Christian Marclay at the Holland Festival

Christian Marclay, the Swiss-American collagist and composer, is in Amsterdam to perform his latest work, Everyday. With Marclay utilising the turntables and electronics with which he made his name – Marclay has a claim to being the first musician to improvise with records and turntables – Everyday features him performing alongside his jazz ensemble, comprising Steve Beresford on piano, John Butcher on saxophone, Alan Tomlinson on trombone, and Mark Sanders on percussion. With a montage of hundreds of found film clips projected, conjoined, and narrowed onto a big screen, these images serve as a score for the musicians, who read and interpret them for their performance through a series of movements and audio-visual sequences. Everyday will be performed tomorrow evening at the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, as part of the Holland Festival.

Marclay’s previous work, The Clock, won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale 2011. Tonight, as a sort of preface to Everyday, EYE (the Dutch Film Institute) and the Holland Festival show three of Marclay’s earlier projects, all of which also draw upon found footage, film and improvised music.

The Bell and the Glass (2003) brings together the Liberty Bell, the symbol of American independence located in Philadelphia, and Marcel Duchamp’s The Large Glass (also called The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even), the artwork which he completed in 1923, and which is in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. With video relating to these two pieces projected onto two screens, musicians improvise regarding the videos as a score. In Screen Play (2005), black-and-white footage provides the background for coloured, musically-inspired computer-animation. Shuffle (2007) is a sort of musical card game which suggests the musicality of everyday life, using photographs which imply the elements of musical notation to spur improvisation. For the performance at EYE, the MAZE ensemble will play to Marclay’s visuals.

Everyday will feature at the Muziekgebouw tomorrow at 8.30 pm. The three works by Marclay at EYE will be shown and performed from 8.30 pm this evening; with Marclay being interviewed in the foyer from 7.30 pm. More information is here and here.

Holland Festival 2013

The Holland Festival has, since 1947, served as a premier international event for the performing arts. With a focus on theatre, music theatre, dance, opera, and music, the festival – under artistic director Pierre Audi since 2005 – hosts both established and experimental artists in Amsterdam’s major cultural venues; centring on the Stadsschouwburg, the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, and the Frascati theatre, and also including the Bimhuis, Concertgebouw, Muziektheater, Koninklijk Theater Carré, and Westergasfabriek, with a couple of events even taking place in the Stedelijk and the Rijksmuseum. Fifty productions will show in over a hundred performances throughout the month of June.

The festival will commence tonight with an opera by Luca Francesconi entitled Quartett, based on Heiner Müller’s stage version of Les Liaisons dangereuses. Francesconi studied at the Milan Conservatory, and is a student of Stockhausen; his opera premiered in Milan in 2011, and will show at the Westergasfabriek at 8.30 pm on Saturday and Sunday.

The festival will continue on with an interview with author David Mitchell; who has collaborated with Michel van der Aa on a new multimedia opera for the festival, titled Sunken Garden. There will be two performances at the Stadsschouwburg by Benjamin Millepied’s L.A. Dance Project, including a new piece choreographed by Millepied himself. De Nederlandse Opera will partake in seven performances of Wagner’s lengthy comic opera, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Hildur Guðnadóttir, an Icelandic cellist with a penchant for experimental popular music, will play two pieces at the Bimhuis. Toni Morrison has written a new work for music theatre, entitled Desdemona, based on Shakespeare’s Othello. Toneelgroep Amsterdam will be directed by Thomas Ostermeier, in the director’s first engagement with Chekhov’s The Seagull.

The Berlin string ensemble Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop will be joined in performance by Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo. Chinese-born choreographer Shen Wei has produced, with Het Nationale Ballet, a new version of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring – a celebration of that work’s centenary year. A multidisciplinary exhibit by South African director Brett Bailey will utilise the concept of ‘human zoos’ to view the West’s relationship with Africa. The collagist Christian Marclay will show a new work called Everyday, which will comprise a film montage with a soundtrack improvised via turntables and electronics.

The Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic will perform four pieces on the theme of light on 21 June, the longest day of the year. A series of free lunchtime concerts will take place in the Rijksmuseum.

Holland Festival 2013’s website, with a full programme of performances and ticketing information, is at: http://www.hollandfestival.nl/en/