ISSUE Project Room, in collaboration with Erstwhile, is pleased to present two nights with legendary guitarist Keith Rowe at TEMP in downtown Manhattan. Originally trained as a painter, Rowe adopted the principles of the plastic arts, applying them directly to the electric guitar. On this closing night he performs solo and in a duo with longtime collaborator and renowned composer and guitarist Christian Wolff.
Program
Keith Rowe / Christian Wolff (premiere)
Keith Rowe Solo (premiere)
Keith Rowe led the forefront of the initial wave of European free improvisation, co-founding the AMM collective in 1965 and originating the tabletop guitar. The tabletop guitar has remained at the center of his ever-evolving setup of electronics and gadgets ever since, becoming increasingly stripped down and minimal in recent years. Having mostly performed within AMM until the late 90’s, he’s since been involved in a wide range of projects, including a slew of Erstwhile’s most prominent releases. He is the cornerstone musician of the label, and his wide range of releases over the last decade stands with the strongest bodies of work of the last century in improvised music. He has been an integral part of every AMPLIFY festival since 2002, performing seven festivals in five cities on three continents. He has worked with composers Cornelius Cardew, Ben Patterson and Christian Wolff, was a member of the Scratch Orchestra, and collaborated with with the Merce Cunningham Dance company.
Christian Wolff (born 1934, Nice, France) is a composer, teacher and sometime performer. Since 1941 he has lived in the United States. He studied piano with Grete Sultan and composition briefly with John Cage, in whose company, along with Morton Feldman, then David Tudor and Earle Brown, his work found encouragement and support, as it did subsequently from association with Frederic Rzewski and Cornelius Cardew, and with Merce Cunningham and his dance company. As an improviser he has played with the English group AMM, Christian Marclay, Takehisa Kosugi, Keith Rowe, Steve Lacy, Larry Polansky and Kui Dong. From 1971 to 1999 he taught classics, comparative literature and music at Dartmouth College.
TEMP is an art project space in the historic TriBeCa neighborhood of New York. Its mission is to promote emerging artists and curators through exhibitions, performances, and collaborations. Encouraging creative discourse, the space is a place for experimentation, ingenuity, and talent in the arts. In September, TEMP opened its inaugural exhibition Working On It, a group show that explores the creative zeitgeist of young adults in the early 2010s.
