We pick the artist - They pick the music.
UI Picks is curated by the Underground Institute, an international agency for adventurous music
and platform for culture. UI Picks episodes are tailored for selected underground radio stations.
This episode is curated by Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu / HEXA).
Jamie writes: “A former bandmate Cory McCulloch introduced me to (Morton Feldman’s) music in the early 2000s and my interest in his music, which has since become an obsession, was cemented by the percussionist Ches Smith. In 2008 we were on tour and he played Patterns in a Chromatic Field everyday in the van for 30 days in a row. It changed my perception of time and of focus forever. ”
Morton Feldman was an American composer born in New York in 1926 and died of pancreatic cancer in 1987.
He is quoted as having said: ”it’s too fucking loud and it’s too fucking fast!” during a rehearsal.
Later in his life Feldman’s works began to expand in length, many became 5 or 6 hours long. He knew he was going to die and was going to die a particular painful death. It seemed as if he needed to add as much of himself to the listening hearts of the world before he vanished.
“During the early days of our current plague I went on a walk around my neighborhood everyday listening to String Quartet no. 2 from 1983. It is 5 and half hours long. When I finished the walk I would mark where I stopped and pick up from there next time. My neighborhood was particularly ravaged by the pandemic and more and more shires to the dead were put up under lamp posts or in street corners. As I listened to one of Feldman’s last pieces and a piece screaming to cling to life, evidence of death was growing all around.
When one stops listening to a Feldman piece there is a sense of loss. Loss of having to leave a world or a state of mind that his work has placed you in. Loss at having to return to our world”.
Image by Julia Brokaw
#uipicks, #undergroundinstitute, #rebootfm #xiuxiu #jamiestewart #mortonfeldman #minimalism
#contemporarymusic #20thcentury
Rumpus Room (video) - www.youtube.com/watch?v=jspV_JajAhk
Official website: www.xiuxiu.org/
Bandcamp: xiuxiu.bandcamp.com/
https://www.mixcloud.com/Underground_Institute/
https://www.instagram.com/underground_institute/
https://www.facebook.com/undergroundinstitute/
tracklist:
(all pieces are by Morton Feldman)
01. Piano and Orchestra
02. Only
03. Structures
04. String Quartet no 2 pages 1-4
05. Violin and Ochestra
06. Intersection1 (with Leopard by Chris Watson)
07. Last pieces for Piano
08. String Quarter no 2 pages 120-124