Bang on a Can

"I met Giacinto Scelsi in 1975 when I first went to Rome," says cellist Frances-Marie Uitti from her home in Amsterdam. "I was playing a concert of the Second Viennese School, Webern pieces for piano and cello, which all together last about two minutes. In shuffled this man, quite small, with intense blue eyes under a mountain of furs. He came up to me and said, 'Do you play well?' I said, 'You will hear me, albeit very fleetingly.' He felt I was on the same spiritual path, so he invited me to his house to hear his compositions. That first time I heard it, the music put me into a complete panic. I felt off balance, but it was, at the same time, an amazing, spiritual elevation. We had daily contact for fifteen years and endless talks about his music. Scelsi wrote Et maintenant, c'est a vous de jouer for Fernando Grillo and me. It means, 'And now, it is for you to play,' in the spiritual sense of play--now it's for you to be in the flow, above yourself. The piece is a great meditation for the deep instruments. Scelsi often said he considered himself a channel, a filter for the higher sources through musical means to reach people. He reached that channel state through meditation, which he did for many years, and in this state of revelation, he would play and write his music. He considered the music not his but given to him."