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
Last on
Music Played
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Black Monks of Mississippi
Do not pass me by
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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.
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