Fifty years after its storied New York premiere, The Kitchen and the Goethe-Institut will present a 21st-century staging of Originale, a music-theater piece by pioneering German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007). Directed by Big Art Group's Caden Manson and Jemma Nelson, this staging, much like it's 1964 New York premiere, will feature a notable cross-section of contemporary performance artists and musicians whose actions are organized by Stockhausen's score and accompanied by noted electroacoustic compositions, such as his Kontakte.
Participants include visual artist Joan Jonas; poet Eileen Myles; performance artist
Justin Vivian Bond (11/7 only, costumed by threeASFOUR); pianist Stephen Drury; sound projectionist Joe Drew; performers Niv Acosta, Bishi, Nao Bustamante, Raul de Nieves, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Zach Layton,
Rachel Mason (11/7), Narcissister, Colin Self (11/8), Alexandro Segade,
Lucy Sexton and Saori Tsukada; musicians Stuart W. Gerber, Nick Hallett and Zach Layton; and filmmaker A.L. Steiner.
Performances of Originale will take place November 7 & 8 at 8pm at The Kitchen (512 West 19th Street, Manhattan). Tickets, $15 ($12 students, seniors), are available online at
thekitchen.org or by phone at
212.255.5793 x11. This two-night, standing-room event has limited capacity.
A discussion of the work, hosted by the Goethe-Institut, will take place at their Wyoming Building (5 East 3rd Street) on November 8 from 1-3pm.
Originale (1961) is a music-theater piece by Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007), created in response to the Happenings genre pioneered by Allan Kaprow. The first performances in Cologne were freewheeling affairs where friends and acquaintances of the composer and his collaborator, Mary Bauermeister, could essentially goof off within the parameters of a loosely structured list of theatrical instructions. At the core of Originale is the composer's much-referenced musical work Kontakte for piano, percussion and electronics.
In 1964, cellist and impresario Charlotte Moorman scheduled the New York premiere of Originale as part of the second annual New York Festival of the Avant-Garde. In collaboration with Allan Kaprow-originator of Happenings-as stage director, she set into motion a production featuring a veritable who's-who of the Downtown cultural landscape, including
Dick Higgins, Jackson Mac Low, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Breer, Billy Klüver, Max Neuhaus,
Alvin Lucier, David Behrman and Nam June Paik in his first US appearance. The performances gained national media coverage and polarized the Fluxus movement. A picket organized by Tony Conrad, Henry Flynt and George Maciunas against "European, Ruling Class Art" caught almost as much attention as the performances themselves.
Curated by Nick Hallett for Darmstadt: Essential Repertoire as part of Synth Nights. Co-produced by The Kitchen and Goethe-Institut.
Synth Nights is a continuing series at The Kitchen featuring inter-generational programs of electronic composers across genres. Previous evenings have included projects by David Behrman, Laurel Halo, Yuka C. Honda, Musica Elettronica Viva, Oneohtrix Point Never, Ben Vida, and Xeno & Oaklander, among many others, with individual programs curated by such luminaries as
Laurie Anderson, Nick Hallett, and
Nico Muhly.
Karlheinz Stockhausen's Originale is made possible with support from The Amphion Foundation, Inc., Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, The
Aaron Copland Fund for Music, and The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, and in part by public funds from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor
Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
