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We are on July 9th and the Superspectives festival is coming to an end. Co-director of this 4th edition with Camille Rhonat, but also columnist on Hémisphère son (deontological information obliges), I seized the unique opportunity that was offered to me to speak with Charlemagne Palestine, this iconoclastic American artist, installed in Belgium for more than 30 years. An experience in itself!
A lot of people in this afternoon at the Gare Part-Dieu of Lyon and a heat which does not help to be patient when the train is late. For security reasons we could not go up on the platform to help Charlemagne Palestine, accompanied by his wife Aude Stoclet, to carry suitcases full of stuffed animals and microphones. During the journey, he recalls his years in Lyon at the very end of the 80s where he lived for almost two years and all our exchanges of almost four years. A monument of American music history is in my Fiat Tipo.
The concert ofAlvin Curran (another giant of the festival) is for him the occasion to find an old friend not seen for almost fifteen years.
We make an appointment for the next day. It's my first interview and starting with Charlemagne Palestine is certainly the best way to relax!
Hello Charlemagne! Yesterday, when you arrived, you told me that you had already lived in Lyon...
thirty years ago.
And you told me that you were there as a visual artist because you were in denial about being a musician...
...no, I do a lot of things like all the artists of my generation from the late 60s. We did everything. Videos, performances etc. People like Richard Serra. We were a generation where you could work in several fields at the same time. Now with lap-tops, everyone can do everything in every genre. I was part of the first wave of Americans who started in New York, but also quite quickly in Europe, in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, where artists were not one thing or the other. And I am surprised that fifty years later we are still so surprised. I am often asked: "Is it possible that you are invited to a music festival as a visual artist! and be a musician at the same time! Young people can do anything they want in any field and why not me? I was one of the first! That's it. That's my answer.
Why do you live in Belgium?
I was invited by Hergé, who came to New York with Karel Geirlandt, the director of the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 1973, who had invited all sorts of New York artists, groups from Soho... We were in Europe, at the Autumn Festival in Paris, in Italy, in Amsterdam, in Frankfurt. Later, I met my wife in 1999 in Brussels. I was in residence in Rotterdam. We lived together and I left my Dumbo studio in Brooklyn. And today I am not only American, I am Belgian! I am happy to live in Europe. Life for an artist is more human and decent.
And you don't miss the United States too much?
Oh no! I don't know if you read the papers but after 50 years now, they're becoming a weird country where women can't decide the future of their bodies. A monster like Donald Trump tried to steal an election. This country is wild like a jungle. New York is different. Brooklyn was a hole 50 years ago and now it is the cultural center of the world. When I was a young artist, for example, Phil Glass and I rented a very, very large studio for $250 per person. And now it's ten times that. Paris, London, Frankfurt, San Francisco, Amsterdam, everything is now incredibly expensive. Everyone has to give up being an artist and become a banker or a businessman.
As a musician, what would you like to leave to people?
What does that mean?
What musical posterity do you wish for? Are you a big name among the so-called minimalist or maximalist musicians? His oral answer is so much more impressive than the written one; here it is:
Where is the sacred in your work?
The sacred is in everything I do. I started with my animals. My fabrics are sacred. My rituals are sacred. I don't say religious. A higher meaning than the ordinary. Here it is. It's recorded? it's going to be hard to transcribe all this...
Camille Rhonat joins us to ask a question: what I liked to read in one of your interviews is that the sacred in the 70's had become according to you something kitsch, orientalizing and that you hated. For the sacred to remain serious, you had to propose a new music. Is your music sacred?
I was never into the Mumbo Jumbo of Terry Riley, La Monte Young and all that. I studied with a great opera singer who was Viennese. I did Pran Nath. It wasn't religious for me. I was a bit of a hippie. We hippies like drugs. I still have some alcohol. Even at my age. I still have a bottle of Johnnie Walker. Stravinsky, when I met him I was fifteen. He used to drink Johnnie Walker during his rehearsals. I was influenced by Stravinsky for Johnnie Walker. I like oriental things. But I also like Western things. Sibelius! Carl Nielsen! Mahler! They always wanted to put me in a cage. John Cage! I, like any other bird, I WANT MY OWN TERRITORY! You can try to lock me up but I will always resist. What do I think of Strumming in the 70s? But I forgot! I don't remember. I love to forget. Every day I go back through my life like a naive fool and redo things MAXIMALLY!!!
... and I would add: not minimally!
FUCK YOU !! You guys are sick of Glass ! We talked about this with him a few years ago and he too was sick of the word "minimalism". It's a word to be banned! A racist word!
What kind of music do you listen to?
I listen to a lot of classical music, jazz in the car. Mahler. Sibelius. Debussy, Ravel. I like sensual music. I don't like metronomic music. It kills me things like tu tu tu tu tu tu tu tu tu. It makes me sick. Steve Reich, the old Glass works. I like waves. Things that happen, that continue. That inspires me.
Yesterday I found Alvin's concert very "monologue". I told him so. He was very diverse and changed his mood very quickly! I really enjoyed what he did last night.
Do you know what you are going to do tonight?
No. I first played a Bösendorfer Imperial in 1969 in California. I've had one at home for fifteen years. I'm going to start practicing now. Each piano has its own personality. And I will start to imagine what I will do. I don't like to be only in the acoustic anymore, like in the old days. In the open air, I prefer it to be amplified. I brought my mics back to amplify the harmonics. I will use the low frequencies of the Bösendorfer that not many people use. It's been a very long time since I've used these low frequencies! My mission tonight is to try to do something with those 9 extra keys.
Do you write your music?
No! I sometimes write some scribbles. To get some directions. For a Schlingen-Blängen, a few weeks ago in Amsterdam with five organs, I had to write something. I didn't know how to do it. Gradually I started and it was a great success! And a beautiful recording that will be released next season. I don't like to transmit on a sheet of paper something that you feel with your body. I prefer to be direct. Nothing to do with a score. Fortunately, like jazz musicians, there are recordings. Like Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans or Charles Mingus. Mingus made scores.
Do you like jazz?
I do. It is not what it used to be. It has hit a wall. Very popular in Europe, more than in the United States. People don't listen to much jazz. Or listen to a new wave. I like jazz. I lived in a neighborhood where I was around a lot of jazzmen of the time like Pharoah Sanders, Mingus etc. Pharoah Sanders started to become important with Coltrane. I don't know where jazz is going now. In Belgium and the Netherlands there are many things but very few surprise me. I don't know why. Jazz has become like a museum that you visit with a leaf in your hand to copy the great masters.
Among contemporary composers, who do you appreciate?
I know some but I prefer not to take a position. Many people send me things and I am invited to festivals where I am the oldest. I meet the young people. I try to absorb what they do with pleasure. I don't have a favorite.
What inspires you?
The location. Being in a nice city. I'm not interested in playing anywhere. My wife and I decided to take an extra day because we love Lyon. We can't just work. Meet people, eat in the regional style. To eat at the Brasserie Georges and not croque-monsieurs. It is not easy to find them in Brussels. We have fries!
The concert of Charlemagne was an important moment of this edition. He, the "false pianist" - as he likes to call himself - made his famous Bösendorfer Imperial sound like no other pianist. To speak of a concert by Charlemagne Palestine, one has to let go of everything one has ever heard, understood and loved about the piano in order to let oneself be invaded by the sound, the famous golden sound of Charlemagne Palestine which certainly still resonates at the Maison de Lorette.
Interview by François Mardirossian
