45. In Memoriam, Joel Chadabe

Sharon Kanach

The inimitable Joel Chadabe (1938–2021): friend, colleague, proverbial big brother for so many.1 The one and only person I have ever known who never pronounced the words “no” or “impossible.”

In this tribute, we hear from some of the people most touched by you: Bill Blakeney, Mike Kupietz, Lori Freedman, Peter Beyls, Roger Reynolds—in either words or music—or both.2

What better occasion to render homage than in the Meta-Xenakis celebration, as Xenakis too would have been right there, had he been able, in recognizing and giving thanks for everything you did to champion his music: from releasing the first CD of his electronic works on your EMF label, to all the concerts and events you organized over the years featuring his work in North America.3

When, in 2017, at the Xenakis Project of the Americas, we toyed with the idea of creating an oral history around Xenakis in America, you enthusiastically volunteered to be our “guinea pig” and do a pilot interview, with Olga Touloumi, Laura Cocks, and Anne Lanzilotti.4 Several significant excerpts from that hour-long interview are rendered public here for the first time, supporting the Chadabe motto: “Our mission is to create a gift of knowledge for future generations.”

Media 45.1 In Memoriam Joel Chadabe. Video by Sharon Kanach and Daniel Teige. © 2022 Xenakis Project of the Americas (XPA) (46 minutes).
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12434/5d01db28