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20 Mar
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Monday, June 20, 2016 at 8.30pm
The Transmigration of Morton F.
Holland Festival
Amsterdam
Netherlands
Morton Feldman (1926-1987) was a leading American composer, who is regarded as one of the most important composers of the twentieth century. Feldman studied composition with Schönberg disciple Wallingford Riegger and former Webern student Stefan Wolpe; but the decisive encounter in his musical life was with John Cage, who encouraged him to break away from old compositional models, such as traditional harmony and serial techniques.
Feldman is often associated with the experimental New York School, along with Cage, Christian Wolff and Earle Brown. In the 1950’s Feldman experimented with graphic notation and freedoms for the performers. From the 1970’s he used conventional notation. Through Cage, Feldman met various other prominent figures from the New York art scene, including visual artists Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston and Robert Rauschenberg, the composers Henry Cowell, Virgil Thomson and George Antheil and the writer Frank O’Hara. Feldman was especially inspired by the works of the abstract-expressionist painters. He expressed his indebtedness with titles such as Rothko Chapel (1971) and For Frank O’Hara (1973). In 1977 he wrote the opera Neither, set to a text by Samuel Beckett. Until 1973 Feldman worked as a composer as well as holding a full time job in his family’s textile business. That year he started lecturing in composition at the State University of New York in Buffalo, a position he held until his death. Especially his later chamber music, from 1977, tends to be soft, slow and intimate. These works are often extremely long. For Philip Guston (1984), for instance, is 4 hours long; his Second String Quartet (1983) measures 6 hours. Shortly after his marriage to the Canadian composer Barbara Monk, Feldman died of pancreatic cancer.
Sjaron Minailo is no stranger to Morton Feldman's work. With his Studio Minailo company, he created Rothko Chapel, a theatrical music video in which he used Feldman's eponymous composition while adding associated imagery inspired by Mark Rothko's paintings. Last year, Minailo directed Feldman's Three Voices for Joan La Barbara at Brussels’ De Munt opera house, in which young singers were coached by La Barbara herself. Minailo specialises in creating genre-crossing music theatre, his many collaborators including the Asko|Schönberg Ensemble, the Slagwerk Den Haag percussion ensemble, Rotterdam’s Kunsthal and Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum.
Composer, singer and performer Anat Spiegel is one of Minailo's long-term collaborators and, like Minailo, specialises in interdisciplinary performing arts. Together, they staged their opera Medúlla at De Munt in 2015. Based on singer Björk's eponymous concept album, the performance featured a cast of four opera singers, a one hundred strong children's choir, a throat singer and live electronics. In 2012 they collaborated on their internet opera Soul Seek. Spiegel's works have been performed in Europe, the United States, Israel and Japan.
Joan La Barbara is famous for her virtuoso vocal skills and her groundbreaking performances within contemporary American music. Hailed as 'the Houdini of New Music', she has developed various experimental vocal techniques. Morton Feldman dedicated his monumental work Three Voices for Joan La Barbara to her. Other collaborators include composers John Cage and Philip Glass as well as choreographer Merce Cunningham. La Barbara appeared at the 2014 Holland Festival in filmmaker Matthew Barney's River of Fundament. She performed a solo concert at the 2012 edition and featured at the 2007 festival in Robert Ashley's opera Celestial Excursions.
Anat Spiegel : Transmigration of Morton F
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