alva noto + michael nyman

The first collaborative work of artists/musicians Michael Nyman and Carsten Nicolai aka alva noto is based on Michael Nyman’s 1977 piece Pretty Talk for George Brecht. The challenge here was to reinterpret, reread and musically/visually overwrite a forty-year old piece which Nyman originally created during his experimental phase on a suggestion by then recently deceased Fluxus artist George Brecht. The original piece used material from a record put out by a bird-food company to help customers teach their pet birds to talk. This 7'' Flexi Disc played short sentences spoken by a Mrs Mattie Williams to encourage her pet and the replies from Sparkie Williams, the world champion of talking birds in his day. George Brecht sent Michael Nyman these recordings and suggested that he turn them into a libretto for an opera. Michael Nyman and Carsten Nicolai found this piece in Nyman’s archives when they met up in 2007 to think about ways of collaborating. They decided to reuse it, and in the course of further explorations into archives and museums discovered a complex web of meanings and references which serves as the basis for the new piece, to be performed by Carsten Nicolai and Michael Nyman in person.