621 Huntington Ave
Boston, Massachusetts

Non-Event and Eventworks Present:

RHYS CHATHAM'S ESSENTIALIST (Boston Debut)

w/ Heathen Shame and more

MassArt
North Building, Room N 181
621 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA
617.879.7726
http://www.massart.edu/about/directions.html
http://www.massart.edu/about/map.html
$8 students; $10 non-students

Non-Event and EventWorks are proud to present the first Boston appearance in several decades by legendary maverick composer Rhys Chatham. Chatham is one of the most versatile and significant figures in all of modern music, and if you don't know the name, you've heard the reverberations of his influence in bands from Sonic Youth to SunO))).

A classically-trained prodigy, Chatham was protegee to the world-renowned pianist Glenn Gould, and a student under composers Morton Subotnick and La Monte Young. In 1971, at the age of 19, he founded the profoundly influential music program at The Kitchen in New York City, which launched the careers of a generation of avant luminaries, including Laurie Anderson and Brian Eno.

In 1975 Chatham had an epiphany at a concert by the Ramones. His mission: to alter the DNA of rock by splicing the overtone-drenched minimalism of John Cale and Tony Conrad with the elemental fury of punk. The amalgamation was inspired, and it energized the downtown New York scene throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, making Chatham a founding father of the notorious No Wave movement. Chatham's influence spread even further as former students and ensemble members, including Glenn Branca and Sonic Youth, injected his raucous, ecstatic sound into the rock mainstream. In 1982, he even took to the road with Fab Five reddy, marking hip-hop's first excursion into the heartland.

Throughout the 1980s, Chatham's ensemble continued to grow in size and scope until it became an enormous amplified orchestra. His 1989 masterpiece, _An Angel Moves Too Fast to See_, scored for 100 electric guitars, bass and drums, is one of the most extraordinary works in the minimalist canon and cemented Chatham's reputation as a monolithic figure astride both rock and classical musics.

In September 2006 Rhys Chatham will be leaving his home in Paris and he's going to Georgia, USA, deep in the heart of the Dirty South. He's renting a van and hitting the road.

Rhys Chatham has started a heavy metal band.

Informed by decades of exploration in raw, electric minimalism and inspired by the slow-motion grinding of bands like Sleep, Sunn O))) and Earth, Chatham breaks down the conventions of the genre, reveals the fundamentals, then turns them inside-out. The name says it all: Rhys Chatham's Essentialist. Chatham's band-mates are a talented young group of New York musicians, including members of San Agustin and Jonathan Kane's February, and together they conjure a hallucinatory, mind-crushing form of metal unlike anything you've ever heard.

Links:
http://www.rhyschatham.com
http://www.tableoftheelements.com
http://babel.massart.edu/~eventworks/
http://www.myspace.com/nonevent

Upcoming:
9.7.06 :: Pan Sonic with Keith Fullerton Whitman and Jason Lescalleet :: Great Scott
10.3.06 :: Cosmos: Ami Yoshida and Sachiko M :: Mills Gallery at the BCA

Non-Event programs are supported in part through a grant from the LEF Foundation.

Official Website: http://www.myspace.com/nonevent

Added by Non-Event on August 30, 2006

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