Charlemagne Palestine
Charlemagne Palestine is an American minimalist composer, performer, and visual artist. A contemporary of Philip Glass, Terry Riley, Phill Niblock, and Steve Reich, Palestine wrote intense, ritualistic music in the 1970s, intended by the composer to rub against Western audiences’ expectations of what is beautiful and meaningful in music. A composer-performer originally trained to be a cantor, he always performed his own works as soloist. His earliest works were compositions for carillon and electronic drones, and he is perhaps best known for his intensely performed piano works. He also performs as a vocalist.
Charlemagne Palestine is an American minimalist composer, performer, and visual artist. A contemporary of Philip Glass, Terry Riley, Phill Niblock, and Steve Reich, Palestine wrote intense, ritualistic music in the 1970s, intended by the composer to rub against Western audiences’ expectations of what is beautiful and meaningful in music. A composer-performer originally trained to be a cantor, he always performed his own works as soloist. His earliest works were compositions for carillon and electronic drones, and he is perhaps best known for his intensely performed piano works. He also performs as a vocalist.
The Goldennn Meeenn + Sheeenn
CD Edition. Venerable composer and pianist Charlemagne Palestine revisits his seminal 1976 work ‘The Golden Mean’ in duo with enigmatic artist Rrose, reprising a dialogue started 10 years ago when Rrose was studying at Mills College and looking for a score to Charlemagne’s amazing ‘Strumming Music’…“In 2018 the Festival Variations in Nantes commissions Palestine to perform The Golden Mean, reworking the piece for two pianists. Palestine chose Rrose to join him in this new rendition of the work. …
A Sweet Quasimodo Between Black Vampire Butterflies For Maybeck
Charlemagne Palestine's A Sweet Quasimodo Between Black Vampire Butterflies For Maybeck is a piece for two pianos played simultaneously in a tremolo style that Palestine calls “strumming,” a technique that has defined his piano music since the late ’60s. It spins out its sonic tapestry in surges and ebbs, and dense sonorities with hypnotically dancing overtones grow from its few opening pitches.This live recording from the Maybeck recital hall also contains Palestine’s short comments about his l…
Dinggg Donggg Dinggg Vs Singgg Songg Singgg
Last copies**Deluxe Art Edition of 240 copies, the LP comes with a extra 7", engraved with an exclusive track on one side and etched with a Charlemagne drawing on the other** Singing songs while playing ding dongs, Charlemagne Palestine’s solo voice over the bells of his studio carillon is a premiere in his recorded works, and possibly the first voice/carillon record in musical history. All the little shamanic stuffed deities inhabiting the carillon added their souls to the spirit of the reverbe…
Palestine, first name Charlemagne – Meshugga Land
A biographical essay which explores the origins and influences of Charlemagne Palestine, as well as themes related to his life and artistic practice—spirituality, music, performance, avant-gardism—together with an acute analysis of his main works. The study is followed by an interview with the artist, which provides a clever balance between personal anecdotes and reflection.Born Chaïm Moshe Palestine in Brooklyn, 1947, Charlemagne Palestine joined as a child the Stanley Sapir Jewish choir to low…
Interrvallissphereee (Blue TB7 Series) LP
Charlemagne Palestine first started using electronic instruments in his music in the late 1960s. Palestine on the release: "Electronic instruments were very rare and exotic in the 1960s.There were Moogs around New York but they were only in universities who preciously guarded them from us young composers. So after all this time visiting The Moog Sound Lab is like a dream come true for me... to have so many oscillators all singing together is a truly beautiful experience. I am so glad I am still …
Ttuunneesszz Duh Rruunneesszz (Blue TB7 Series) LP
Charlemagne Palestine first started using electronic instruments in his music in the late 1960s. Palestine on the release: "Electronic instruments were very rare and exotic in the 1960s.There were Moogs around New York but they were only in universities who preciously guarded them from us young composers. So after all this time visiting The Moog Sound Lab is like a dream come true for me... to have so many oscillators all singing together is a truly beautiful experience. I am so glad I am still …
Aa Sschmmettrroossppecctivve
1000 pictures and documents from the work and life of Charlemagne Palestine explode from the pages of the book, superimposed in ‘strumming’ layers, weaving the historical & present, works & performance, private & public into a tightly knit sschmmettrroobookk. Texts by Michel Baudson and Xavier Garcia Bardón.In 1974, the Belgian cartoonist Hergé, a great admirer of American avant-garde art, and Karel Geirlandt, the new director of the Centre for Fine Arts, invited Charlemagne Palestine to perform…
Sttt Thomasss ''''”'”dingggdong...
In memory of the late polymath avant-garde artist Tony Conrad (1940-2016), longtime friend and coconspirator Charlemagne Palestine returned to the site of their first encounter for a tribute performance on what would have been Conrad's 77th birthday. Charlemagne Palestine is a composer, performer and visual artist born in Brooklyn in 1947. Often labeled as one of the founders of minimalism alongside Glass, Niblock, Reich, Riley, and Young, he prefers to call himself a "maximalist", eschewing the…
The Lower Depths
There was a time, not far outside of recent memory, when one of musical Minimalism’s great voices had disappeared into the ether, leaving only two remarkable, but largely unobtainable, albums behind - hints toward what had been. When Charlemagne Palestine reentered the world of music during the 1990’s, following roughly two decades of silence, he was possessed by a remarkable fire - performing and recording widely, seemingly making up …
Ssingggg Sschlllingg Sshpppingg
Our favorite shaman comes back with a new solo album. This awesome full length album by Charlemagne solo has been recorded especially for idiosyncratics. It has been brilliantly engineered by our long term associate Fredéric Alstadt (Angström Studio) and mixed by maestro Aymeric De Tapol. The artwork is an original collaboration between Charlemagne Palestine, labelboss Yannick Franck and Frau label designer Helena Dietrich, immortalized by photographer Laurent Meurice. It comes with a colo…
Omminggg And Schlomminggg
Important Records present Omminggg and Schlomminggg, the second release by continuous music pioneer Charlemagne Palestine and Grumbling Fur, consisting of London based multi-disciplinary artists Daniel O'Sullivan and Alexander Tucker; the Time Machine Orchestra being the extended drone arm of Tucker and O'Sullivan's experimental avant-pop conception. This double LP captures a performance of the trio at Copenhagen's illustrious Jazzhouse on November 28th, 2016. The pin-drop acoustic clarity of th…
Godbear
Limited repress. "The first vinyl release of Charlemagne Palestine's Godbear, a 1987 solo piano recording originally scheduled to sit alongside Sonic Youth and Swans in the catalogue of Glenn Branca's Neutral Records but eventually released on CD by the Dutch Barooni label in 1998. Although Palestine has worked in an enormous variety of media, his long form performances for solo piano are perhaps his most acclaimed works. Palestine immersed himself in the study of overtones throughout the 1960s,…
In Mid-Air (Golden 3)
Originally released in 2003. The first electronically generated sounds that Charlemagne Palestine ever heard came from the machines he encountered in ordinary daily urban life. Machines like the refrigerator electric motor, or electrical generators; but it was especially the sounds of motion (race cars, motorcycles, war planes, rocket ships) that first excited his sonic imagination as a young teenager. Then he heard the electronic music of Tod Dockstader, Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaeffer, the f…
Charlemagne at Sonnabend
Special limited edition of 300 signed and numbered copies, packaged in large oversized gatefold cover. Privately issued by the composer in collaboration with Sonnabend Gallery and issued in an edition of 300 signed copies in large silkscreened gatefold folio in 2002. This art edition was never officially distributed and after 10 years a limited amount of copies is now exclusively available for the first time from Alga Marghen. The first contact between Charlemagne Palestine and the Sonnabend…
GesammttkkunnsttMeshuggahhLaandtttt
This catalogue documents Charlemagne Palestine\'s eponymous solo exhibition, including his early video works, sculptures, paintings, installations, and sound scores. Charlemagne Palestine works form a highly personal universe of rituals, intoxication, and shamanism. In the last four decades, the artist has created an extensive body of experimental musical compositions, bodily performances, and, in later years, visual art works that are inhabited by stuffed animals. To Palestine, teddy bears figu…
Nothing to tell, only listen
Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1947, Charlemagne Palestine began by singing sacred Jewish music and studying accordion and piano. At the age of 12 he started playing backup conga and bongo drums for Alan Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Kenneth Anger, and Tiny Tim. Throughout the seventies Palestine created records, videos, abstract expressionist visual scores and performed regularly in the company of his stuffed animals!
This new release entitled Nothing to Tell, only Listen explores his unique soundsc…
Cathedrale de Strasbourg
The latest transmission from Joachim Montessuis curated Erratum imprint sees the return of the inimitable Charlemagne Palestine, casting a spellbinding invocation of organ ritual music. A self-described “maximalist composer”, Palestine originally developed his organ technique in 1964 with a debut performance as an organist in New York City, after decades of recognition since the 1960s, as a leading Minimalist composer and visual artist. He has long been fascinated by drones, rituals, repetition…
Organo Rinascimentale Non Temperato
**restocked**A mind-expanding journey undertaken on church organ! Buoyed by slow changes that create illusions of movement, the experience of listening to this CD is one of floating between parallel worlds of harmony and noise. Schlingen-Blangen evolved out of a number of events Charlemagne held in L.A. in 1970 and ’71 that he called “Meditative Sound Environments.” In these performances he would sustain a chord on an organ in a Unitarian church by inserting pieces of cardboard between the keys …
ggrreeebbaammnnuucckkaaiiooww!!
Sold out at source, few copies available. In 2013, when Daniel O'Sullivan was invited to curate the sixth installment of Ravenna, Italy's Transmissions festival, his first request was for Charlemagne Palestine, the shamanic world-maker, sacred toy emissary, and one-time student of Pandit Pran Nath associated with the New York '60s minimalist scene and known primarily for extended performances with Bösendorfer piano, cathedral organs, and falsetto voice. After Transmissions O'Sullivan invited P…
Youuu + Mee = Weee
Sub Rosa presents Youuu + Mee = Weee (First), a vinyl edition of the first disc of the three CD set Youuu + Mee = Weee (SR 367CD, 2014). Youuu + Mee = Weee is the first recorded collaboration between Charlemagne Palestine and Rhys Chatham. And it's precious. Following the musical meetings with Z'ev (Rubhitbangklanghear Rubhitbangklangear, SR340CD/LP), and with Tony Conrad, these new Sub Rosa sessions create a sort of trilogy. Rhys Chatham began his musical career as a piano tuner for avant-gar…