>> HENDRIK: The Bell Laboratory came to me it was just something that needed to happen.
It was very clear to me that this had to happen and that we had to make it happen.
And if you dramatically fail, then you will dramatically fail, then you will learn out
of it and it's a fantastic experience anyway.
It was a big, big risk for all of us.
It's about this communication with the musician, like when you work with a machine, it's a
machine.
When you work with a musician and an instrument it's a different vocabulary and that's a different
way of connecting.
These are all classical musicians,how do they listen to electronic music?
It was never the focus for me to be a musician, it was more that I was really interested in
this parallel universe.
The real stuff that was happening wasn't that joyful, wasn't that interesting so I would
always put a lot of energy into creating my own environment and involve people into it
also.
It was a lot of experimental music that I was listening to and that I was making when
Pantha came into birth it was the idea of being able to dance to what I do.
So I had to create Pantha to basically give birth to the ideas that I had in my head.
Bell Laboratory started with carillon research that I did for some years already and we recorded
a few church bells in the mountains in Switzerland where we did the basic source recordings for
Black Noise.
While I was touring with Black Noise I was listening to this carillon and it's high up
on the City Hall.
I had never heard before something like this in the city, this loud and this present.
I said 'Oh this is a nice carillon, this is really
special, it'd be nice to create a piece for this carillon.'
Then Lars Petter Hagen, who is connected to the new music scene in Oslo told me about
these mobile carillons and I was super fascinated.
Then we basically started thinking about creating an ensemble.
When I first listened to "In C" it felt so familiar.
It's something I had always wanted to do.
Andre de Ridder, he is a conductor, he saw the Bell Laboratory in Berlin and we decided
to work together on something new and he made the contact between Chris Sharp at the Barbican
and us.
>> CHRIS: We, the Barbican, we engage with, sort of, minimalism and minimalist composers
quite a lot and so I thought - How about an evening of doing nothing but "In C."
As I had seen the Bell Laboratory collaboration both in Norway but also in London.
It was kind of very fresh in my mind and I thought Hendrik would zone in on the pulse
and the rhythm.
Riley is a really interesting figure in that he is somebody who brings together very old,
ancient, kind of, devotional and spiritual practices of South Asian music with a real
interest in cosmic jazz and moments of frisson and explosion that make changes in consciousness.
>> HENDRIK: We tried to kind of get it together and I was asking the musicians and they were
really into it and they were like: Yeah, of course we can play this.
There's always a musical discussion.
Bell Laboratory is more about this communication with the musician.
>> HEMING: The start - maybe we could just let it stay much, much longer so that as a
listener... you start forgetting about that this is the tonal centre and that this upholds.
>> HENDRIK: Yeah but this is a very classic beginning for the piece, it is what a lot
of people do.
>> HENDRIK: It's about an exchange, getting together at a point where it's going somewhere
where I probably haven't seen before.
>> HÅKON: I think it's cool to go in all other directions than what we would normally
do.
>> HENDRIK: Yeh.
So if we start with the tonal, like really played stuff, so you can also enter with the
C maybe on the high ones, ...but damped... [laughs] Yeah we'll try.
>> HENDRIK: My own version of "In C" is the blueprint for the version that we would play
in the Barbican.
Every time you play "In C" you have to have a different result.
>> HENDRIK: I basically did a jam, an arrangement, where I made a kind of sketch for the musicians.
So how I would interpret In C.
I mean you could make a fixed score but we decided not to.
Everybody is open to interpret the sequence.
The sequence consists of high particles that Terry Riley gave us.
So we, basically we have the time running and the musicians, have to get from one pattern
through three patterns for the sequence for example.
What they get from us is that when the sequence starts the cue points basically give them
the new entry for a new sequence and the sequence sometimes is one minute, sometimes two, sometimes
ten seconds.
It was just the idea to also open up our process to a new approach...and this is the possibility
we have with the Barbican to make this experiment.
>> HENDRIK: Of course it's a different situation when you create something in your studio and
then you have to translate it onto a stage with acoustic instruments there's always this
risk involved that it might not turn out the way you want it to turn out.
>> CHRIS: Well thanks so much for kind of agreeing to do it.
So when were you in Oslo?
When was the first chance you had to try it out?
>> HENDRIK: 2 weeks ago
>> CHRIS: Intensive?
>> HENDRIK: Yeah, it's okay, we will manage.
Rehearsals were
>> CHRIS: Fun?
>> HENDRIK: Super fun.
>> HENDRIK: It was very helpful thing to make this connection between acoustic and electronic
that we had a digital way of working together.
>> HEMING: So, we do our thing and he just extracts elements from us.
He has every microphone also going through his mixer so that he can pick out sounds that
he finds interesting.
That's one of the things that makes it a little bit more organic because he has the opportunity
to pick out these things and make new things for every concert.
He's good at doing these things.
>> HENDRIK: Playing "In C" is a little bit like coming home to a very comfortable place.
It's rather exciting of course to play it then with an ensemble in front of a crowd
and also with the Joshua Light Show who are also from the time when it was written.
>> HENDRIK: I see my role as some kind of connection point, not like someone who gives
direction.
It's more like that I filter the information from each musician.
>> HENDRIK: When I hear what the musicians are playing I have ideas and I try to kind
of formulate these ideas in other ways than it would when a normal conductor of composer
would formulate them.
I'm more, really trying to create this environment.
>> HENDRIK: I think it's very, very important to be aware how you use whatever technology
you're using.
And to also sometimes use it not in the way it was thought of as being used.
Make it your own, make it your own thing.