When Rhys Chatham was a kid growing up in Manhattan in the late 1950s, his father Price, a voracious reader and a novelist himself, befriended all the key musicians in the nascent Early Music revival. Price encouraged his son to play Renaissance harpsichord music on the virginal, an instrument for young women that had very thin keys and a limited range.
Young Rhys became well-versed in the keyboard music of William Byrd, Giles Farnaby, and John Bull, three English composers of the late Tudor and early Jacobean periods (back around 1600, as you know).
Richmond's Craneway Pavilion
His father later sent him to the great harpsichord builder William Dowd in Boston to become an instrument tuner so Rhys could support himself. It worked! For a time Rhys was the go-to tuner for all the major performers in New York, including Albert Fuller, Gustav Leonhardt, and even Glenn Gould. An interlude of flute study led to Rhys performing works by Edgar Varèse, Stefan Wolpe, and Pierre Boulez. Rhys even composed post-serialist music for a short while.
Little did Price Chatham suspect that his son soon would offer his services as a keyboard tuner to minimalist drone pioneer La Monte Young and study with live electronic music innovator Morton Subotnick. From there Rhys' musical life took a sharp left turn, but his knowledge of the classical composition would forever inform his own composing.
So when you hear A Secret Rose, his monumental work for 100 guitars, you'll hear a 5-movement, 60-minute piece on a symphonic scale that is both exciting and ravishingly beautiful.
And if you can't be there, we'll post the recording of the concert so you will feel as if you were with us in person. There is no other available recording of this fabulous piece.
P.S. "Rhys" is an old Welsh family surname on Price Chatham's side of the family. The Chathams arrived in Kentucky in 1610, so I'm told. But it took them 340 years to get to the Big Apple!
Add to Chatham's rich and varied background: The Ramones at CBGB's, back in 1977, and the resulting "urban music fusing the extended drone work of minimalist music with the raw and elemental fury of rock and roll."
And the venue is something else, unknown even to this venue-aware column: Richmond’s Craneway Pavilion, with a 180-degree waterfront view of San Francisco, the Bay Bridge, Oakland, Berkeley, and the Bay.
Designed by Albert Kahn in 1931, the site was originally used as a Ford assembly plant up until WW II at when it was retooled to manufacture tanks and jeeps. After briefly returning to auto manufacturing and a stint as a film set and book depository the 45,000 sq. foot structure was partially destroyed in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. In 2004 the building was purchased and underwent renovations resulting in its distinction as an official landmark on the National Register of Historic Places.
