Understanding
Duo Performance
The composition, an improvisation really, which I now call Understanding was created by me as a piano
solo in 1996 at the USIS Center in Bangkok. There really is no score, not even verbal, nor could there be
since it is a question of an ‘ultimate improvisation’ where nothing must be pre-thought. I may have
jotted-down a few words about it somewhere. I now choose as ideal an electric keyboard (which I usually
avoid) because of the timbre-changing possibilities. Phœbe Neville as my assistant serves to make the
changes by pressing the buttons with unforeseen result; while I play at the keyboard whatever comes to
me in a mental state where ‘everything is right’. Since we are not allowed to see what we are doing (a
would-be offensive level of human-will controlling) we wear the painted masks made for us by Picuk in
Java.
[Philip Corner]
Philip Corner
see Carrot Chew Performance.
Phœbe Neville
Phoebe Neville has been called "a supremely original artist whose explorations since the 60’s follow no
fashion" by Anna Kisselgoff of the New York Times. She has created dances for thirty-five years in New
York, and directed her own company for twenty. Her work has been seen in major cities around the United
States and in Berlin.
She began collaborating with Philip Corner in 1991. Since joining him in Italy as his wife, she has
performed with him in galleries, cloisters, (deconsecrated) churches, museums, factories, farmhouse
courtyards, and on rooftops and rock outcrops from Salento to the Alto Adige, being called ‘una ballerina
deliziosa’ and ‘l’onda della sua musica’. Other appearances include Festivals in Lyon, France, and
Odense, Denmark; and performances in France, Germany, and Belgium, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia,
and Nepal.
[provided by the artist]
Thursday, November 26th, 2015, 20.30
Understanding — Duo Performance
Philip Corner & Phœbe Neville