World renowned minimalist composer, Rhys Chatham will perform his intricately-structured piece 'A Crimson Grail' along with a 100-piece guitar orchestra as part of Sydney Festival.
It will be the first time Rhys has performed in Australia since playing in Brisbane in the early '90s.
'A Crimson Grail' will see Rhys work with 100 local guitarists to create the symphonic and orchestral masterpiece. “The audience is surrounded in a kind of U-shape and we have me conducting and a percussionist playing high-hat [cymbal] who will keep time with the musicians,” Rhys explains.
“It was May of 1976, the name of the place was CBGB and the name of the band was the Ramones. I went to see this concert and I was blown way.”
“Then what we do is each of the musicians will have a number, 1 to 100 and we pass the sound around the room.
“I don’t think of it as a wall of sound, I think of it as a huge tidal wave of shimmering sound inspiring and uplifting to the heart and the body.
"There are moments that are really delicate and yes, guitarists can play softly, there is such a thing. It's not 5 points of sound, it’s 100 points of sound.”
Rhys is well-known for his guitar orchestra arrangements, his first being 'An Angel Moves Too Fast To See' in 1989.
A conservatory-trained minimalist composer who was a contemporary of Philip Glass, Rhys began incorporating elements of '60s and '70s guitar rock into his compositions.
Rhys was working as a composer in New York City during the 1970s when he experienced his most profound epiphany as a creative up until that point in his life: going to see his first-ever rock concert by a band called Ramones in 1976.
“A fellow composer named Peter Gordon and I were walking back from rehearsal,” Rhys explains.
“We both lived in a section of Manhattan called the East Village and Peter asked me a highly personal question, he said: 'Rhys, have you ever in your entire life been to a rock concert?' and I had to confess that I hadn’t.
“So Peter laughed and said: ‘Rhys, there’s this really nice rock club right near where we live and there’s a good band playing tonight, why don’t we go together and you can see what a rock concert looks like.’
“It was May of 1976, the name of the place was CBGB and the name of the band was the Ramones. I went to see this concert and I was blown way.”
It was a significant turning point in his career, marking his transition from fledgling student to purveyor of the avant-garde and the world-class writer he remains to this day. “I was just at a point as a composer where I was finding my own voice,” he says.
“Before that I was writing music exactly like Tony Conrad or Terry Riley or La Monte Young and I... realised I need to do something that every musician needs to do; they have to take all the things they've been listening, put it through a personal filter and make it their own voice."
