In an artistic gesture as radical as it is poetic, the Colón Theater Experimentation Center (CETC)will pay tribute to the French composer Erik Satie with two concerts that invite us to revisit his figure from the avant-garde and contemplation. “Vexations” and “Socrates” They will be part of a tribute that will mark the centenary of the death of the creator who disrupted the rules of Western music and anticipated, with irony and audacity, the languages of the 20th century.
On Friday, November 14, at 8:30 p.m., “Vejaciones” will beginan extreme musical experience that will last for 24 uninterrupted hours, until the same time on Saturday the 15th. Admission will be free, free and with continuous access – through Pasaje de los Carruajes, in Tucumán 1171 -, allowing each spectator to decide their own length of stay. The work will be performed again and again, without respite, in a relay system that embodies the egalitarian essence that Satie hinted at and that the experimentalism of John Cage enshrined in 1963, when he organized the first comprehensive performance at New York University and opened a decisive chapter for the art of repetition.
More than 95 pianists will participate. Internationally renowned concert artists, musicians from other disciplines, established teachers, young students and amateurs who, in rigorous horizontality, will take place every ten minutes in front of the piano. The audience’s ear will be challenged by minimal-looking writing: a short melody, sandwiched between two harmonizations, whose original duration does not exceed two minutes. But Satie’s instruction in the score is as precise as it is delirious: to perform it 840 times in a row, “preparing in the deepest silence, through serious immobility.” The room will be accompanied by video projections, reinforcing the installation and performative nature of this sound liturgy.
The tribute will be completed with the presentation of “Socrates”, on Saturday, November 29 at 8:30 p.m. and Sunday the 30th at 6 p.m. It is a symphonic drama inspired by texts by Plato, which Satie considered his masterpiece and which is rarely heard live. It will be the first time that it reaches the stage of the Teatro Colón, in a scenic format for pianist, soprano and narrator that will allow us to discover a more austere, luminous and spiritual facet of its author.
In times when music seeks, once again, to expand its edges, the figure of Satie reappears as a beacon and a rupture. An unclassifiable composer, with an eccentric personality, who challenged empty virtuosity and embraced the repetitive before minimalism had a name. The CETC proposes to celebrate this legacy with two experiences that challenge hearing, patience and thought. An invitation to enter the silence of the obsessive and the beauty of the essential.
