The Jewish Museum Presents Charlemagne Palestine in Concert March 16 at The Church of the Heavenly Rest

New York, NY, February 14, 2017 – The Jewish Museum will present visual artist, musician, composer, and performer Charlemagne Palestine in concert at The Church of the Heavenly Rest on Thursday, March 16, at 8pm.  The concert, titled  Aaa HHeavenlyyy RResttt SSchlingennn BBlängennnn, is held in conjunction with the exhibition Charlemagne Palestine’s Bear Mitzvah in Meshugahland, on view at the Jewish Museum from March 17 through August 6, 2017.

Charlemagne Palestine—a pioneer of experimental and minimalist music—will perform his monolithic 80 minute organ riff, a sensual, pleasure inducing drone. The crisply sparkling sonority creates a sense of drift, a foreword carrying motion propelled by colliding tones. Buoyed by slow changes that create illusions of movement, the experience of listening to the piece is one of floating between parallel worlds of harmony and noise.

The piece he will perform at the Church of the Heavenly Rest evolved out of a number of events the artist held in Los Angeles in 1970 and 1971 that he called “Meditative Sound Environments.” In these performances Palestine would sustain a chord on an organ by inserting pieces of cardboard between the keys and letting it play all night, adjusting the stops here and there to make only slight changes. An initial chord and its timbre was chosen and then left to sing for the duration of the recording. It demands attention and gets it by pushing aside the chattering thoughts of the trivial everyday mind.

Tickets for the March 16 concert are $18 General; $15 Students and Seniors; $12 Jewish Museum Members. The Church of the Heavenly Rest is located at 2 East 90th Street, Manhattan.

The exhibition Charlemagne Palestine's Bear Mitzvah in Meshugahland is the first U.S. museum exhibition of the artist's monumental plush toy installations. It will feature hundreds of plush toys, including teddy bears, which the artist regards as shamanic representations of the soul. For this presentation, Palestine will refer to the teddy bear's invention in Brooklyn, near where he grew up.

Born in Brooklyn in 1947, Charlemagne Palestine began exploring music and performance at a young age, singing in a synagogue choir and ringing carillon bells at St. Thomas Church in Manhattan. From there he explored the world of experimental sound, performance, collaboration, and installation. He was heavily involved with the New York avant-garde in the 1960s and 1970s, collaborating with artists such as experimental filmmaker and musician Tony Conrad and choreographer Simone Forti before moving to Europe permanently in the 1980s. Palestine’s ethereal sound recordings are often steeped in the rituals of various non-Western cultures, post-minimal music, and his own Eastern European sources.

Support
Public programs are made possible by endowment support from the William Petschek Family, the Trustees of the Salo W. and Jeannette M. Baron Foundation, Barbara and Benjamin Zucker, the late William W. Hallo, the late Susanne Hallo Kalem, the late Ruth Hallo Landman, the Marshall M. Weinberg Fund, with additional support from Marshall M. Weinberg, the Rita J. and Stanley H. Kaplan Foundation, the Saul and Harriet M. Rothkopf Family Foundation, and Ellen Liman. Additional support is provided by Lorraine and Martin Beitler and through public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

Further program and ticket information is available by calling 212.423.3337 or online at TheJewishMuseum.org/calendar.