Jacques Bekaert by KRAAK

A Tribute to Jacques Bekaert

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David Behrman Steve Marreyt

Xavier García Bardón

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Alain Géronnez Mark Harwood Jacques Bekaert

A man of many gifts I’m not even sure what an Ipod is An electronic conversation with composer Jacques Bekaert His music is in my images On the collaborativework of Akiko Iimura and Jacques Bekaert Possible écart : une pochette pour un album de Jacques Bekaert A winter’s evening, Poughkeepsie Beach street slow afternoon Documents Colophon / Contributors

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Pictures taken from the John Cage box edited by Jacques Bekaert, including contributions by Pierre Bartholomée, John Cage, Hugh Davies, Shigeko Kubota, Gordon Mumma, Henri Pousseur, Anne Thyrion, Joji Yuasa and Jacques Bekaert, published by Algol Edition, Brussels, 1971. Source: Royal Library of Belgium. Bekaert as Talleyrand in Terri Hanlon’s Meringue Diplomacy (USA, 2010, 57’). Stills from Pêche de Nuit, a film by Henri Chopin, Luc Peire and Tjerk Wicky (France / Belgium / Switzerland, 1963, 12’). Stills from the Taj Mahal Travellers’ world tour film diary (1971 / 1972). Stills from Mon Petit Album, a film by Akiko Iimura (France, 1974, 12’). Stills from Late Lunch, a film by Akiko Iimura (USA, 1981, 30’). Alain Géronnez, sketches and final artwork for Jacques Bekaert’s LP published by Igloo Records in 1981. Originally in colour.

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Mark Harwood & Graham Lambkin on a winter’s evening, Poughkeepsie. A photograph by Jacques Bekaert. David Behrman and Jacques Bekaert at the Cedar Tavern, New York. Cover of Jacques Bekaert’s Summer Music 1970 (Lovely Music, 1979) Reviews of the Sonic Arts Group concert organized by Musiques Nouvelles at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, 13 April 1967. Source: Bozar Archives. Press release for the Sonic Arts Group concert at the Palais des BeauxArts, 13 April 1967. Source: Bozar Archives. Press release for the Taj Mahal Travellers show at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, 2 October 1971. The concert was organized by Musiques Nouvelles in association with RTB. Source: Bozar Archives. Documents taken from the John Cage box edited by Jacques Bekaert, Algol Edition, Brussels, 1971. Source: Royal Library of Belgium.

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A review of Bekaert’s LP on Igloo Records, 1981. Details unknown. Labels from the same record. Source: Igloo Records. Press release for Jacques Bekaert’s LP on Igloo Records, 1981. Source: Igloo Records. Igloo Records, early catalogue sheet, ca. 1983. Source: Igloo Records. Jacques Bekaert in the swimming pool, Kho Samui (Samui Island), Thailand.

A man of many gifts David Behrman

Jacques Bekaert has the most multi-faceted career of anyone I have known. He could be called a true Renaissance Man. He is a gifted author, journalist, composer, photographer, visual artist, wine connoisseur, radio talk show host, diplomat and expert in Southeast Asian affairs. We met, thanks to Henri Pousseur, in New York in 1966, at a party following a concert of new music. We had both studied in Europe with the cheerful, kind, gifted Pousseur, and Henri had given Jacques my phone number before his first trip to the States. We became instant friends and have remained close ever since. A year later Jacques helped my friends Robert Ashley, Gordon Mumma, Alvin Lucier and me give a concert at the Palais des BeauxArts in Brussels, on the first European tour of our group, Sonic Arts. Jacques performed with us. He was serving in the Belgian army at that time, posted in a remote area, and he told an amusing story about how he had convinced his commanding officer to give him a 3-day leave so he could go to Brussels and participate in an event with “important producers from New York”. (In reality we were all more or less obscure at that time, but the officer took Jacques’ word for it.) Sonic Arts made several trips to Belgium during the years after that, and Jacques co-produced and assisted us and sometimes took part in our performances. He helped other American musicians, among them Steve Reich, Philip Glass and Anthony Braxton as well. On one of those trips

Jacques invited us to his family house in Tubize, where we met his gracious mother. Jacques brought out to the garden that afternoon some bottles of extremely fine old Burgundy wine which had escaped the German occupation in the 1940s thanks to a basement flood. All the labels had floated off. He served us this fine old unlabeled wine in paper cups and we naive Americans enjoyed it — and we upped our knowledge of oenology at that moment. Jacques returned often to the States during the next years. He became friends with Charlotte Moorman, John Cage, David Tudor, Akiko Iimura, Jasper Johns, Sari Dienes, Leroy Jenkins and many other artists and writers. John Cage invited Jacques to stay at his Stony Point house in the summer of 1970, and it was there that Jacques started recording sounds and voices for a Summer Day at Stony Point. In the mid Seventies, when Jacques was still living in Europe and I was at Mills College in Oakland, California, the two of us together acquired a living space in New York City that we could use in alternating and overlapping fashion. We had enjoyable times together there with our friends and partners. In the early Eighties Jacques and his wife Shirley Jonhson moved to Southeast Asia, but they kept an apartment in New York and we continued to see each other often. In 1999 and 2000 my wife Terri Hanlon, Jacques and I showed our artworks (photographs, music, videos) at Studio 5 Beekman, a gallery that Michael Schumacher had set up in New York that specialized in sound art installations. Since then Terri, Jacques and I have continued to see one another as often as possible in the States, Southeast Asia and Europe. Jacques’ curiosity about human nature and the wider world beyond Europe and his unusual gift for

forming new friendships first led him to journalism, a profession he practiced in highly personal ways during most of his career. He produced a great variety of writings over a period of four decades in French and English, as well as verbal reports for radio and TV. In the early Sixties in Brussels he participated in broadcasts of awidely popular radio program called King Kong, in which he spoke about a variety of subjects: music, politics (mostly USA), books etc. Later he had his own FM show on Belgian radio, L’Ascension de la Musique par la Face Nord, about contemporary American music. It lasted about 4 years. On Belgian TV he introduced a series of American films and moderated debates about various related subjects by panels of specialists. As a journalist he wrote first in Brussels, for La Relève, then in Paris, where he wrote for Le Quotidien de Paris, and as a travelling correspondent for Belgian Radio in America during the Sixties and Seventies. Later in Thailand and Cambodia where he developed a long-term affiliation with the English language newspaper The Bangkok Post, he served as an interim correspondent for Le Monde and for seven years worked for the BBC Far Eastern service. As a result of his extensive travels and interactions, he accumulated a large number of close life-long friendships with journalists, writers, artists and political figures in Brussels, Paris, New York, Washington, Bangkok and Phnom Penh. In the Sixties he wrote a book about John Cage in the form of non-linear loose pages within a box, and another on Richard Nixon with the ironic title Nixon’s The One. Much more recently he wrote a fine short story, humorous and ironic, The Takeover, about a mythical Southeast Asian country that

is taken over by a team of shysters from Europe in collusion with the local military. The Takeover and other writings can be found here: http://Writing. com/authors/rmutt17 Writing for The Bangkok Post for ten years as a correspondent covering the wars in Cambodia he produced a vivid series of articles many of which were written in dangerous circumstances from remote villages and jungle areas. Those writings, gathered together and published in 1997 and 1998 in two volumes under the titles Cambodian Diary — Tales of a Divided Nation, 1983-1986 (vol. 1) and a Long Road to Peace, 1987-1993 (vol. 2), are a definitive account of those ten fraught years in Cambodia. They are written in an informal style giving the reader a feeling of personal connection with the author, and there are many thoughtful insights within those pages. Also writing for The Bangkok Post during the Nineties and early Two Thousands, he published, under an anonymous pen name — Chateau d’O — a weekly wine column in which he discussed wine, art and travels in a most charming and urbane way. (I hope those articles can be gathered together and made available again to readers in the future.) In New York in 2009, Terri Hanlon did a video shoot with Jacques for her piece Meringue Diplomacy. In Terri’s videos the characters who appear are in part themselves, exactly who they are in real life, and in part they take on the roles of historical figures. Jacques was playing the role of Talleyrand and Terri had prepared a loose monologue for him to deliver about his relationship with the young chef, Carême, whom he had hired to make elaborate diplomatic dinners. Terri was amazed that Jacques did the scenes perfectly on the first try, taking on the Talleyrand role with

complete authority. Some of Jacques’ music is also a part of Meringue’s soundtrack. http://www.ubu.com/film/ hanlon_meringue.html In 2010 Jacques wrote a slim volume in French entitled La Thaïlande de A à Z, the most fascinating “travel book” I can remember reading (it was published by André Versaille éditeur). This slender paperback looks from the outside like an ordinary “travel tourist book”, but when you read what’s inside, you discover wonderful insights into the history and character of Thailand and its people, and a delightful variety of subjects ranging from large political issues to small details of life-style. The book is written with first-hand authority, enthusiasm and wit. Following the death of his wife Shirley, Jacques left journalism to become a diplomat at the embassy of the Order of Malta in Cambodia, and later in Thailand. In that role he was able to initiate a special, much-needed program to bring food to the inmates of a womens’ prison outside Phnom Penh. He raised funds for that program and administered it until his recent retirement. He was also involved in the search for hostages and people captured by the Khmer Rouge. In some of Jacques’ early music, gentle threads of instrumental and electronic sounds are mixed with outdoor rural field recordings and the occasional voices of his friends speaking, whistling or singing simple folk songs or quietly reading (sometimes fragments of texts by Henry David Thoreau). Tiny wisps of John Phillip Sousa marches and American folk and patriotic songs are woven into the mix. In recordings made at Mills College in the early Seventies, the feeling is always spacious, free of melodrama. He creates a warm environment within which we can hear subtle individual voices of good

musicians who are relating to Jacques’ loosely-notated scores and verbal instructions. Sometimes the mostly calm energy level rises, as though a little breeze has sprung up to stir things around. Listening now, in the 21st Century, to a collection of those remarkable recordings, one gets the feeling of a music that’s been re-invented from zero. That’s a quality that Jacques’ work shares with other minimalist composers who were active in the 60s and 70s. Because most of the tiny quotes from pre-existing music are American, one senses that this music gives us a glimpse of an idealized, spiritual America that perhaps only an artist from another part of the world could envision. Among Jacques’ more recent compositions there are a number of lively, often playful solo pieces which have been performed and recorded by flutist Jackie Martelle, pianist Jenny Lin, and by musicians in Thailand. There are also several excellent pieces for instruments and voice commissioned by the baritone soloist and music producer Thomas Buckner. A recent piece for voice and orchestra called La Aurora de Nueva York makes references to Latin-American music and literature. And also, Jacques is a fine photographer. Some of his photographs have been the sources for artworks in the form of printed still images. One fine series of his visual artworks, entitled War, based on detailed photos of ruined American military equipment in a museum in Hanoi, has been shown in galleries in Southeast Asia and New York. Excellent journalistic photos that he took himself are included in the two volumes of Cambodian Diary. A few of his other photos can be seen here: www.mygalleryplace.com/ JacquesBekaert

I’m not even sure what an Ipod is An electronic conversation with composer Jacques Bekaert Steve Marreyt

Jacques Bekaert was born in a hospital in Bruges on 11 May 1940, a few hours after the invasion of Belgium by the Nazis. He spent about three days in Flander’s main open air museum. When I first e-mailed him last year suggesting we could communicate in Dutch, or in the West-Flemish dialect if he liked, he replied that English would be an easier way of communication. In the early sixties Bekaert set his first steps in the world of modern composition, studying with Henri Pousseur in Basel and in Brussels. In Brussels he went on to work with Pousseur at the Apelac Studio for Electronic Music. It soon became clear that Bekaert wasn’t the usual homesick Belgian, but an artist with a strong international perspective, an open vision and a craving for everything new. By the end of the sixties he met John Cage, stayed at his house at Stony Point, wrote a book about him and became a part of a school of avantgardists that circled around Mills College in California in Oakland, near San Francisco. When I discovered Jacques Bekaert’s music a couple of years ago (I come from a generation that could easily be Bekaert’s grandchildren), I was shocked by the fact that his music seemed to have been completely obliterated in his own country. Soon after that I discovered that Belgium was not much more than his country of birth, a mere biological chance operation. Following a career as a political journalist, which brought him a bit all over the world, he finally set in Bangkok in 1979 and eventually made Thailand his home. Still, in a Belgian experimental music environment that has a strong focus on both the

developments and music history in the United States, I felt urged to laud this amazing composer who sprouted from the same soil. Listening to his records on Lovely Music and Igloo, the recording for Revue OU and the new works commissioned by Thomas Buckner, I could not believe my ears. Not only have his early works a vividness that has not lost anything of its inspiring qualities; his recent works have this cheerful and naïve angle that is not common in academic composition of these days, which still make his music stand out as utterly original and overall magnificent. As a means to start the celebration I e-mailed Bekaert with some questions to get a better view on his parcours artistique. SM: In 1965 you started studying with Henri Pousseur and eventually started working at his Apelac Studio. Could you tell me a bit of those early days in Belgium and your relationship with Pousseur? JB: I applied to his classes in Basel in 1962 or ’63. I cannot remember the exact year anymore. Pousseur came right after Boulez. Darius Milhaud also worked there at that time. He used to call us “Les Cloches de Bâle” (ironically, after Louis Aragon’s novel). In French a cloche can mean both a bell and some kind of stupid guy, or girl. I met Pousseur earlier though, somewhere in the early sixties. If I remember correctly it was at the Deutsche Bibliothek in Brussels, which was very active in contemporary music. Célestin Deliège and Henri Pousseur gave frequent lectures there, and Marcelle Mercenier played recitals. I followed Pousseur to the Hochschule für Musik in Basel. One of my fellow-students in that small class was French composer Paul Méfano. After Basel, Henri invited me to work at the Apelac Studio. He introduced me to Hervé Thys, later director of the Philharmonic Society, who gave me a key of the studio and said I could use it any time in the evening. It was a great experience to have

the studio all to myself. I composed Summer Day at Stony Point (a tape commission of the Harrogate Festival) and later a version of The Day After, as well as the tape part of Pop Corner with guitarist Philip Catherine. I also composed a piece in three movements called Now, with live voice and double bass. Now was premiered in 1968 at Aldo Tambellini’s Black Gate in New York with David Behrman playing viola. SM: Was Leo Küpper still working there too at that moment? JB: Yes, Leo Küpper also worked at Apelac, and we met from time to time. I helped Pousseur with the tape for his opera Votre Faust. SM: How did you relate to Küpper’s music at that time? JB: Leo’s music was very special. He was very interested in very small sounds (he called them “pico sounds” if I remember well). He also worked with actors and some musicians. We went for lunch or dinner together from time to time. SM: How did the European network of electronic music studios function in those days? I mean, did everyone kind of know each other? Was there a lot of correspondence? Did people visit each others studios often? JB: I believe that the first generation of composers working with electronic sounds in Europe (Stockhausen, Berio, Pousseur, Karel Goeyvaerts, Bruno Maderna) were also friends and kept regular contacts. I came later and although I remember going to Köln to visit the Studio and going to a few concerts, like the premiere of Stockhausen’s Hymnen, and once meeting Berio and Maderna (in Berlin, for a convention on new music, shortly after the Wall was built) I was certainly not a friend, like I was with Henri Pousseur and Pierre Bartholomée. I also met regularly with Philippe Boesmans

when we were both young and had common friends. It is thanks to Henri Pousseur that I met David Behrman. David had been a student of Henri in Darmstadt and Brussels. When I went to New York for the first time in 1966, Henri gave me the phone number of David. And so we met and became close friends. When I returned to New York in 1968 I was invited by Charlotte Moorman to participate in her Avant Garde Festival. It was a very festive occasion, repeated successfully for many years. This is also when I met young composers like Phil Glass, Steve Reich, Anthony Braxton, Leroy Jenkins… In 1967, as I was in the Belgian Army, based in Düren (Germany), the Sonic Arts Group (Later Sonic Arts Union) came to give a concert at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. I managed to obtain a few days of leave and so met Bob Ashley and his wife Mary, Gordon Mumma and Alvin and Mary Lucier. Bob asked me to participate in the performance of Frogs. All these people became good friends afterwards.

Thanks to David Behrman, I got John’s address in Stony Point. Cage was very kind to write me, telling me it was a good idea. To his letter he joined a small manuscript. I finally opted for a kind of “Cageian” book, a box more in the spirit of his music, a printed “mobile”. John was delighted by it and invited me to meet him in Paris where he would be performing with the Cunningham Company. This is also when I met David Tudor for the first time. When I told Cage that I was planning to spend the summer in New York he suggested that I could live in his little house in Stony Point for a few weeks, an artist colony near NYC, as he would still be in Europe. David Behrman and David Tudor lived there, as well as other artists like MC Williams, Stan Vanderbeek… This is where I composed Summer Music, each piece being dedicated to someone I met that summer.

SM: In what way did these people influence your work?

SM: Could you tell me a bit about your relationship with Henri Chopin? How and when did you first meet? Was The Day After the only thing you did for Chopin and or OU? Compared to your other works that piece sounds pretty heavy. Could you tell me how it came about?

JB: I’m not sure if their music influenced me a lot, but we met often, in NYC, in California, in Belgium, in Holland, even in Thailand. I performed with them a few times. The American composer who had the strongest influence on me, and not only on my music, is certainly John Cage. I first heard his music, some pieces for prepared piano, in 1954, by chance, on a small crystal radio (poste a galène). As I had no musical education, I found it as “normal” as any other music and as soon as I was able to buy a piano (I sold my bicycle to buy a cheap piano) I prepared it. It was probably the first composition that I could play for others as I managed to record it on a reel-to-reel portable recorder. In 1968, after listening to a lot of Cage’s music, and being troubled, challenged by it, I decided to write a book about him.

JB: I met Henri Chopin in 1963 at one of the Biennales de Poésie in Knokke-Le Zoute. They took place in the Casino of Albert-Plage. Henri and Tjerk Wicky presented a poetic short film called Pêche de Nuit, using abstract paintings by Luc Peire. The rather conservative audience was incensed, and I was among the few who liked the film and applauded. Henri and I became friends, and I met him and his British wife Jean for the first time in Paris and after 1968 in England. They lived in a small village in Essex, Ingatestone. The owner of the large house was a wonderful gentleman named, quite appropriately, Human. There were a number of bedrooms, a large garden and Henri, at the suggestion of Mr. Human, organized a festival there. I was invited, and went with Philip Catherine. We met artists like Tom Philips, John Furnival, Annea

Lockwood and Hugh Davies. I was still in contact with Henri a few months before he died in 2008. Henri asked me a piece for his art review OU, which usually came with a 25 cm mono record. I gave him a copy of The Day After I made at Apelac. This is normally a live piece, using A Summer Day at Stony Point as a feed, and played through a bunch of ring modulators. It can be a rather heavy piece, especially in its mono non-concert version. Bob Ashley did a live version at Mills College, but no recording was made. It is the mono version of OU that was published in Italy by Alga Marghen. SM: What were those Biennales de Poésie like? It seems like there was something going on in Knokke in the sixties, which has now completely disappeared (except for the reenactment of EXPRMNTL that Xavier García Bardón organized a few years back). How did avantgarde artists end up there I wonder. Was it just because of its wealthy residents, or was there something else going on? JB: The Biennales de Poésie took place at the Casino of Albert-Plage. This because Mr. Nellens, owner of the Casino, liked poetry and art (and music). So not only the Casino was free, it was in September, after the season, but he also offered nice receptions with plenty of food and drinks, instant translation in some case etc. I could attend because my parents had a villa in Duinbergen where I could stay. It was the same thing for EXPRMNTL, the film festival, which usually took place in the winter. SM: How did you combine your work as a composer and journalist in those days? Is your job as a journalist the reason why so few of your work was actually published? Or was it just hard to find a publisher for that kind of work? It struck me that your music was only released on LP in the early eighties, while you had been composing for over ten years by then…

JB: I have been asked a few times how I managed both activities: journalism and composing. It is something I never thought about while I was active as a journalist and later as a diplomat. Almost the minute I discovered music (I was about 14 and living in Tubize) I wanted to compose. I had absolutely no musical training, knew close to nothing about solfège and had to check in the collection of Larousse dictionaries my parents had to find out simple things as keys, violin, viola, cello. So I composed a string quartet in G major… I never considered that this music should be performed one day, and later when I composed more seriously, it never occurred to me that it should be published. I was lucky as most of what I composed was performed, and that was good enough for me. This was long before computers and programs like Sibelius appeared. I lost most of what I composed at the time. Some of that music was performed in Belgium, and in the USA. It never occurred to me to send my music to a record or a publishing company. I am basically a lazy person. Just the idea to have to go to the post office to send a package — being a recording or a manuscript for a book — is defeating. This being said, like most lazy people I tend to be very serious about trying to do the best I can when I compose or when I write. The existence of e-mail has been a major step forward in my life and in my capacity to communicate with people. I also very much like the fact that an e-mail makes no noise when it comes. Since the sirens of my childhood, the bombings and the nasty screams of the Stukas I deeply dislike any kind of alarm, even the ringing of the telephone. I don’t have a mobile phone, and do not miss it. I’m not even sure what an Ipod is. As a journalist at first I wrote mostly about politics. Especially about American politics. It was an easy way to make money. While in the US during the summer of 1968 I asked La Cité if they would be

interested in articles about the elections, and they said yes! (this was the presidential campaign between Nixon and Humphrey). I also worked for the Belgian radio and TV. Later Hervé Thys asked me to write for a publication from time to time announcing classical concerts, books, radio programs published by the Philharmonic Society. It is about the only thing I ever wrote about music, besides an article about Morton Feldman, when he died and another one when John Cage died, both for the Bangkok Post. I find it difficult to write about music, especially my own. Journalism and composing are both insecure. I don’t mean the physical danger (I have been shot at but I had no idea I would be so I had no time to be scared) but the moral danger. It takes me a long time to compose. I need time to think about it, and when I was writing about Cambodia or Vietnam often I had no idea what exactly I would write before going to the Bangkok Post, for which I wrote a weekly column on Indochina, mostly Cambodia and Vietnam. This sounds a bit pretentious but writing about these two countries in the eighties and early nineties for a major Thai newspaper was a bit risky since it directly affected Thai national security. Both Indochinese countries were communists, considered hostile to Thailand and for a while it looked like Thailand would be the next domino to fall. I must say that no matter what I wrote, the Thai never interfered. SM: Tell me about the shooting incidents. Sounds like you have an adventure story there! JB: I can remember at least two occasions when bullets came very close. The first time was in 1976 in Porto. The communists had tried to take over by a coup. People were fed up with dictatorship. A group of communists took refuge in their headquarters on the main square of Porto and suddenly started shooting. I saw the person next to me (a female journalist I believe)

fall, and the next thing I knew I was on the ground myself. I had been hit by little pellets of a hunting riffle. Two or three people carried me to a small hospital where they removed everything pellet by pellet. I also remember somebody getting me a big glass of port to help me with the pain. The second time was in 1984 at the border of Thailand and Cambodia. Vietnamese troops had launched an assault against a non-communist base in Cambodia but very close to the border. I was there covering this for the Bangkok Post. My friend Nick Cumming Bruce (who worked for The Guardian and The Economist) and I decided to try to reach the base of the noncommunists. Suddenly the Vietnamese started a heavy artillery barrage, with shells whistling over our head. Wisely we decided we were too young to die and went back to the relative safety of the border (where a few shells fell dangerously close to us). SM: Could you tell me a bit about Transition, how you first met Taj Mahal Travelers and how that band came about. Not much is known about the band. Did you play a lot? Did you record? Is there still archival material somewhere? JB: David Behrman who knew Takehisa Kosugi (he was the leader of the group, mostly because he spoke English) wrote me a note explaining that the group was coming to Belgium, asking if I could find some gigs for them. Hervé Thys organized a concert at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, and while the group lived in a cheap place in Antwerp. Kosugi came to live with me and my wife in Brussels. This is when we decided, Kosugi and I, to start Transition (because of its transitory nature Transition would be anywhere one member of the group would be). The original members of Transition were Kosugi and Ryo Koike, Michel Herr and myself. Occasionally we were joined by another member of the Taj Mahal,

and also by Philip Catherine and Marc Moulin. We gave several concerts in Belgium, and were invited to the Ices festival in London. There is a recording of the Ices Concert. It was supposed to be published by a very small but nice company in Seattle but at the end the project never saw the light of the day. On 11 November 1972 I organized a concert called Transition West at Mills College, with Robert Ashley, David Behrman, Kathy Morton, and other members of Mills (including Phil Harmonic, Paul DeMarinis, Jill Kroesen…). Transition also performed with the Sonic Arts Union in Brussels but the program note I have does not mention the date. For Transition there was Michel Herr, Marc Moulin, Philip Catherine and myself. We played a piece by Alvin Lucier called Brussels Memory Space from 1969. After his departure from Belgium, I met Kosugi several times in the USA and France. It is also at the beginning of Transition that I met a young man who became our road manager, Marc Dachy. Today he is considered one of the world best specialists of Dada, and has published some of my texts in his review Luna Park. SM: Reading the notes on your compositions on the Summer Music 1970 LP (Lovely Music, 1979), it seems like humor played quite an important role in this work. The recordings really strike me as wittiness translated to music. How important is humor / playfulness in music? Was this a reaction against the strict rules of the traditional academic music of those times? JB: I’m not really aware of the role of humor in my music. We did have a good time during the recording of Summer Music which took place in the Concert Hall of Mills College. We all knew each other. Remember that I wrote these little pieces while living in John Cage’s house in Stony Point and John was certainly a witty man, with a good sense of humor.

SM: I especially like the last three recordings. Could you elaborate a bit on the recordings of it? It sounds like it must have been good fun in the studio. JB: I don’t remember if we had special fun with the three last pieces (20, 23 and 24 a & b). The last piece was a kind of homage to Jasper Johns and to Charles Ives who used a lot of American popular music (listen to his Symphony No. 4 for instance, or the Three Places in New England). SM: Recently, I was listening to Jenny Lin’s performances of some of your piano pieces from 2007. While they are still rooted in experimental music, could I say that they are less radical than your early / electronic work? Or would that only be a misjudgment from my part because it’s a different medium? How would you describe the evolution in your composed work? JB: Is my music becoming more conservative? Yes probably. A sign of old age or simply the evolution of contemporary music itself? And of all the instruments the piano (and maybe the harp) sounds more “traditional”. The notes are fixed, and you can listen to piano music from all over the world and it is somewhat familiar. This is probably also the influence of Pousseur, who was using more and more either quotes or elements reminiscent of music of the past. So did Berio and today many younger composers.

His music is in my images On the collaborative work of Akiko Iimura and Jacques Bekaert Xavier García Bardón

Akiko Iimura only made two films and these have barely been shown publicly. Mon Petit Album (France, 1974, 12’) and Late Lunch (USA, 1981, 30’) were both inspired by the beauty of Bekaert’s music, and they inspired original compositions by Bekaert in return. Strangely enough, the inclusion of their soundtracks on the LP published by Igloo records in 1981 is almost the only sign of existence of these two films. After a long and unsuccessful search for any possible information on these long unseen gems, we eventually got in touch with Akiko Iimura. She spontaneously offered to transfer to video her two 16 mm films, whose prints have not been preserved anywhere. Although the received DVDs showed faded-out colours and damaged soundtracks, the beauty was still there, untouched. In a dreamlike atmosphere, ripe with mysterious beauty, both works feature this special connection between Iimura’s images and Bekaert’s music. Bekaert met Akiko and her husband, the Japanese film and video artist Takahiko Iimura, thanks to Alvin Lucier in New York in 1968. They just came from Japan, he just arrived from Belgium. Akiko was a friend of Yoko Ono, she was close to Fluxus, and was then considered as one of Japan leading writers on contemporary art. As Bekaert recalls, “Alvin invited me to go with him to a performance at the Electric Circus in the East Village. He had composed the soundtrack for a film by Taka. I met Akiko and Taka again a year later in Belgium when they stayed with me. Taka had been invited to show his films (including Ai) by Baron Lambert. This took place on the top floor of

the Bank Lambert (later BrusselsLambert) after a sumptuous dinner. Taka and Akiko invited me to come with them. I was rather poor at the time, my ‘apartment’, 18 Rue de Quatrecht, was considered a kind of slum by many people, but to me it was a great place, full of second hand books, my own kingdom. My rent was about 600 BEF a month and my landlady was a very kind Flemish teacher.” In New York and in Brussels, Jacques played a few tapes of his own music to Akiko, triggering new images that led to a fruitful collaboration. “I was so attracted to his music... It was unknown to me”, Akiko recalls. In 1972 Takahiko Iimura spent a year in Berlin for a residency at DAAD (the German Academy Exchange Service) before moving to Paris, where Akiko joined him and where they stayed for a year or two. “For a while Taka and Akiko lived in Paris, rue de Charonne, where I went frequently for talks and wonderful Japanese food (Akiko made great Shawan Mushi). It’s there that she filmed most of Mon Petit Album”, Bekaert remembers from his account. He lived in Brussels then but frequently traveled to Paris for work. “I would see him briefly, just by chance”, says Akiko. “He was always moving. He was very active and did various things. He was writing books, he was making music. His sound was so beautiful. I really liked it. That’s why I made that kind of film”. A short description of Mon Petit Album appeared in the out-ofcompetition program of Knokke-leZoute’s EXPRMNTL 5 festival, where the film premiered on the first day of 1975, shortly before the Iimuras moved to the US. It reads: “This film consists of a series of portraits; friends, flowers, animals, other natures. All those were photographed in the way that many impressionist painters did on their paintings. Music was composed separately and then coordinated.” As Akiko was shooting and editing, Jacques taped some sounds and

assembled them together at the Apelac Studio. Following a rather Cageian strategy, none of them knew what the other was doing. Images and sounds came to be connected at the end of the process only, Jacques’ floating composition opening new spaces for Akiko’s superimposed images. Nevertheless, as Akiko points out, she knew the music as she was inspired by Jacques’ approach: “Before filming, I had an image of the music. His music is in my images.” Knokke gave the first but also the last important screening to Mon Petit Album. Akiko laughs: “I feel that it was the most successful night for me. And after that nothing happened. The film was not shown publicly so much”. Late Lunch came a few years later, in New York, when a Japanese friend of Akiko, a TV journalist, gave her some pictures he had found. One of these would become the very reason for the film. “I don’t know where he got them but these were private images. I just wanted to use that specific photograph, the very old picture of an unknown woman”. A picture of haunting beauty. For the soundtrack, Akiko asked Jacques again. “I told him: ‘I’m making a film for your music’. ‘How long will it be?’ he asked. I said it would be about 30 min, and he made the music for that length of time”. “I used leftovers from the recording of Summer Music.” Bekaert explains, “I put it together using very simple equipment at the Blind Lemon (Berkeley), a small performance place where George Lewis, Rae Imamura and I performed, where also I had my first photo exhibition, called Cheap Shots in 1979. The title came simply from the fact that Akiko and I had a working lunch and she was late for lunch. The movie was premiered at a concert at Mills College, then went to various other places. Mostly in the US and Japan”. Like its predecessor, Late Lunch only had a few screenings, mainly for friends and people involved. Then Akiko became too busy to make any other film,

working as the editor in chief for a Japanese community paper in New York, OCS News — to which Jacques actually contributed as a journalist, writing on Cambodia and Vietnam. Akiko concludes: “I am not a filmmaker and it is difficult for me to talk about them from an artistic point of view but in my films, all images are dedicated to Jacques’ music. I made those films for his music.” Based on interviews with Akiko Iimura (on the phone, September 24, 2013) and Jacques Bekaert (by e-mail, October 4, 2013).

Possible écart : une pochette pour un album de Jacques Bekaert Alain Géronnez

En 1977, je commençais à réaliser quelques pochettes pour la (alors petite) firme Igloo. Ami du fondateur d’Igloo records, Jean-Louis Godefroid, qui allait fonder Contretype — la première galerie photographique à Bruxelles — et avait réalisé deux premières pochettes, m’avait présenté à Daniel Sotiaux, et ce fut le début d’une relation qui durera dix pochettes, jusqu’en 1983, date où le onzième projet, un disque de Galeska Moravioff, ne vit pas le jour, et que, la firme Igloo devenant plus grande, peut-être moins expérimentale, et se lançant alors dans le jazz, mes méthodes très artisanales n’étaient plus assez pragmatiques pour répondre à ses besoins. Entre-temps, j’avais réalisé les pochettes du disque Igloo 4 (Bellenorgel, GodfriedWillem Raes), 7 (Leo Küpper), 8 (Jacques Bekaert), 9 (Memory Stop, John Van Rymenant), 10 (Christian Leroy et Fred Van Hove, Au pavillon de la garde), 11 (Composition-Improvisation, Logos Duo — G.W. Raes et Moniek Darge), 12 (Minable Music-Hall, Jacques Lizène), 13 (Henri Chopin), 15 (Gest, Groupe d’expression sonore de Tournai) et 2 (ré-édition du disque-objet d’Arthur Petronio, sans l’objet conçu par Petronio, mais dont j’utilisai les éléments, rephotographiés-remixés). Pour une partie de ces pochettes, je suis naturellement parti du matériau visuel fourni par les artistes, mais dans d’autres cas j’ai eu les mains libres (8, 10, 13 entièrement). Le cas du disque de Jacques Bekaert est particulier. La collaboration avec Daniel Sotiaux était excellente, et un jour il m’a demandé, si je le voulais, de proposer quelque chose qui méritait

d’être édité. Tout de suite j’ai proposé Jacques Bekaert, dont je connaissais le groupe Transition (Jacques Bekaert, Michel Herr, Ryo Koike, Takehisa Kosugi), Bekaert qui avait édité une plaquette sur John Cage (que, étudiant à l’époque, j’étais trop fauché pour m’offrir), et dont j’étais le fervent auditeur des émissions sur RTB 3 à la fin des années 70, L’ascension de la musique par la face nord, qui dressait un tableau très vivant des avant-gardes musicales américaines, dont je ne connaissais alors que les plus grands noms. Je découvrais ainsi Harry Partch, Alvin Lucier, Robert Ashley et bien d’autres par la voix de Bekaert (qui continuera ensuite à intervenir, sporadiquement, dans les émissions de Marc Moulin, était-ce Cap de nuit, King Kong ou Radio-Crocodile ? sur RTB 1, nous parlant de Gavin Bryars, de La nuit américaine de Truffaut ou du chant des baleines…). Daniel Sotiaux contacta Bekaert, qui était alors correspondant pour le journal La Cité à Bangkok, je crois, et qui se réjouit de ce projet de disque, qui dut paraître en 1981, peu de temps après l’autre album de Jacques Bekaert, Summer Music 1970, paru chez Lovely Music en 1979 aux Etats-Unis. Il est à noter qu’une partie du matériau musical de notre album remonte lui aussi à l’été 68, passé par Jacques Bekaert à Stony Point, en communauté avec David Behrman, Shigeko Kubota et d’autres, au cœur de cette avant-garde américaine tellement essentielle. À l’époque du disque Igloo, il n’y avait ni personal computers ni internet, et tout se faisait par courrier traditionnel. J’avais proposé à Jacques Bekaert, pour la pochette, de m’envoyer des images qu’il rencontrait en Asie, avec l’idée d’en faire une sorte de photo-montage, significatif des stimuli visuels du musicien-journaliste, mais il déclina l’offre, arguant d’un manque de temps, et me proposant de me sentir libre de faire ce que je voulais. Là, on rentrait dans une sorte d’aléatoire cagien, et je me suis dit

que je pourrais partir du rapport, de l’accord, entre John Cage et Merce Cunningham, précisant que le musicien et le chorégraphe feraient leur partie respective du travail sans chercher aucun rapport entre la musique et la chorégraphie, ce qui fut certainement l’idée la plus moderne qui pouvait arriver au spectacle de la seconde moitié du vingtième siècle. Je me mis donc à réunir une imagerie à ma façon, et tentai de l’articuler en une composition s(h)onorable. Pour cet article, j’ai retrouvé trois diapositives en bande, mes premiers essais sans doute, que je vous livre ici. L’ensemble des dias qui composeront la pochette définitive y était déjà choisi, et j’essayais différentes combinaisons sur une table lumineuse, ayant découpé une lucarne adaptée dans une feuille noire mobile, et procédant par multi-expositions avec mon appareil Minolta SRT 303, qui le permettait très facilement. Ensuite, j’ai opté pour une projection successive des mêmes images sur un mur, ce qui permettait des anamorphoses plus vivantes des images, toujours réalisées en multi-exposition, probablement avec un appareil moyen format emprunté (je ne retrouve pas pour l’instant ces documents, enfouis quelque part dans dans trente-sept ans d’archives foisonnantes, mais qui donneront la face avant de la pochette publiée). J’ai réalisé la typographie du nom Jacques Bekaert à la gouache de retouche, au pinceau, sur une feuille de vinyle Kodatrace, et l’ai tirée sur papier sensible, sous mon agrandisseur Durst. Le tapuscrit de Jacques Bekaert, pour les notes du dos de la pochette, a été photocomposé mais j’ai re-photographié certains détails comprenant ratures et corrections manuelles de l’auteur, le genre de ratures qu’on trouve fréquemment sur des partitions originales des compositeurs, ou sur les manuscrits des écrivains, que j’ai ensuite mixées avec quelques images en noir et blanc, photographiées sur une vieille télévision (un appareil que je

jetterai aux ordures durant la guerre du Golfe, excédé par le traitement de l’information comme un feuilleton juteux, et que je ne remplacerai jamais). L’expérience de ce disque de Jacques Bekaert, elle, est irremplaçable, et je suis heureux que cet artiste musicologue ressorte aujourd’hui de l’oubli où tombent trop facilement les gens partagés entre différentes activités — et dans le cas précis de Bekaert, entre différents lieux, de l’extrême-Orient à l’extrême Occident.

A winter’s evening, Poughkeepsie Mark Harwood

I first heard Jacques Bekaert’s self titled LP on the Belgian label Igloo in Poughkeepsie, upstate New York at Graham Lambkin and Adris Hoyos’ house. It was a great night, they had everything in place for my visit. A crate of Pilsner, some very lush red wine, Chinese pears and some whiskey to ride out the oncoming hours. On arrival they prepared a Cuban feast which went down as well as the music and banter later on. Given that myself and Graham are obsessed with music of the uncommon and these unfamiliar angles that appear when excavation overrides media he had planned a listening session for us, once the children were put to bed. Lambkin’s knowledge of music towers over mine. I can honestly say I know no-one who knows such a wide rich variety of (unusual) music. In reference to the music of choice this evening Lambkin asked: “What flavour”? At this point in time I had been obsessing over some of those old European art records, Beuys, Christiansen, etc... I wanted more of that. I think we started with that Dieter Roth, Gerhard Rühm & Oswald Wiener record, the first Selten Gehörte Musik release — 3. Berliner Dichterworkshop. That was bonkers. A really strange record. Obviously fun, certainly strange. One of these absolute anomalies made by three smart people being absolute idiots. It tickled my grits, I got all worked up. I had never heard anything like it and this I like. I like this a lot. There were some other records played, Lawrence Weiner’s Niets Aan Verloren / Nothing To Lose was one I recall. A break from the overt strangeness was supplied by an Edgar Froese record, the one with

synths and water. The wine flowed, the whiskey began. “Poughkeepsie is a city in the state of New York, United States, which serves as the county seat of Dutchess County. Poughkeepsie is located in the Hudson Valley midway between New York City and Albany. The name derives from a word in the Wappinger language, roughly U-puku-ipi-sing, meaning ‘the reed-covered lodge by the little-water place’, referring to a spring or stream feeding into the Hudson River south of the present downtown area.” At some point Graham pulled out the Bekaert LP. “You know this one?” I had not. “Ok, we go with this one then”. I sat back, he put on the vinyl and from the outset we were on to a good thing. Starting with the B-Side, A Summer Day at Stony Point started. These analogue tones. We all know them, in recent years everyone who twiddled a filter and a dial in the fifties or sixties is acclaimed as some kind of frontier hero. Whatever, I am not interested in this. What I am interested in is ideas and this track had more pouring from the speakers than most. It was unlike any other electronic music I had encountered. So simple, so strange and alien. Even the most extreme music becomes comfortable. People / scenes / ideas / movements fall into tropes. The design once laid out is repeated verbatim. This is the history of post-Cageian music. There are some genuine voices, clear, distinct and self assured. Then there are loads of token-istic representations of a pre-exisiting form. This is fine, I understand why this is the case, I assume you do also. You. So what makes this record so unique? “Stony Point is a triangle-shaped town in Rockland County, New York, United States. It is part of the New York City Metropolitan Area. The town is located north of the town of Haverstraw, east and south of Orange County, New York, and west of the Hudson River and

Westchester County. The population was 15,059 at the 2010 census. The name of the town is derived from a prominent projection into the Hudson River.” A Late Lunch. This title infers the lunch came late. An unusual study of audio portrait is this. Not a lot happens, one could say. On listening a lot happens. It just happens that little of any dynamic consequence happens. The instrumental passage at the start is subtle, mournful, never intrusive. There is a warmth to the recording which fits it into the environment of the recording itself along with the one in which it is played back. The instrumental passage leads into the sounds of the environment. Distant voices, movement and atmosphere are all present. There is a mood of relaxed social activity, not unlike the one I was engaged with this evening. At a point the instruments re-enter, the chatter of play. Slow and inconsequential. The instruments move on as the world enters again. A reawakening to the world as it is. Environment and composition as one (this line can also summarize the entire record) the artificial, the human, the pre-recorded and the recorded all appear in a stunning combination of audio photography. A Summer Day At Stony Point. The electronics are sublime. This is not the electronic show play that in time became the rigueur du jour with this form of music. These simple, otherworldy modulations of raw electronic tones. A beautiful thing. The shifts of pitch, these wisps of warning, these primeval tones. There are recordings of Bekaert that exist prior to this, as published by Henri Chopin in his essential Revue OU series. These works are startling but also familiar. There is a knowing understanding of early electronic works (possibly David Tudor’s works for electronics) with their frenetic display of chaotic / natural electronic skwarks, bubbles etc... With the Igloo release it seems that Bekaert found a means of harnessing this unwieldy

gear resulting in a unique perspective. There is a calmer understanding of the wild frequencies that abound in such equipment. The cross fading from machine to nature is impressive. Analogue synthesis slyly shifts into organic matter. The combination of the natural and the artificial is so astute as shrill electronic timbres morph into the searing sounds of cicada’s. A game of artificial and natural mimicry. Towards the end, the human voice enters, singing Black is the colour of my true loves hair. Again, nothing is unfamiliar here, this song is known. But this song enters beautifully and unexpectedly, it’s sudden entry is surprising and haunting and sits as an early example of overt plunderphonics. It is the alchemy of these combined elements (electronics, field recordings and found sound) that ensures a confidence which expresses itself as unfamiliar. As something of note. Mon Petit Album (a great title). Here we take off into the cicada again, a field recording. But what else? The instruments are back. In a way. Never overbearing the timbres blend in with the environment. The ideas on this track combine those laid out in the two prior. At what point is the creator creating and at which point is creation being? Babbling water overtakes a sad violin, that of Takehisa Kosugi’s, he of Taj Mahal Travellers, he who created music for Merce Cunningham’s performances. Again, a snapshot. This is not studio and it is not field. There are sounds of life, reality and time. A performance occurs. Someone has created. People are doing. The world exists. Voices enter over an unnatural sound. Jacques Bekaert’s extraordinary LP was made in the middle of the 20th Century American experimental milieu, amongst many of the seminal thinkers of this age. However, it stands alone. The use of electronics, field recording, composition along with recontextualized recordings are all discreetly

placed amongst the grooves of this record. It’s a stunning object inside and out (the artwork!). These moments are often neglected. Life moves on, people alter their reality. Jobs, journalism, the balance of work, pay and thought. Jacques Bekaert did not posit himself aggressively as an artist or musician. We understand he moved into a field. Cicada’s are everywhere.

Beach street slow afternoon Dedicated to David Behrman Jacques Bekaert

We drank red wine and said very little for a while it was a solid red. I bought it from Steve’s, said David. I always go there. A California red, with long lasting harmonics. A wine for a slow afternoon. Peace can accommodate silence. It takes time and grace to savor the pleasure of meeting again. A police car left the station across the street, sirens screaming. It is such a beautiful day, said David. We sat and just enjoyed our happiness. Such a long trip, he added. And here you are. Then we talked. Slowly, as if we were learning a language, our language. Friends have their own way to say the world is round. We talked of past lives and present worries. We had big hearts, we loved them all. That much we remembered from our youth. It had been such a surprise, he explained, that morning, when he arrived from California and found Beatrice here, with her long legs. We had big hearts. And searched loves to match our dreams. It has been such a long trip, I told David. So many times across so many waters. We counted cities, told ourselves stories of the early years. Like meeting at Dave’s corner, and later using a picture of Terri drinking egg cream for a Belgian magazine. But Dave’s corner is no more. Yes it was a lovely day. And we seem to always come back to New York. It is time to have another lunch at the Oyster Bar I said. An old habit, a ritual, a pleasure. A meal to reassure us that friendship does not suffer from our separated lives. The telephone rang. It was a man from Boston asking for my biography. In case I write a notice about you in a music dictionary, he explained. How strange I told David that somebody I never met is aware of my most fugitive music. And calls me here, the precise minute of the day of the year I came back. David said it was all very natural. It suddenly felt like too many years had gone by. We had another glass of wine. Smiled at the bottle, thought of California. There was little need for words. We had both been there. I am so glad you came, David said. Another police car left the station. There is no place like New York in the fall. Our world was at peace. Its fragility was apparent from every noise, from the distant echoes of our own music. 17 November 1990

Colophon

Contributors

Published on the occasion of the tribute to Jacques Bekaert organized by KRAAK and BOZAR CINEMA at the Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels, 8 November 2013.

David Behrman (1937) is an influential avant-garde composer based in the USA. He was one of the founding members of Sonic Arts Union, an experimental music collective that also included Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier and Gordon Mumma. In the seventies he was a co-director of the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College in California which he still frequents to this day as a visiting artist and professor. Behrman also has a strong connection to the Merce Cunningham Dance company and is still active as a composer and performer. Many of his works can be found through acknowledged labels such as Lovely Music, Alga Marghen and Experimental Intermedia.

Publication Coordinators: Xavier García Bardón (BOZAR CINEMA), Steve Marreyt (KRAAK) Additional Researches: Bart Daems, Bruno Roelants Design: Félix Gastout Thank you: Jacques Bekaert, David Behrman, Thomas Buckner, Akiko Iimura, Alain Géronnez, Mark Harwood, Igloo Records (Christine Jottard, Rémi Planchenault, Daniel Sotiaux), Guy Marc Hinant, Charlemagne Palestine, Pip Chodorov, Daan Vandewalle, Raymond Beegle, Gladys Serrano, Niels Latomme, Bettina Saerens, Albert Dethier. Edition: 200 copies. BOZAR CEO — Artistic Director: Paul Dujardin Deputy Artistic Director: Adinda Van Geystelen BOZAR CINEMA Coordinator & Film Programmer: Juliette Duret Film Curator: Xavier García Bardón Producer: Pascale Valcke BOZAR ARCHIVES Coordinator: Veerle Soens Archives and Library Officer: Bart Daems Technician: Bruno Roelants

Steve Marreyt (1983) has worked as a concert promoter and editor at the Belgian off-stream organization Kraak for the past seven years. He is one of the founders of the Funeral Folk collective and its psychedelic jam band Silvester Anfang, recorded solo under his Edgar Wappenhalter moniker and plays different instruments in various musical projects. Lately, while studying Literature & Linguistics at Ghent University, he has been focusing mainly on his writings. A first volume of poetry entitled Nadapter is scheduled to be published in 2014. Xavier García Bardón (1976) works at BOZAR CINEMA, where he curates programs focusing on the connections of film and video with other practices. Artists who have been presented in this context include Henri Chopin, Sandra Gibson & Luis Recoder, Harun Farocki, Makino Takashi, Peter Kubelka, Spencer Clark and Guy

Sherwin, among others. He is the author of various essays and programs exploring the history of the Knokke-le-Zoute EXPRMNTL film festival. He teaches at École de Recherche Graphique, Brussels. Alain Géronnez (1951) is an artist living in Brussels whose multidisciplinary practice combines images and conceptual processes. From 1974 to 1987, he was a member of Groupe 50/04 together with Charles Dijck, Réginald Stokart, Gerard Thèves and Paul Van Ré. In the early 1980s, he designed a series of record covers for the Brusselsbased Igloo Records (including the album of Jacques Bekaert). Géronnez is the author of various books, radio programs and articles. He teaches at École de Recherche Graphique, Brussels. Mark Harwood (1972) was born in Ferntree Gully and lives in England. As a writer, publisher and musician Harwood engages in the excavation and exploration of the past and present as a single identity. He records under the name Astor and publishes books and music as Penultimate Press. Texts are published in their original language.