Tony CONRAD
“Untitled (Solo for the Building of a Museum)”

This recording (2002) captures the two instruments central to Conrad’s practice at the time: his self-built Long String Instrument and his amplified violin. He performed hidden behind a large sheet, and the nature of what unfolded behind it was never disclosed to the audience.

Mudam
Recorded at the construction site of the future Mudam – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg, designed by I. M. Pei – during the Museum Night of October 12, 2002, by invitation of Marie-Claude Beaud. The concert was co-organized by Transhistorics, a coproduction by Sub Rosa and Philippe Franck’s Transcultures. Conrad also performed several times in Europe alongside Charlemagne Palestine in the following years, including the October 2005 concert An Aural Symbiotic Mystery.

Short Bio
Tony Conrad (1940-2016) was an American musician, experimental
filmmaker, and composer, active across media since the early 1960s. A pioneer of drone music, he was a central figure in the New York scene of the 1960s and performed as part of the Theatre of Eternal Music. He became known as a filmmaker for his 1966 film The Flicker. Over the following decades he performed and collaborated with a wide range of artists.

Interview
The recording is accompanied by an extended interview conducted by Philippe Franck, published here as a tribute to him.

– Doesn’t this relate to intensity – the kind of theatrical intensity largely absent from computer music performance?
– When I started performing again with the violin in the 1980s, some people described what I was doing as “expressionism.” I was surprised at first – in my own arrogance I thought: this is mine, I invented it. But I took the criticism seriously, and it led me to ask what actually distinguishes expressionism from other forms of expression.

– Perhaps we should simply speak of expression, rather than ‘Expressionism’?
– Exactly. In performance, I like to work at what I’d call the zero degree of sound – harmonic structure itself. I can be entirely satisfied with a pure open fifth: dance, meditation, heroism, all of it is contained within a fifth, provided I can find my way into that sonic space. Once, a student who admired La Monte Young told me I was playing out of tune. I remember thinking thinking: I’m playing music, not notes. I’m making music that speaks to people.