Keith Rowe(born 16 March 1940 inPlymouth,England) is an Englishfree improvisationtabletop guitaristand painter. Rowe is a founding member of bothAMMin the mid-1960s andM.I.M.E.O.Having trained as a visual artist, his paintings have appeared on most of his albums. He is seen as a godfather ofEAI(electroacoustic improvisation), with many of his recordings having been released byErstwhile.
Biography
editRowe began his career playingjazzin the early 1960s withMike WestbrookandLou Gare.His early influences were guitaristsWes Montgomery,Charlie Christian,andBarney Kessel.[1]But he grew tired of what he considered the genre's limitations. He began experimenting. An important step was aNew Year's resolutionto stop tuning his guitar—much to Westbrook's displeasure.[1]He began playingfree jazzandfree improvisation,abandoning conventional guitar technique. He was featured in 'Crossing Bridges', a 1985 music programme based around jazz guitar improvisation, and broadcast byChannel 4[2]
His change was partially inspired by a teacher in a painting class who told him, "Rowe, you cannot paint aCaravaggio.Only Caravaggio can paint Caravaggio. "Rowe said that after considering this idea from a musical perspective," trying to play guitar likeJim Hallseemed quite wrong. "For several years he contemplated how to reinvent his approach to the guitar, again finding inspiration in visual art, specifically American painterJackson Pollock,who abandoned traditional painting methods to forge his style. "How could I abandon the technique? Lay the guitar flat!"[3]
Rowe developedprepared guitartechniques: placing the guitar flat on a table[4]and manipulating the strings, body, and pick-ups in unorthodox ways. He has used needles, electric motors, violin bows, iron bars,[4]a library card, rubber eraser, springs, hand-held electric fans, alligator clips, and common office supplies in playing the guitar. Rowe sometimes incorporates live radio broadcasts into his performances, includingshortwave radioandnumber stations(the guitar's pick-ups will also pick up radio signals, and broadcast them through the amplifier).
Percussionist Eddie Prévost of AMM said Rowe finds radio broadcasts which seem to blend ideally with, or offer startling commentary on, the music. (Prévost, 18). OnAMMMusic,towards the end of the cacophonous "Ailantus Glandolusa", a speaker announces via radio that "We cannot preserve the normal music." Prevost writes that during an AMM performance inIstanbul,Rowe located and integrated a radio broadcast of "the pious intonation of a male Turkish voice. AMM of course, had absolutely no idea what the material was. Later, it was complimented upon the judicious way that verses fromThe Koranhad been introduced into the performance, and the respectful way they had been treated! "[5]
In reviewingWorld Turned Upside Down,critic Dan Hill writes, "Rowe has tuned his shortwave radio to some dramatically exotic gameshow and human voices spatter the mix, though at such low volume, they're unintelligible and abstracted. Rowe never overplays this device, a clear temptation with such a seductive technology – the awesome possibility of sonically reaching out across a world of voices requires experienced hands to avoid simple but ultimately short-term pleasure. This he does masterfully, mixing in random operatics and chance encounters with talk show hosts to anchor the sound in humanity, amidst the abstraction."[6]
Rowe has worked withOren Ambarchi,Burkhard Beins,Cornelius Cardew,Christian Fennesz,Kurt Liedwart,Jeffrey Morgan,Toshimaru Nakamura,Evan Parker,Michael Pisaro,Peter Rehberg,Sachiko M,Howard Skempton,Taku Sugimoto,David Sylvian,John Tilbury,Christian Wolff,andOtomo Yoshihide.
In 2008 at Tate Modern, London, Rowe performed a live collaborative workThe Roomwith film makers, Jarman award winnerLuke Fowler,and Peter Todd as a part of the programme accompanying the major retrospective of the painter Mark Rothko.The Roomfeatured films by Fowler and Todd and live guitar improvisation by Rowe with subsequent iterations being presented in France and Spain and the Netmage festival in Bologna Italy.[7]The Roomis also the title of a work by Rowe issued on CD in 2007 followed byThe Room Extendedin 2016 on a four CD set both from erstwhile records.[8]
References
edit- ^ab"Keith Rowe".paristransatlantic.com.Retrieved26 October2015.
- ^Crossing Bridges website
- ^Dan Warburton (January 2001)."Keith Rowe Interview".Retrieved23 March2011.
- ^abBerendt, Joachim-Ernst; Huesmann, Gunther (2009).The Jazz Book: From Ragtime to the 21st Century(7 ed.). Chicago, Illinois: Lawrence Hill Books. pp. 433–434.ISBN978-1-55652820-0.
- ^Prevost, Edwin (1995).No Sound Is Innocent: Amm and the Practice of Self-invention, Meta-musical Narratives, Essays.Copula.ISBN0-9525492-0-4.
- ^"Catalog:Erstwhile Records reviews".Erstwhile Records website. Archived fromthe originalon 3 March 2016.Retrieved26 October2015.
- ^Fowler, Luke, 1978- (2009).Luke Fowler.Ruf, Beatrix., Peyton-Jones, Julia., Obrist, Hans Ulrich., Bradley, Will, 1968-, Comer, Stuart., Kunsthalle Zürich. Zürich: JRP/Ringier. p. 66.ISBN978-3-03764-046-3.OCLC351329902.
{{cite book}}:CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^"The Room Extended, by Keith Rowe".Erstwhile Records.Retrieved1 June2020.