[product title] - unseen worlds

Elodie Lauten - The Death of Don Juan

Digital
$9.00
Skip to product information
[product title] - unseen worlds
  • [product title] - unseen worlds
  • [product title] - unseen worlds
Elodie Lauten - The Death of Don Juan

Elodie Lauten - The Death of Don Juan

$9.00
Format

Elodie Lauten - The Death of Don Juan

Elodie Lauten1980sArt SongReissue

Description

CD debut of this 1985 post-minimal landmark by Elodie Lauten, featuring performances by Arthur Russell and Peter Zummo. Lauten has been active in the downtown New York classical and punk scenes since moving from France in the 1970s. The Death of Don Juan is a breakthrough for its bold, lyrical minimalism in concert with a dramatic sensibility that is deeply faithful to the modern existential emotional experience. Originally self-produced and released as a small LP edition on her own label, it has been touted ever since by Kyle Gann, who adds notes to this edition, and was recently included on one of Alan Licht's Minimal Top Ten lists.

Liner Notes

Cosmically Hip: The Death of Don Juan, by Kyle Gann

Cosmically Hip: The Death of Don Juan, by Kyle Gann

Track List

DIGITAL TRACK LIST

  1. Overture (5:59)Act I
  2. Vision (5:09)
  3. Death As Shadow (8:22)
  4. Don Juan Enlightened (5:50)
  5. Prelude (2:36)Act II
  6. Death As A Woman (3:04)
  7. Duel (6:18)
  8. Despair (6:50)
  9. Despair Postlude (1:48)
  10. Kyrie (5:56)

Press

a complete experimental work of opera that doesn't seem much like an experiment, and even less like an opera – instead we get a multi-faceted, thoughtful slice of modern composition and a high point for second-wave minimalism.

Spencer Doran, North Coast Journal

This is one of the great lost experimental records of the 80s. Lauten has been around since the 70s, going back and forth between Paris and New York. The Death of Don Juan is an opera, in the avant garde sense, but I honestly prefer it to any of Robert Ashley's operas or the Philip Glass ones (except Einstein). There's a Fairlight on most of the record, but fear not, as you would never know that it dates from 80s. The first two tracks sound like Joe Jones meets Glass or Steve Reich, with harpsichords, trine (an electric lyre that Lauten invented) and Arthur Russell's cello. "Death As A Shadow" recalls Meredith Monk's "Turtle Dreams" but is even more haunting and doomy. Russell's vocal on "Death As A Woman" even reminds me of Moondog 2 and sounds unlike any of his other work. Even the libretto is fab-A+

Alan Licht, Liner notes

About Elodie Lauten

Elodie Lauten

Elodie Lauten was born in Paris in 1950, moved to the US in 1972, and tragically died all too young on June 3, 2014. The daughter of the jazz pianist and drummer Errol Parker, she studied piano at the Paris Conservatoire at age seven, and started composing at age twelve. In New York in 1973, she responded to an ad in the Village Voice, and ended up as lead singer for a band called Flaming Youth. She shaved her head, long before that was a common fashion statement. Flaming Youth's guitarist Denise Filiu was living at the time with the famous poet Allen Ginsburg, who also took Elodie in and gave her a Farfisa organ so she could accompany him when he sang and chanted. She studied with La Monte Young, whose Well-Tuned Piano her keyboard music occasionally brings to mind. Despite these radical beginnings, Elodie poured the creative energy of her later years into the forms of opera and oratorio, beginning in 1985 with The Death of Don Juan, and including such large works as Deus ex Machina, Orfreo, and Waking in New York, this last based on Ginsburg poems that he had selected for her. Just before her death she was awarded the Robert Rauschenberg Award, the money from which she used to stage a new performance of Waking in New York. She was too ill to attend it, and died the next day.

– Kyle Gann, from Elodie Lauten as Postminimalist Improviser

Elodie Lauten Artist Page

Explore more Unseen Worlds releases