Charlemagne Palestine + Mika Vainio + Eric Thielemans

By far the most powerful musical collaboration between musicians that are renowned for their visionary navigations on some of electronic music’s uncharted waters is the performance by Charlemagne Palestine, Mika Vainio and Eric Thielemans.

Charlemagne Palestine is a highly influential experimental American musician, composer, performer and visual artist who creates intense, ritualistic music which he refers to as “resonant music”, in contrast to the “minimal music” of his peers such as Phillip Glass. Palestine will accompany his ringing chants with grand piano and electric organ when he performs together with Mika Vainio, himself a tireless researcher of resonances in electronic music through both his solo work and as one half of Pan Sonic. Palestine and Vainio have previously collaborated together in other configurations, most recently with Belgian genre-crossing percussionist Eric Thielemans, who works from a classically trained ear via jazz drumming, free improv and contemporary music. This marks the special Dutch premiere and a unique appearance of the trio featuring a pioneer of musical experimentation in dialogue with a younger generation of artists.

The Brooklyn born Charlemagne Palestine is an authentic minimalist composer, performer and visual artist. His earliest works were compositions for carillon (a bell tower) and electronic drones, and he is knows for his intense piano performances, such as Strumming Music. Palestine wrote intense minimalistic music in the 1970s, intended to rub against Western audiences’ expectations of what is beautiful and meaningful in music. His performance style is ritualistic: he generally surrounds himself with stuffed animals, smokes Indonesian kretek cigarettes and drinks cognac.

Mika Vainio was one half of the minimal electronic duo Pan Sonic from Finland, (with Ilpo Väisänen). Before starting Pan Sonic in beginning of the 90’s, Mika Vainio has played electronics and drums as part of the early Finnish industrial and noise scene. His solo works, under his own name and under aliases like Ø, are known for their analogue warmth and electronic harshness. Be it abstract drone works or minimal avant techno, Vainio is always creating unique, physical sounds. He has released on labels like Editions Mego, Touch, Wavetrap and Sähkö and he has been producing with Alan Vega of Suicide, Keiji Haino, Chicks on Speed, John Duncan and Bruce Gilbert.

Genre crossing percussionist and drummer Eric Thielemans is working from a classically trained ear via jazz drumming, free improv and all sorts of contemporary musics towards his own realms in music and performance. From his first moments of active musicianship up until now, Eric Thielemans always has been interested in performing arts, theatre, poetry and dance. Consequently he has worked with a wide range of (sound and visual) artists, performers and dancers.