Music for Organ, With Encore for Bosendorfer Pianos

A friend of mine, Ben Schot, sent a photo he recently took of the Brooklyn-born minimalist composer and performance artist Charlemagne Palestine (born Chaim Moshe Tzadik Palestine, or Charles Martin) and his daughter Puck, a student at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague.

“He used to live in Rotterdam for a couple of years in the ’90s,” Ben wrote. “We met then and have been in touch since. He lives in Belgium now but performs in Holland every now and then. I wanted Puck to meet him, after having introduced her to his work. […] It was great meeting him again. […] I fell in love with Charlemagne’s “Island Song” (but maybe that’s because I grew up on an island).”

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Ben also sent me a link to Palestine’s live performance, in 2010, of the complete “Schlingen Blängen.”

Charlemagne Palestine’s “Schlingen Blängen”

Coincidentally, Kyle Gann posted an item, My Own Secret Drone Program, about a piece he wrote for organ. “As much as I love a lot of music that uses drones,” he wrote, “I had never come up with a good strategy for employing drones myself, and the organ’s capacity for endless ones tempted me too far, so that I was in danger of trying to write a piece that was basically all one chord.” But a recent invitation changed his mind.

Kyle Gann’s “Summer Serenade” (loud version)

And now for an encore, here is Palestine’s “Strumming Music” performed on two Bosendorfer pianos.