Strumming Music for Piano, Harpsichord, and Strings Ensemble

Charlemagne Palestine was the enfant terrible of the downtown NY minimalist scene in the ‘70s, but as is so often the case with iconoclasts, his eccentricity and unpredictability went hand in hand with his originality and invention. In 1974, he began unleashing recordings of his revolutionary “strumming music” piano technique, taking the avant-garde world by storm. This handsomely appointed, three-CD set devotes one disc each to previously unreleased mid-‘70s performances of his “strumming” compositions: the composer performing on piano in his loft, Betsy Freeman playing a piece for harpsichord, and renowned composer John Adams conducting a strumming piece for strings. On the piano piece, Palestine slowly builds on one chord voicing, until he eventually erects an empire of overtones from what initially seemed like a single brick. Owing to the more mechanistic nature of the harpsichord, Freeman’s performance is a less airy affair, employing similar techniques and ultimately achieving a sound that you’d swear was being generated by banks of synthesizers. The Adams-helmed string piece is probably the most impressionistic of the three, and its last few minutes feature the greatest amount of harmonic and dynamic variation on the whole set. This package does double duty as manna for collectors and an excellent entry point into Palestine’s world.