“The Sleep Concert has been one of the dominant threads in my musical journey through life. It marked my first solo concert ever, in January 1982, in the lounge of a Stanford University dormitory. It became a sort of trademark for me, even as I explored a range of dynamic music throughout my career.
Occasionally I feel an urge to return to this slow-motion core of my creative heart, and occasionally the world comes back to remind me that I will always be connected to sonic explorations at the edges of perception, trance consciousness, dreams, altered states, communal ritual.
I returned to making all-night music when the Unsound Festival invited me to perform a sleep concert in Krakow Poland, October 2013. This would be my first sleep concert in ten years. I decided to create new textural soundscapes to use in this performance, to reinvigorate the concept for a new generation, a new millennium. After spending at least six months developing long evolving textures for the performance in Krakow, I proceeded to hone the material into a new long-form work, a sequel to the 7-hour long Somnium from 2001.” Robert Rich about his album Perpetual which will be performed during a unique festival of sleep concerts at the Fonderie Kugler in Geneva.
This festival called Dreams & Illusions invites the people of Geneva to experience the sound in its capacity to make us dream. Every night between April the 5th and the 8th, several artists will come rock your nights in order to take you somewhere really far. The festival is organised by the association Bamba Triste / Fonderie Kugler and is a tribute to Robert Rich. Up to you to take your pj or not. But for one week, you won’t be sleeping home.
Photography © Yann H. Andersen, “Sleep concert” by Robert Rich at the Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center
From April 5th until the 8th, doors open at 10pm, performance starts at 10.30pm
Fonderie Kugler, 4bis rue de la Truite, 1205 Geneva
Price: 15.- (subscribe by email, link below)
Saturday, April 9th, closing event from 8pm to 2am
Price: 20.- (on spot)
