Charlemagne Palestine and Rrose are getting set to release The Goldennn Meeenn + Sheenn on April 25th via Rrose’s label Eaux. Chronicling the musicians’ joint live performance of Palestine’s composition for piano, The Golden Mean, the recording was made in 2018 during the Festival Variations in Nantes. The festival had commissioned Charlemagne Palestine to perform the piece, and he reworked it to include two pianists inviting Rrose to perform with him.
Rrose, the latest incarnation of interdisciplinary artist Seth Horvitz, first met the composer/musician/artist Charlemagne Palestine while studying at Mills College. Inspired to play the composer’s masterwork Strumming Music in the halls of the Mills’ student union, Rrose reached out to see if a score existed. Informing the student that one did not, he instead invited Rrose to study with him at his home in Belgium.
Charlemagne Palestine, born Chaim Moshe Tzadik Palestine in Brooklyn in 1947, began singing sacred Jewish music as a young boy, as well as playing piano and accordion. By age 12 he was playing backup conga and bongo drums for Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Kenneth Anger, and Tiny Tim. Palestine would follow that up as a carillonneur for the Saint Thomas Episcopal Church in Manhattan during the ’60s composing a piece comprised of 1,500 15 minute performances during his time there.
Palestine would go on to study vocal interpretation with Pandit Pran Nath while beginning a multi-faceted career that included art production, composition, the building of an alternative synthesizer called the Spectral Continuum Drone Machine, as well as teaching at Cal Arts with Morton Subotnick. The Golden Mean was composed by Palestine in 1976, and it has gone on to be one of his most enduring works. Using the Greek mathematical concept as its genesis, the piece is a total immersion in the “power of the interval.” Rrose explains:
“It’s probably his most systematic work–a step-by-step journey through the intervals of the octave. When we rehearsed it, we were noticing how each interval is like a universe of its own with its own history, emotions, and sonic qualities all mixed up together. Every time you move from one interval to the next, it feels like moving into another world.
Adding to this discussion of the interval, Palestine offers: “You can just do an interval, and if they’re just slightly out of tune with each other, then they shimmer, they play themselves…It continues by itself. So I don’t have to always be there. And that makes my music a little less egocentric.” This also opens up space in the musician’s composition allowing for a free play of resonances to take over the aural experience. With this in mind, Rrose reminds us:
“Do not focus your attention on the notes being played, but on the ocean of overtones swimming, suspended, overhead, brushing against one another, kissing one another, melting into one another.”
