CHUCK VAN ZYL: LIVE CONCERT PERFORMANCE
After decades on the Electronic Music scene Chuck van Zyl is credited with an impressive range of substantial live appearances, collaborations and album releases. Realized in the specific poetry of the Berlin-School of Kosmische Musik his creations draw on a unique understanding of texture, atmosphere and scale. With its deep-space gateways and brilliant sequencer breakdowns, from the heights of heedless improvisation on down to its quietly consuming fields, his work opens interior thought zones of sparking deliberation.
Spontaneously composed in the moment performances by Chuck van Zyl evoke the sense of discovery first heard in early pieces by Jean-Michel Jarre, Kraftwerk, Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream. Offering a Sci-Fi sense of wonder his recitals are uniquely designed for the informed listener and their journey within. To riders of this rare aural plain his music is the perfect cerebral soundtrack. Somewhere between its mysterious sense of inwardness and celestial yearning audiences will find room to contemplate the cosmos.
Gliding the spaceways, Chuck van Zyl presents pulsing passages of rhythmic flight. Slow chords hold forth, while cycling sequencer notes echo out under lithe keyboard leads. As synthesizer harmonies rise and fall, in passages dark and light, an unexpected beauty emerges. It is in this remarkable realm that we are asked to give in to the sensation of sound and connect with our inner stillness.
Perhaps best known for the past 45+ years as host of Star’s End - one of the world's most successful radio programs of Spacemusic - or as founder of The Gatherings - Philadelphia's premiere concert series of innovative music - Chuck van Zyl has also been producing his own electronic realizations, in collaboration and solo, since the mid-1980s. He has played live at a variety of venues and issued numerous studio works and concert recordings - all in service to an enduring impulse for expression.
The new release The Rotunda: 9 March 2025 (sales of which benefit The Rotunda) represents the diverse sonic terrain he is capable of achieving in the concert setting - the issuing of which coincides with the Sunday 15 March 2026 event at The Rotunda.
This event will also include video artists Neil Cippon and Samara Talkin. Generating projections of original, ever-evolving graphics onto the features of The Rotunda staging space, their visual output will align with the improvised live musical expressions conjured by Chuck van Zyl.
Admission is FREE