Music / avant garde
Fifty-five years new
It’s often been cited as a powerful influence by PJ Harvey, Bjork and Primal Scream – among many others. Now contemporary classical collective Apartment House are bringing their string quartet arrangement of Nico’s 1968 album The Marble Index to St George’s on April 27 as part of the Bristol New Music Festival. It’s not that surprising an idea, of course, when you consider that Nico’s co-composer was John Cale. Before joining Lou Reed to form the Velvet Underground Cale had trained as a classical viola player and been embedded in the early-60s New York avant-garde scene alongside John Cage, Lamonte Young and others.
Cale and Nico first worked together when Andy Warhol installed her as a vocalist into the Velvet Underground but her solo work was something else – bleak mystic poetry sung in a flat Germanic voice over droning off-key harmonium. By reaching back into his modernist classical experience, however, Cale created something entirely unique, transforming songs the singer herself had described as ‘suicidal’ into a starkly beautiful, proto-Gothic masterpiece. Apartment House cellist and director Anton Lukoszevieze first discovered the album in his brother’s collection in the 80s and it has remained a favourite ever since, hence he asked pianist Kerry Yong if he could come up with an arrangement for singer, keyboard and string quartet. “Kerry’s an extraordinarily clever musician and arranger,” Anton told B24/7. “He’s meticulous about transcription so it’s more or less verbatim. He’s done an amazing job.”
The choice of singer was obviously crucial for the project and Anton had ideas about that: “I was very clear in my mind not to find someone who would replicate Nico. I believed it would have been a mistake to look for another Teutonic-sounding voice.” He found the answer in composer/performer Francesca Fargion. “Francesca has a nice, almost folky voice and it’s kind of honest. Her singing is really beautiful – and clear, because the lyrics are important, of course. If quite depressing!” The premiere performance at London’s Café Oto last year proved a great success and Anton was encouraged to take the show on the road. “I think it sounds really good with a string quartet – we can mirror (Cale’s) viola overdubs. At the same time we haven’t tried to do everything exactly the same. There will be differences – but I think that keeps it fresh.”
is needed now More than ever
Apartment House (pic Alicja Wróblewska)
Anton started Apartment House about thirty years ago as a way of playing the under-explored contemporary classical music he really liked. Each outing draws its own combination from the fifteen core members according to whatever the music needs and over the years they have performed a wide range of left field compositions, including many new commissions and premiers. In partnership with record label Another Timbre they have made over thirty albums, a lot of them totally unique records of avant garde music, but Anton accepts they are unlikely to be massive commercial hits. “The kind of music we play and record has a very small audience in the grand scheme of things,” he shrugs. “That’s just how it is. For me it’s live performance that is the best thing, though.”
Maggie Nicols (l) with Julie Tippetts (pic: Tony Benjamin)
For the New Music Festival gig, as well as the Marble Index, Apartment House will be playing a specially arranged piece by sometime Sonic Youth bassman Jim O’Rourke and theatre music composed by 80s avant-disco enigma Arthur Russell. It’s a triple header of a night, in fact, with vocal improvising legend Maggie Nicols in a duo with Bristol’s improv drum hero Dan Johnson as well as remarkable US composer, experimentalist and saxophonist Matana Roberts presenting the latest chapter of their ongoing ‘work in progress’ Coin Coin.
Apartment House will be performing The Marble Index at St George’s, Bristol on Saturday April 27 as part of the Bristol New Music Festival 2024.
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