Event

CHANTAL?

Sun Apr 29: 7.00pm

Series - Visiting Artists
Live Music
** Live cello accompaniment to Chantal Akermans Blow Up My Town by Akerman collaborator Sonia Wieder-Atherton! **

About
** Co-presented with On the Boards! **

This performance is a rare event expressive of an enduring collaboration between Paris-based cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton and Belgian/French filmmaker, Chantal Akerman (1950-2015). Conceived by Wieder-Atherton after Akermans death, CHANTAL? is a dialogue that I imagined with Chantal as she plays the cello within the frame of Saute ma ville (Blow up my town), Akermans first film made in 1968 at the age of 18. The performance is an intimate conveyance of the passion embraced in the music of Wieder-Athertons New York Quartet and Traditional Jewish Prayer and the music of composers Béla Bartók, Leo Janáek and Sergueï Prokofiev as arranged by Wieder-Atherton. The performance begins with Akermans voice melding with Bartók and ends after an explosion with a childs voice and Wieder-Athertons prayer. For Wieder-Atherton, the performance is Inspired deeply from what happened in our two apartments, one above the other, rue Henri Chevreau, in Paris, when I played and Chantal wrote. The images mingled with the words, and the words with the notes.

Performances of CHANTAL? are being presented on the west coast in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles in April/May 2018. Performances in Seattle and Portland have been organized by Sandra Percival, Director and Curator of Zena Zezza, with the Fondation Chantal Akerman.

CHANTAL?, Sonia Wieder-Atherton on cello and Chantal Akerman in SAUTE MA VILLE (Blow up my town), 1968. © Fondation Chantal Akerman. Photo courtesy of Fondation Akerman.