Triptych: The Music of Eliane Radigue
12–26 June 2011
Concerts at Christ Church Spitalfields and St Stephen’s Walbrook churches, London
Sonic Bed Exhibitions at Rich Mix and Watermans, London
Sound and Music presents the first major UK retrospective of Eliane Radigue (born Paris, 1932), one of the major living figures in contemporary music.
Radigue studied with electronic music pioneers Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaeffer and has been likened to American minimalists Terry Riley, La Monte Young, Steve Reich and Philip Glass, but her meditative works, often monumental in duration, have taken a singular path, transporting the listener on a journey into the very heart of sound.
This London-wide festival stages a selection of Radigue’s work including rare concerts of her classic electronic compositions at St. Stephen Walbrook, extraordinary performances of her recent works for instrumentalists including a world premiere at Christ Church Spitalfields, and a unique presentation of her installation work at Watermans and Rich Mix. The Triptych audience will be immersed in her sonic creations in venues chosen with the artist for their resonant beauty and rich acoustics.
Eight concerts of Radgiue’s classic electronic works will take place in St. Stephen Walbrook, one of London’s most beautiful acoustics. This series will include the most well known of her works, Trilogie De Le Mort, a spiritual acoustic journey reflecting on the transcendence of death, and a special concert of Radigue’s early and very rarely heard feedback works.
Although celebrated as an electronic composer, Radigue stopped working with synthesizers in 2005 and is now focused on acoustic collaborations with musicians for which no score is created. Some of these unique collaborations with performers will be performed for the first time at Christ Church Spitalfields as part of Spitalfields Music Summer Festival.
A free public presentation of Radigue’s rarely heard installation works can also be experienced on two Sonic Beds. These instruments have been designed for the audience to lie in and feel sound move up, down and around their bodies in ever changing patterns of vibration. Created by sound artist and Radigue collaborator, Kaffe Matthews they will be installed at Watermans in Brentford and Rich Mix in Bethnal Green.
Since the 1960s Eliane Radigue has created a singular, powerful and individual body of work. As a teenager she became interested in early electronic field recording, working with pioneers of French electronic music such as Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry. Marrying the artist Arman at 19, she moved to Nice and began to meet some of the most famous French artists of their generation including Yves Klein and Marcel Duchamp. All the while she was beginning to compose her own, very personal music.
Sound and Music is one of the foremost producers and promoters of sound art and contemporary music in the UK. Triptych follows on from the success of its Bill Fontana: River Sounding and Chris Watson: Whispering in the Leaves projects in 2010.
