My personal overgrown path is leading back to the radio studio, and that has set me thinking recently about how to create programmes that are distinctive, inclusive and personal. Over in Holland the creator of Big Brother , Endemol , has its own formula for distinctive broadcasting, and this week launches De Grote Donorshow ( The Big Donor Show ) which gives three dialysis patients the chance to win a dying woman's kidney - or not. Back in 1969 Glenn Gould took a different approach to producing great broadcasting when he created his 'contrapuntal radio documentary' The Latecomers . The main subject was the new Canadian province of Newfoundland , but there was a second subject of solitude, isolation and non-conformity seen from a cultural perspective. The Latecomers , with its basso continuo of the ocean, is both a land-mark in twentieth-century broadcasting and a seriously neglected aspect of Gould's work. Now, thanks to reader Walt Santner, you can hear the whole
Follow this link for an excellent, and rare, interview with Karlheinz Stockhausen in today's Guardian. (Well actually it's done by email, but don't let that put you off.) He is playing a concert in London on October 22nd, his first since 2001. The works are Kontakte (1960), and Oktophonie (1991).
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That's for sure--but wow, that would be quite an experience if they do.
I've heard that Stockhausen was not adverse to taking LSD in the late 60's/early 70's. That interview seems to confirm it! :-)
I heard Stockhausen's Oktophonie (1991) at Berlin's New National Gallery in 2003, and I have little recollection of it (though I have an extensive, beautiful little program booklet from the evening). While before reading the Guardian interview, I had recalled that the work involved 8 loudspeakers situated at the corners of a darkened cube, I had forgotten about the theatrical sliver of moonlight and Stockhausen dressed all in white.
That evening before the concert in 2003, I spoke briefly with Stockhausen downstairs at the Museum. He looked distracted (in his white costume), and I thought to myself "Oh my", the two years since his 9/11 comment must have been disturbing for him. However, once on stage, he commanded the evening's audience with his charisma and spoke clearly and crisply for 25 minutes about the technology of the work and its "vertical" sound innovation. He struck me then as a composer-engineer, and not the distressed shaman that he had appeared an hour earlier. Again, I recall little of the evening's music, though I will say that I do continue to respect Mr Stockhausen for his contributions as an experimental sound and musical artist.
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(I recall much stronger, Jenny Holzer's huge LED installation on the ceiling of Berlin's New National Gallery, the previous year.)