Christian Marclay – more widely known as a visual artist – will be participating at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival hcmf// (16 – 25 November 2018) as Composer in Residence. The festival is due to stage the world premiere of his «Investigations», a piece for 20 pianos.

Visual art meets music
Christian Marclay (born 1955) became internationally known as a visual artist at the latest with his acclaimed video installation «The Clock», which earned him a Golden Lion as best artist at the Biennale di Venezia 2011. The Swiss-American artist’s musical career has so far attracted less attention. It began – after the completion of his studies in visual art and sculpture – with him as an experimental DJ in New York in the 1970s. Since then he has been particularly interested in the combination of music and visual elements. In his work, he explores the interaction between sound and images under the influence of various materials, including fortuitiously discovered objects and video excerpts. The resulting «graphic scores» make up a large part of his oeuvre.

World premiere and retrospective
The world premiere of «Investigations», a composition for 20 pianos, represents the centrepiece of Christian Marclay’s residence. It will be held on 18 November 2018 in Huddersfield Town Hall, with performing artists including Philip Thomas, Reinier van Houdt, Steve Beresford and Claudia Molitor. In addition, hcmf// will be presenting a retrospective of Marclay’s creations over the past years, comprising older pieces such as «Screen Play» and «Zoom Zoom» as well as more recent ones such as «To be Continued». The eight Marclay concerts in all will be performed by internationally renowned musicians, many of whom have accompanied him on his career over many years, among them Shelly Hirsch, Thurston Moore, John Butcher and Ensemble Babel from Lausanne.

(Photo: Christian Marclay ©Ivan Rérat)