Champ d' Action

In the late 1960s, the United States produced a considerable number of artists who wanted to break the mould to which music seemed condemned. At the same time as Jimi Hendrix was punching a hole in the inaccessible American national anthem with his plectrum, John Cage was presenting work that was more than just an interpretation of a score. 'Jimi and Johnny', or two extremes in the same emancipation movement, in which music did not refer only to itself or its established contexts. In its place there was a struggle for openness and freer association and for reflection on an external world. Today, a new generation of artists is appearing to find more of a connection with the late 1960s rather than with the narrow academic music movement of the 1980s and 1990s. 'Power Flower' follows these lines of force and draws unusual cross-connections through current demarcations of genre and era. In a concert programme that is anything but conventional, the keynote is the 'power' which once sounded so forceful and which does so once again in our own era.