CHARLEMAGNE PALESTINE
LIVE or Installations (Brooklyn, New York City, USA, based in Brussels + Oostende, Belgium)
TECH RIDER CHARLEMAGNE PALESTINE
Attention: 3 hours for sound check!
Travel details, please note:
23 KG for check-in luggage
2 flights from and to BE-Brussels, 1 double room 4* (preferably with arrival 1 day prior to the concert)
GRAND PIANO CONCERT:
The biggest (about 2 metres x 0,80/0,90 metres) and best grand piano you can get!
– Fazioli or Bösendorfer or Bechstein or Kawai or BIG Yamaha
DPA microphones will be put into it with magnet stands, to be inserted into FOH master system
Synthie keyboard with “Organ Sound”, into FOH with a DI box interface
Vocal microphone + stand, with separate insert into FOH master system
2 Channels DPA:
2 Channels TC Helicon
2 Channels Sytho Organ Keyboard
1 Vocal Mic Stereo
Charlemagne Palestine will bring:
TC Helicon Voice Synthesizer with a Shure cordless Mic system attached to it, to be plugged into the FOH
DPA microphones
Mac Laptop with Cubase 50 Channel Sound Grouping, attached to TH Helicon by USB, leading to master System
ORGAN CONCERT:
Please send photos of all details (manuals, pedalboard, organ stops)
Performance Pictures
Charlemagne Palestine (organ) in DE-Berlin @ Zwingli-Kirche, Sept 2019
Photos by Udo Siegfriedt
Charlemagne Palestine in IT-Bari (grand piano) @ Timezones Festival, Nov 2018
Photos by Udo Siegfriedt
Charlemagne Palestine (organ) in DE-Düsseldorf @ Antoniuskirche, March 2018
Photos by Udo Siegfriedt
Charlemagne Palestine in DE-Berlin (organ) @ Sophienkirche, Nov 2017
Photos by Udo Siegfriedt
Biography
Charlemagne Palestine was born in Brooklyn NYC in 1947. He is a sound artist, composer, performer, video artist and installation artist. Palestine studied at New York University, Columbia University, Mannes College of Music, and the California Institute of the Arts.
A contemporary of Philip Glass, Terry Riley, Phill Niblock, and Tony Conrad; Palestine creates intense, ritualistic, continuum music for electronic sound sources, bell carillons, pipe organs, pianos, voice and other keyboard instruments since the sixties. A composer-performer originally trained to be a cantor, and then a carillonneur; he always performs his own works as soloist. His electronic continuums were his first major pieces. He early on began developing sonorities especially with large numbers of electronic sound oscillators and filters developed by Moog, Buchla, Serge, Arp and Oberheim. These sonorities lasted from several hours to days exploring slow gradual timbral color transformations and beat tone variations creating what he termed his “Golden Sonorities” or the search for the Golden Sound. His continuum form “Strumming” for amplified pianos, develops harmonies, dissonances and clusters with a visceral physical force that pushes the sonic limits of a piano till it no longer resembles one, even often naturally detunes from the force and becomes a new kind of multi spectrum electro-acoustic sound emitting machine. His favorite pianos are the 9 foot long Bösendorfer Imperial which has 9 tones lower than any other piano in the world and the Borgato which is a grand piano with 2 bodies; one played with the hands and one with the feet.
His “Schlingen Blängens”, a sonic continuums form for pipe organs where like in alchemy all the different and varied timbral registers of a traditional church or theatre organ are merged and developed searching for the Golden Sound, using a unique continuum key prolonging technique that allows Palestine to create works developing hundreds to thousands of nuances of organ timbres becoming a massive magical sonorous vibrating storm cloud that interacts with the architecture of each church or theatre edifice. As a vocalist in his epic 2 hour long Karenina he sings in a haunting ghostlike countertenor falsetto register and in other works like his sound/motion videos he sings long tones with gradually shifting vowels and overtones while moving through spaces and places while performing repetitive intense shamanic body action rituals such as throwing himself against walls; running and falling in labyrinthal spaces; singing on high speed motorbikes or while on roller coasters and other amusement park intense motion rides.
Palestine stopped performing from the early eighties till the mid nineties and devoted himself entirely to his forms of plush animal divinity altars as multi-media sculptures and installations. These altars are always an integral ingredient in Palestine’s performances. Since his return to performing Palestine has reissued works from the sixties and seventies on CD and vinyl, created and recorded many new works and has collaborated and recorded with other musicians such as Pansonic, Simone Forti, Tony Conrad, Rhys Chatham, Perlonex, Gol, among others. He now performs regularly in venues and festivals as well as presenting his multimedia installations worldwide.
Charlemagne lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.
Discography
Audio / Video
Charlemagne Palestine is considered one of the pioneers of minimalist music, although he refuses to claim this label for himself. His repetitive piano pieces are rather a part of a Gesamtkunstwerk that combines installations and performances. Playing on a Bösendorfer Imperial grand piano surrounded by stuffed animals Palestine unfolds a sound structure that transforms difference and repetition into complex sound clusters.
Charlemagne Palestine performs Strumming Music @ Sibelius Museum / Turku, Finland (Sept 2024)
Charlemagne Palestine – Grand Piano Konzert @ Kunsthalle Wien (2015)
Charlemagne Palestine | CharleBelllzzz
Recorded at Saint Thomas Church NYC.
Each track recorded directly on tape in one take between 1966 and 1968.
Charlemagne Palestine – Schlingen-Blängen, Cathédrale de Nantes (2012)
Charlemagne Palestine – Documentary on Belgian TV
Concert/performance (extrait) de Charlemagne Palestine “Mother Of Us All” (2009) from Vincent Vicario on Vimeo.
