Charlemagne Palestine

‘My best performances are the ones I can never remember,’ Charlemagne Palestine told The Guardian in a 2010 interview. Born Charles Martin, the eccentric experimentalist was a key figure on New York's avant-garde music scene during the '60s and '70s, when he gained notoriety for intense, trance-like performances that conjured dense drones and overtones on piano, voice, carillon bells and church organ. Some called it minimalism; he preferred ‘maximalism’. Yet while peers such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass went on to attain far wider success, Palestine would become disillusioned with music-making, abandoning it altogether at one point to focus on visual art involving his collection of stuffed toys. Now in his mid-60s, he's finally making his Japan debut this month, playing solo piano at WWW in what promises to be an unforgettable gig – if not necessarily for its creator.