3. Rome, Open City
So the thing about Rome, Open City is that especially for the time it’s an interesting combination of scripted and not-scripted scenes. So do you have a particular affinity, as a musician, with this kind of semi-improvising?
Well, I would always, always, improvise I wouldn’t even call it semi. And I would always do everything in one take. I despise the second takes. So, it had to be right. And things like that certainly did influence me and impressed me.
But also, I like Rome, Open City because I was a sort of grandchild of immigrants, and the First World War brought us to America also, the other side of my family who come from Belarus, we were thrown out of Europe and came to Ahm-er-i-ca [in his best West Side Story accent]. Since around 1971, I’ve been going regularly to Europe and the first place I actually did my first performances in Europe, with a whole group of New Yorkers and Americans, was Rome! There was a gallery, it still exists, called L’Attico and the director Fabio Sargentini invited people like La Monte Young and Simone Forti, the dance artist and that’s where I actually met Philip Glass, Terry Riley… I met all of them in Rome.
