The Great Learning (II, IV, VII) | Atlas Festival

Cornelius Cardew, The Great Learning
Paragraphs II, IV, VII

Atlas Festival
at Ogród Powszechny
30/06/2016
21.00

with Michał Mendyk, Fundacja Strefa Wolnosłowa and around 100 participants from Warsaw, Bologna, Antwerp, Paris and God Knows Where

KALKWERK / STUDIUM

KALKWERK / STUDIUM

POSTPONED

Nowy Teatr
Madalinskiego 10/16, Warsaw

Michał Libera - concept, libretto, composition outline

Pete Simonelli - voice

Hilary Jeffery - trombone

Jerzy Rogiewicz - drums

Ralf Meinz - sound design
Karolina Gebska - light design

KALKWERK / STUDIUM

Theatre-for-the-Ear based on "Kalkwerk" by Thomas Bernhard
or, more literally, 
Audio-Book of an unwritten text

The plot of „Kalkwerk”, one of Thomas Bernhard's masterpieces, oscillates around the main protagonist's unsuccessful attempt at writing „Studium” – treatise on listening, „the most philosophical of all senses” and the one which „had never become subject to a magnificent study, prominent dissertation, not even a solid article” (Bernhard). According to widespread interpretation, treatise on listening is nothing but an allegory; a symbol of failure, work not only unfinished but not even started, endlessly postponed, continually distracted and finally paving the road to the degenerate crime. Seen from this existential perspective, as in famous theatre adaptation by Krystian Lupa, defeat in writing about listening is a mere narrative background, anecdotal course of events which only serves to display grand metaphysical drama which is at the core of Bernhard's real interest.

KALKWERK / STUDIUM is rooted in an entirely different reading of „Kalkwerk”. Listening here is not an incidental alibi to examine more profound realms of human's existence. Quite the contrary. There is no drama in Bernhard outside of listening or perhaps the drama is the listening itself. Construction of the book seems to support this thesis. It is not built of characters but rather overheard and misheard voices – uncertain gossips, never fully reliable rumours and contradictory tales written down and given to the reader in a fragmented and sometimes disembodied versions. „Kalkwerk” is thus firstly a book on listening and more importantly a book to listen to and it is in the latter one where the piece displays its structural majesty. Seen in this way, it is questionable if treatise on listening had never been written. It is true that it was not conceived by Konrad, the main character of „Kalkwerk”. Yet one can argue that Bernhard wrote „Studium” himself, aware of the fact that the theme of listening calls for liteterature for the ear rather than the eye. 

If Austrian author wrote the treatise himself, the only possible way to depict it is to follow the auditory features of the given discourse, reconstructing Bernhard's theory of hearing. 

Farewell to Emilia

fot. Maja Wirkus

FAREWELL TO EMILIA
A handful of acts dedicated to an empty building

13/05
Wolf Eyes

14/05
The Great Learning by Cornelius Cardew
perfromed by a workshop group of Fundacja Strefa Wolnosłowa
+ 
acts by Warsaw artists incl. 
Brud
Ray Dickaty
Alessandro Facchini
Gamid Ibadullayev
Irad Mazliah
Philip Palmer
Candelaria Saenz Valiente

co-curated by Paweł Nowożycki

Ivy Snowstalkers of Ancient Apron

Piotr Kurek, Ivy Snowstalkers of Ancient Apron

Opera commissioned by Kody Festival
12/05/2016
Lublin, Centrum Kultury, 20.30

Piotr Kurek – music, dramaturgy
Michał Libera – libretto, dramaturgy
Łukasz Sosiński – scenography
Laura Ociepa – screenings
Magdalena Łazarczyk – costumes
Natalia Przybysz – voice
Anastazja Bernad – voice
Hilary Jeffery – trombone
Kamil Szuszkiewicz – trumpet
Jerzy Rogiewicz – percussions
Hubert Zemler – percussions


Libretto (excerpt):

(In less than five minutes)

Within basidia of hymenium
and moraine of Karachi

in whale calfs' unborn barnacles
or over shallow end
of a small vernacular gravel
of some Northwestern town
in the country
of Romani ground

eighteen wreck DEAD
buried
remains
count
down.


(In time, quite soon)

When you're all no longer here
'xcept some dusty sludge

in a paddle strained of smog
or of human stinky wet
your particles snowing down
amid the wooden planks
in the floors
of your homes

thirteen DEAD
buried
remains
kick
off.


(In a while)

When the times arrive
of no torso corpse

in a tombless land
only leftovers
disperse their turns
in the solids
underground
yet always over

fifty DEAD
buried
remains
out
set.


(Very soon)

In borers walks
over man's veins

spread from
Diabal to Maine
devoured
by linches
on bloody
wood

DEAD
buried
remains
birth
bow.


(Now)

Leave on
within

among end
and by
now
good
by
now

DEAD
buried
remains
now
grow.

Salon de Salon de Fleurus

Salon de Salon de Fleurus
at
Salon de Fleurus

18/03 - 15/05
ms¹
Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź
Więckowskiego 36

Sound adaptation for an exhibition by ICI

It is quite certain that the space of the Salon at Rue de Fleurus, at the time Stein and Toklas were in residence, when canvasses of Picasso, Matisse and Cézanne graced the walls, when those paintings were viewed by Joyce and Pound in person … there is no doubt that the entire space of the salon at this time, in this most original company and accompanied by the most original originals, was filled with art enjoying the status of mere lesser replicas. This art was music. The music was played on phonographs, and had been recorded on vinyl or shellac records decorated with the words “Pathé” or “Odeon” as well as other words informing one that in these unassuming grooves one can find the voice of Mistinguett or of Maurice Chevalier. These texts were beheld by the eyes of Paris’ high society, yet they were just the same texts as those read by other Parisians. By anyone, in fact, who had come into possession of a copy and played their record on any other gramophone located in any other salon. The sounds which fell on the ears of Stein and Pound were just the same as the sounds heard in the houses of lesser-known streets. And they were just the same as the sounds which fall on our ears today, in our homes. We only need to avail ourselves of other copies of those same records, which as it happens is possibIe . You can buy copies. They are by no means cheap, but they are certainly much less expensive than the acquisition of a Matisse or Picasso canvas from Stein’s salon. 

The mere vocal presence of Mistinguett or Chevalier at Rue de Fleurus 27, especially in the form of precisely grooved vinyl or shellac, seems a very particular work of art. This artwork announces - in this very salon in the 1920’s, 1920’s and 1930’s - the arrival of the work entitled Salon de Fleurus, dated from the early 1990’s. And this announcement fulfils its own ambition: perhaps the records – copies – played in the salon were already for Stein and her guests in fact more significant and tell them more about the history than the original artworks, whatever those artworks might, properly, be – say, as performed live in concert. If it is true that mere copies might have meant more, it is because fiction was turned by those records into real history and because the listeners were given the space to contemplate and review the past while listening. Perhaps this is why the music could not have been canonised in the Salon – precisely because it had already been canonised before. Questions where, why and how certain narratives about modern music were originated through the salon structure had already found answers in these unassuming records themselves, even before those records reached the music stores from where they progressed to Rue de Fleurus and other streets of pre-war Paris. And if it’s true that the answers to these questions are not very present in the copies of “Mon homme” or “La femme a la rose” which were to be found in the salon, we may still hope that answers will be clearer in the copies found in Salon de Fleurus. These are versions which Stein and her friends could not have listened to because they represent a phonographic “life after life” of  the hits of Paris from the time of the Salon, giving us some insight into the period that followed – from the forties until today. 

POPULISTA WINTER TRIANGLE

Populista 
presents
Barbara Kinga Majewska, Emilia Sitarz
play
Franz Schubert 
Winterreise

BR POP14

1. Gute Nacht
2. Die Wetterfahne
3. Gefrorne Tränen
4. Erstarrung
5. Der Lindenbaum
6. Die Post
7. Auf dem Flusse
8. Rückblick
9. Irrlicht
10. Der greise Kopf
11. Wasserflut
12. Die Krähe
13. Letzte Hoffnung
14. Im Dorfe
15. Der stürmische Morgen
16. Täuschung
17. Mut
18. Rast
19. Frühglinstraum
20. Einsamkeit
21. Der Wegweiser
22. Das Wirsthaus
23. Die Nebensonnen
24. Der Leiermann

Voice by Barbara Kinga Majewska
Piano by Emilia Sitarz
Concept and rearrangement by Barbara Kinga Majewska and Michał Libera

Recorded and edited at homes by Barbara Kinga Majewska and Michał Libera in 2015
Additional recordings by Michał Kupicz
Additional edits by Robert Migas
Mixed and mastered by Ralf Meinz

***

Populista 

presents 

Richard Youngs

plays 

Parallel Winter

BR POP15

Voice, guitar and zither by Richard Youngs

Composed, recorded, mixed and mastered by Richard Youngs

***

BR POP16

Populista

presents

Joanna Halszka Sokołowska

plays

Franz Schubert 

Winterreise

Voice by Joanna Halszka Sokołowska

Recorded by Michał Libera in Komuna// Warszawa on 29th of October 2015

Mixed and mastered by Ralf Meinz

Premiered at Playback Play in Dwa Osiem on 12th of December 2014

***

All three CDs:

Produced by Michał Libera

Cover art work by Aleksandra Waliszewska

Layout by Piotr Bukowski

Published by BôłtRecords

Distributed by MonotypeRec

***

Motto of Populista Winter Triangle came about on 13^th of December, 2014. It was a cold and windy day, a classic of pre-winter Warsaw, cold, wet, transparent yet at the same time grey, or perhaps mostly grey. It was also a day of the first Warsaw show of Richard Youngs in Komuna// Warszawa. Not fully by accident, there was a piano in the room, which made Richard propose performing „Parallel Winter”. Few hours later he was introducing the piece to the audience saying that its duration is something in between fifteen and forty five minutes. It is because, he continued, that the piece has as many lines as we have winter days and hence is something one needs to go through, not unlike going through winter.

Is there a better introduction to „Winterreise”?

Legendary music cycle of Franz Schubert accompanies the poems of Wilhelm Müller and is today more than a classic, it is a must in virtually all and any music canon, a model of romantic songbook about misery, love and solitude and last but not least – a 19^th Century equivalent of a pop album mirroring emotional lives of generations to follow after its completion in 1828. Musicians' encounters with Schubert are rarely coincidences, especially in case of „Winterreise”. Regardless of approach, methodology in developing the interpretation, performance's concepts and techniques, facing the cycle is always a challange. It is due to the scale of the piece, varied and settled performance traditions, canonic value and more than often inconspicious refinment of the music which all together require musician to engage deeply and responsibly. It always means something when somebody takes on Schubert.

Interpratations of Barbara Kinga Majewska and Emilia Sitarz are crazy, funny, touching, sad, passionate, icy, irreverent, charming, sharp, ironic, tender, sweet, sensual, repulsive, ostensibly true and movingly artificial. Most of all however, they are a consistent, unhesitating and precise story of high integrity, not easy to forsee though, even for Winterreise's experts. The story is a far reaching interpretation of Schubert and Müller, bold and consequent, not stopping half way, not sucking up to the history of great performances of the piece. Quite the contrary, it is an undogmatic exegesis, open and idiosyncratic, the one that only the two artists in team with the producer, Michał Libera could create, an interpretation displaying new tensions and new interrelations existing in Schubert's cycle. At the same time, it is a work of great admiration and respect, more than often characterized by prudish perfections and surprising faithfulness to the romantic original.

The version of Joanna Halszka Sokołowska is diametrically different, although the distance from Schubert seems comparable in both cases. The album is in a way a field recording of a night session in the theatre. In less than two hours, her singing was captured with no rehearsals, in one go, and was followed by no overdubs or other studio treatments. It seems to be closer to Richard Young's „Parallel Winter” than the other take on Schubert. Perhaps because they both share a thoroughly camouflaged conceptual content uniting all the details and formal decisions with the content interpretation. It is switfly covered with the sound of pop or folk music or whatever kind of music it is which is more about playing than performing. Hence its theory comes more from an instinct and accurate decision than detailed exegesis, which by the way seems quite close to Schubert's fascination with folk songs. But there the similiarities with the original end. 

John TILBURY & Derek BAILEY

John Tilbury & Derek Bailey
Playing with a Dead Person

BR LP03

Side A
Birthday Party I (05.44)
Birthday Party II (03.55)

Side B
Birthday Party III (12.55)

Piano: John Tilbury
Guitar: Derek Bailey

Session commissioned and produced by BBC. 
LP produced by Bôłt Records.
LP distributed by MonotypeRec.

Thanks to Karen Brookman. 

„Derek and I always wanted to do a duo recording together and we never quite managed that. Within the later years that we were trying to set something and his health was failing, we would get close to it and he would phone up and say „I'm just not up to it, I can't do it”, and of course he died and I always regretted it – that we never did that. […] So when you contacted me about the duos, I thought there is nothing more original than playing with a dead person […] which is curious because Derek is very much alive, especially when we hear his voice and I feel he's sort of sitting here, in the studio, and he's waiting for me and I'm waiting for him and we're not quite sure what's gonna happen”

John Tilbury on BBC talking about the session.