Performance: Arthur Russell: City Park
Part of Fall 2023 Arts & Cultural Programs
Directed by Nick Hallett, with Nat Baldwin, Lea Bertucci, Parsa Ferdowsi, Shawn O’Sullivan, David Van Tieghem, Alex Waterman, and Peter Zummo
Saturday, September 30, 2023
Gallery:
About the Performance:
The New York City AIDS Memorial was thrilled to present a free public outdoor concert of City Park, a controversial early work by maverick American composer, cellist, producer, and singer Arthur Russell (1951–1992), which integrates chamber music, electronics, concrete poetry, turntablism, and modern rock. The new, site-specific version at the Memorial, directed by Nick Hallett, featured percussionist David Van Tieghem, who participated in the work’s premiere, and Peter Zummo, another primary Russell collaborator, in collaboration with a later generation of musicians invested in Russell’s legacy, including Nat Baldwin, Lea Bertucci, Parsa Ferdowsi, Shawn O’Sullivan, and Alex Waterman.
The music of Arthur Russell has found new listeners and entered the critical discourse decades after his 1992 death from AIDS-related illness at age 40. However, his radical concert work, City Park (1973), has gone unheard for half a century. Conceived while Russell was studying with modernist composer Charles Wuorinen and apprenticing with Fluxus artist Jackson Mac Low, City Park was galvanized by Christian Wolff, a pivotal figure within John Cage’s circle, who was a mentor to Russell, and whose scores stimulate spontaneous choices on the part of performers. Russell transcended these influences to create the manifesto that would jump-start his career. The work’s only live performance featured Wolff on electric bass and Mac Low’s poetry. Wuorinen—a staunch modernist—called it “the most unattractive thing I’ve ever heard.”
The new edition of the City Park score, arranged by Hallett from archival materials, reconsiders the work as ahead of its time. The concert was presented in partnership with the Arthur Russell Estate and the Music Department at Wesleyan University.
Arthur Russell: City Park was also presented as part of the inaugural West Side Fest. Organized by the West Side Cultural Network—a group of 19 museums, parks, performing arts centers, and cultural institutions located within a half-mile portion of historic New York—West Side Fest is a day of free admission, special indoor and outdoor programming, crafts for kids, artmaking for all ages, an evening dance party, and more to welcome all New Yorkers to the culturally vibrant western edge of Manhattan.
The neighborhood includes organizations that have been on the West Side for decades as well as newer arrivals with more to come. Many of our neighbors will be celebrating the West Side with events and activities. For more information, visit westsidefest.nyc.
About the Artists:
Iconoclast composer-cellist-vocalist Arthur Russell merged experimental and popular forms into “Buddhist bubblegum,” an entirely personal idiom. Around 1969, he left his native Iowa to participate in San Francisco’s counterculture, where he began his lifelong association with poet Allen Ginsberg. Upon his arrival in New York in 1973, Ginsberg’s contacts gave Russell access to the city’s established avant-garde circles. Meeting composer Rhys Chatham at the premiere of City Park led to Russell’s tenure as music director of Downtown New York City venue The Kitchen, where he composed minimalist chamber music in addition to penning pop-folk songs for his band, the Flying Hearts (featuring David Van Tieghem and Peter Zummo). His music found supporters in such figures as David Byrne and Philip Glass. Russell eventually gained a faithful commercial audience in the queer nightlife scene as a producer of off-kilter disco tracks for clubs such as Paradise Garage. He left behind an extensive catalog of works, much of which has been released posthumously by Audika Records.
David Van Tieghem has amassed a major body of achievements as a composer, percussionist, sound designer, actor, and collaborative artist. His solo percussion-theater performances, starting with A Man and His Toys (1977), have toured internationally and include a memorable appearance on Late Night with David Letterman in 1983. He has had essential roles in seminal works by Laurie Anderson, Steve Reich, Brian Eno, and Robert Ashley.
Peter Zummo is a genre-nonconforming composer and trombonist, whose work as a creator and performer finds a place in any genre. Working in close collaboration with artists in related media, including composers, poets, bandleaders, choreographers, directors, and filmmakers, he functions both as a supporting character and as a principal artist. His album Zummo with an X (1985) is considered a new music classic and has seen multiple reissues since its original commercial release.
Nat Baldwin is a musician and writer from Maine, currently living in western Massachusetts. He has released several solo and collaborative works and runs the experimental music label Tripticks Tapes.
Lea Bertucci is an experimental musician, composer, and performer whose work describes relationships between acoustic phenomena and biological resonance through electroacoustic tactics. She has performed in the United States at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gagosian, Pioneer Works, The Kitchen, and the Walker Art Center, and internationally at Tempo Reale, Florence; Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam; Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid; ReWire Festival, the Hague; Borderline Festival, Athens; and Unsound Festival, Krakow. Artist residencies include MacDowell, ISSUE Project Room, Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts.
Nick Hallett is a musician, artist, and curator. He has written the scores for two Bessie-awarded dance productions and served as the music director of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company from 2014 to 2022. He directs concerts and reperformances of experimental music as co-founder of Darmstadt NYC and composes vocal soundtracks for artist Shana Moulton. Hallett teaches at the New School and School of Visual Arts and is getting his master’s at Wesleyan University. He is the curator of the 2023 season of live art at the New York City AIDS Memorial.
Alex Waterman is a composer, performer, producer, scholar, cellist, electronic musician, and storyteller. His installation works, films, and music productions have been exhibited internationally. He collaborated with composer Robert Ashley in the 2014 Whitney Biennial and has produced five books about musical notation and poetics. Waterman was a visiting assistant professor of music at Wesleyan University from 2015 to 2018 and has been The Kitchen’s archivist since 2021.
Support
The New York City AIDS Memorial’s 2023 Live Arts Programming is made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Photography: Benjamin Chertoff