Rhys Chatham

How do you periodize a figure as historically liminal and artistically hybrid as Rhys Chatham? The last of the New York minimalists, or the first of the No Wave noisers? Perhaps, together with his friend and partner in crime Glenn Branca, he's precisely the missing link between the two universes. But there's more to it: in his almost priestly vocation for sprawling happenings of sonic avant-garde (his drone sonatas for guitar ensembles made up of hundreds of players are legendary, immortalized on the monumental “A Crimson Grail”), the American composer, now a naturalized Parisian, is ultimately yet another happy product of that distinctly American tendency toward the conceptual-performative gesamtkunstwerk, a contemporary abstraction with no boundaries of frame or caption, even if it's better suited to inducing mystical trances than to soundtracking art galleries.

After a thoroughly enjoyable solo-guitar opening set from Bologna's J.H. Guraj (a delightful, sprawling and pastoral take on American primitivism, perhaps closer to disciple Jim O’Rourke than to master John Fahey), Professor Chatham takes the stage in a Burroughs/Tom Waits-style outfit, quickly sets up the complex array of gear laid out on the table in front of him, and, in the tone of a science communicator, introduces himself, his impressive credentials (dropping names like Charlemagne Palestine, Steve Reich and Tony Conrad here and there, as though having collaborated with them were the most obvious thing in the world) and the recipe he's about to serve us: he explains that his usual orchestral armies would be far too complicated to bring on tour, so he's decided to make do by appearing alone, juggling loops through a clever delay setup to replicate the layered drone of his most extreme experiments; it will be a single, long suite in several parts, with the raw material for each section supplied by a trumpet, a flute and, of course, an electric guitar; he even tells us the length of the performance: about 55 minutes. He speaks in a calm voice marked by an adorable Yankee accent partly Frenchified, relaxed and playful with the audience, looking more like a grandfather out to entertain his grandchildren than an intellectual intent on épater le bourgeois. After all, we're not talking about a nihilist rocker but a “serious” composer, trained in the classical world as a harpsichord tuner before converting to experimentalism at the court of La Monte Young, who has moved through the avant-punk arena as a free agent.

It begins with a tight overlay of droning trumpet notes, which seem to flit around the venue like stunned mosquitoes, bouncing between the heads of the already hypnotized crowd. The sound is deliberately dirty and creates a frothy amalgam that might recall the metaphysical layers of Jon Hassell, if it didn't also hint at a thoroughly urban neurosis. The second layer comes courtesy of the Telecaster which, thanks to its open tuning (“in D major,” the Maestro is keen to specify), produces that typical, slightly dissonant raga resonance so dear to much psychedelia as well as to certain works by fellow composer Terry Riley. After spreading the base of the cake with a Velvet-esque drone garnished with chiming arpeggios, he adds a second coat with a dusting of higher notes, a web of tiny trills, and stretches things out further with liquid streaks of E-bow. The resulting wall of sound is so starkly, magmatically still that it plunges you into a trance, a hallucination to be taken religiously seriously. Then it's the flute's turn, the first instrument the young Rhys ever picked up, here used to generate long, deep, dense notes, as if a church organ were being played in a rainforest. Depending on one's mood, this atmospheric ocean can convey extreme relaxation or extreme tension, or even both at once. Finally, it circles back to a single-note lament in unison for guitar and voice, the ritual chant with which a monk wakes the rest of the monastery at dawn. The audience is spellbound, utterly won over both by the conjurer's cunning and by the evocative power of the officiant.

As the last lingering notes begin to fade with the same invasive delicacy with which they had taken hold of our heads and bodies, Rhys stands up and bows, jokingly apologizing for running a few minutes over his predicted time. Then, like a minstrel from another age, he sits down at the edge of the stage and invites anyone interested to come over for a chat or an autograph: decidedly not the typical solemn image one tends to associate with an experimental composer…  

Chatham's avant-garde is at once icy and mystical, algebraic and elusive, rigorous and occult. And the key to deciphering it perhaps lies in the title of his latest work, “Pythagorean Dream,” which tonight's performance draws heavily upon: what expression could be more apt than that “Pythagorean dream” to describe this esoteric alchemy of technique and suggestion?

Leaving the Freakout, I head home through the steel-and-concrete streets of San Donato, Bologna's most “industrial” neighborhood: perhaps not so different a setting from the New York slums where this urban shaman began theorizing his captivating pan-ethnic assault on contemporary music…

Rhys Chatham liked this article so much that he decided to translate it and publish it on his website

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