Ghédalia Tazartès and Rhys Chatham first met in New York’s Lower East Side at CBGB’s in 1977. By then, a skid-row bar had risen to become a world-famous bar for punk and new wave, a far cry from the traditional American rural music that the owner Hilly Kristal originally envisaged promoting. Television and Patti Smith were among its early performers, followed by the likes of Blondie, The Ramones, Talking Heads and, in 1977, The Damned, the first British punk band to play in America.
Tazartès and Chatham would not meet again until 2018 when their mutual agent asked them to play a private show together in a Parisian garden at a house where American jazz saxophonist Steve Lacy once lived in the 1990s. Two Men In A Boat is a recording of that moment, alongside music recorded at another show at La Semaine du Bizarre festival in Montreuil, France, a year later, mixed with a couple of studio sessions; eight tracks in total.
The liner notes open: “The Unexpected union of the most distant emotions, the junction of poles that seem opposite but that singularly, perfectly join once another: it is something approaching this, the feeling that some contradiction has been solved that dominates this recording of two musicians who inherited the same tradition but followed different paths, off the beaten tracks, on their own.”
It is a blessing that their agent decided to pull them together when he did, as Tazartes sadly passed away in February 2021. Record label Sub-Rosa:
“The beauty of all this, as well as its sorrowful brutality, is even more powerful and stupefying since Ghédalia’s sudden departure. Because retrospectively, not only is this recording the trace of a rare moment in a Parisian garden, it also summons a ghost, that of a loved one that is gone, and of his voice, which is fully alive here.”
This was probably the last music Tazartès recorded.
The album is available on digital and Limited Edition Clear Vinyl which is currently showing as sold out on Bandcamp.
Recorded in the garden, listen to Jardin de Simone’ Acte 3 below; throughout the album, the relationship between Tazartès singing Chatham’s electric guitar, trumpet and flute are extraordinarily beautiful.
Ghédalia Tazartès recorded more than 20 albums since 1974. Public performances were uncommon, as were collaborations until 2018 when he took the decision to stop playing solo and to collaborate with other musicians again: Maya Dunietz, Rhys Chatham, Chris Corsano and Dennis Tyfus, Quentin Rollet and Jérôme Lorichon.
His Bandcamp bio reads: Ghédalia Tazartès, born in Paris, 1947 of Spanish Jewish parents from Thessaloniki, is an autodidact, playing the accordion, Tibetan bowl, percussion, flutes, tapes. The voice is his main instrument. He sings, speaks, in different languages, real or invented. He uses it like a shaman to create a unique music. He worked for dance, theatre, film, and played worldwide. 20 records are out since 1974.
Order the album here: https://subrosalabel.bandcamp.com/album/two-men-in-a-boat