Italy
  • State-X Festival - December 12th, 2008, The Hague, Netherlands

Discography

  • Factor X (LP), Moers Music 1983. Contents: For Brass (1982), Guitar Ring (1982), The Out Of Tune Guitar (1982), Cadenza (1981)
  • Die Donnergötter (LP), Dossier Records / Homestead Records 1987. Contents: Die Donnergötter (1984–86), Waterloo No. 2 (1986), Guitar Trio (1977), Drastic Classicism (1982)
  • Neon (12 ", CDEP), Ntone 1997, collaboration with Martin Wheeler. Contents: Charm (1996) , Ramatek (1994) , Hornithology (1996), Neon (1993)
  • Septile (12 ", CD EP), Ntone 1997 (collaboration with Jonathan Kane and DJ Elated System)
  • Hardedge , The Wire Editions 1999 (collaboration with Pat Thomas, Gary Smith, Gary Jeff, Lou Ciccotelli)
  • A Rhys Chatham Compendium (CD), Table of the Elements 2002. Contents: An Angel Moves Too Fast To See (1989) [Edit], Guitar Trio (1977) [Edit], Drastic Classicism (1982) [Edit], Two Gongs (1971) [Edit], Guitar Cetet (1977) [Bonustrack], Waterloo, No. 2 (1986) [Edit], Die Donnergötter (1985) [Original version]
  • An Angel Moves Too Fast To See (Selected Works 1971-1989) (3-CD box), Table of the Elements 2002
    • CD 1: Two Gongs (1971)
    • CD 2: Die Donnergötter (1985), Waterloo, No. 2 (1986), Drastic Classicism (1982), Guitar Trio (1977), Massacre on MacDougal Street (1982)
    • CD 3: An Angel Moves Too Fast To See (1989),
  • Echo Solo (LP), Azoth Record Society 2003
  • Three Aspects Of The Name (12 "), Table of the Elements 2003
  • An Angel Moves Too Fast To See (for 100 electric guitars, electric bass and drums) (LP, CD), Table of the Elements / Radium 2006
  • Die Donnergötter (LP, CD), Table of the Elements / Radium 2006. Contents: Die Donnergötter (1985/86), Waterloo, no. 2 (1986), Drastic Classicism (1982), Guitar Trio (1977), Massacre on MacDougal Street (1982)
  • A Crimson Grail (for 400 electric guitars), Table of the Elements 2007

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kyle Gann: A Forest from the Seeds of Minimalism: An Essay on Postminimal and Totalist Music , program for the Minimal Music Festival 1998 of the Berlin Society for New Music

Web links
personal data
SURNAME Chatham, Rhys
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American composer, guitarist and trumpeter
DATE OF BIRTH September 19, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH New York , USA