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Theaster Gates

Michael Berkeley鈥檚 guest is American artist Theaster Gates. With Scott Joplin, Joseph Boulogne, Rachmaninoff and gospel music.

Theaster Gates is a potter, a sculptor, a film-maker, a curator of black history, a real estate developer and a professor of fine art in Chicago, where he lives - and where he鈥檚 also transformed a whole run-down area near the university. When he was made a professor in 2007, he bought a derelict bank for a dollar, tore out the urinals, cut them up and sold them off at five thousand dollars each as artworks 鈥 thereby raising enough money to create a large new art centre. That was just the beginning, as he explains. Gates鈥檚 art and installation work is shown all over the world, and current projects include a library for Obama and this year鈥檚 Serpentine Pavilion building. As his recent show at the Whitechapel revealed, his work is ambitious and provocative - he takes pots and deconstructs them so that they鈥檙e exploding, back to the original clay. He films his work in dream-like spaces - a huge abandoned factory, for instance, full of broken bricks and haunting music, including his own singing.

Theaster Gates is also a musician, the founder of a group called The Black Monks of Mississippi, which aims to rescue old songs from the black South. He brings Michael Berkeley a playlist that includes Scott Joplin, Joseph Boulogne, Rachmaninoff and gospel music sung by Leontyne Price.

A Loftus Media production for 成人快手 Radio 3
Produced by Elizabeth Burke

Available now

38 minutes

Last on

Sun 27 Feb 2022 12:00

Music Played

  • Black Monks of Mississippi

    Do not pass me by

  • Scott Joplin

    The Cascades

    Performer: Joshua Rifkin.
  • Chevalier de Saint-Georges Joseph Bologne

    Violin Concerto no.9 in G major (2nd mvt: Largo)

    Performer: Takako Nishizaki. Orchestra: K枚lner Kammerorchester. Conductor: Helmut M眉ller鈥怋r眉hl.
  • William Grant Still

    Land of superstition (Africa)

    Orchestra: Fort Smith Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: John Jeter.
  • Claude Debussy

    The Snow is Dancing (Children's Corner)

    Performer: Alain Plan猫s.
  • Sergey Rachmaninov

    The Isle of the Dead

    Orchestra: Russian National Orchestra. Conductor: Mikhail Pletnev.
  • Florence Price

    Nimble Feet (Dances in the Canebrakes)

    Orchestra: Chicago Sinfonietta. Conductor: Mei-Ann Chen.

Broadcast

  • Sun 27 Feb 2022 12:00

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