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Philip Corner

Piano Work

Label: Slowscan

Format: Vinyl LP

Genre: Sound Art

Out of stock

Another outstanding slab of 'Lo-Fi What The Fuck Is Going On?' from one of my heros... I know alot of you noise heads will be turned off by the 'piano' in the title...but man... no one has ever made more CRUDE sounds on a piano than corner... seriously... have no clue WHAT The fuck is going on... think he is just banging on the outside of the piano and throwing stuff at it... people are talkin...coughing...hangin out...at one point someone even fucking SITS on the microphone...Edition of 300 copies only on blue vinyl.

"Depending on how you look at it, the early 1960s were either an excellent or a very bad time to be a piano. Corner’s Piano Activities was infamously performed at the 1962 Wiesbaden festival, which is often considered the inauguration of Fluxus. The piece, whose score advises a group of people to, among other things, “play”, “pluck or tap”, “scratch or rub”, “drop objects” on, “act on strings with”, “strike soundboard, pins, lid or drag various kinds of objects across them” and “act in any way on underside of piano” resulted in the total destruction of the piano... and was considered scandalous enough at the time to make it onto German television. Although Corner says that the objective was not necessarily to destroy the instrument, Piano Work (1970) features his high school students from the New Lincoln School in Harlem, taking an old piano apart with their hands in what he calls an “operatic” performance, while discussing their creative work of destruction. “Dig it!” says one student, gleefully."  - Marcus Boon

Details
Cat. number: 10
Year: 2007
Notes:

Numbered edition of 300 copies