A life played twice

Guy Livingston heard his first performance of “Ballet mecanique” a decade ago in Amsterdam. Although this violent, bizarre piece of music mesmerized the pianist, it was the discovery of its composer’s life that completed the seduction.

Since then, Livingston has all but channeled George Antheil -- a self-described “bad boy of music” -- and made a career out of resurrecting the man and his work.

In fact, when Livingston comes to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art tonight, it will be in the guise of Antheil, a pianist as well as a composer who was born in Trenton, N.J., in 1900 and, by his early 20s, was an influential figure in the European avant-garde.

At the museum, Livingston will perform both music and scenes from the composer’s life. The performance is scheduled to coincide with the release of Livingston’s new CD, “George Antheil: The Lost Sonatas.”

Slender, with flaming hair and blond eyebrows, Livingston, 35, can recount a stream of anecdotes and tall tales from Antheil’s life while perched on the edge of a chair laughing, singing and gesturing expansively.

“I’m not an actor. I’m a pianist,” he says.

“I wouldn’t do Beethoven like that. But to do Antheil seems natural.”

Charles Amirkhanian, artistic and executive director of the nonprofit San Francisco organization Other Minds, which promotes Antheil’s music, says it’s fitting that Livingston should do Antheil -- especially in Los Angeles, where the composer spent the last part of his life.

“When he’s on stage, it’s as if the mischievous side has been reincarnated,” Amirkhanian says. “Guy impresses me with his incredible energy, and he is an astonishing player. He’s an unconventional virtuoso.” (Livingston previously recorded “Don’t Panic! 60 Seconds for Piano,” which contains 60 one-minute premieres by composers from 18 countries.)

An unorthodox approach to music is not the only parallel between the men. Both came from small towns in the United States. And half a century later, Livingston -- like Antheil -- moved to Paris as a 22-year-old with eyes and ears tuned to music and adventure. But where Livingston received a classical education in music, graduating from Yale and receiving a master’s from the New England Conservatory of Music, Antheil, the son of an immigrant shoemaker, received little formal training.

“So much of his music came out of nowhere,” says Livingston, before he sits down at the piano to play a selection of Antheil’s music. It is at once loud, violent and funny.

“The clusters -- when he takes his fist and goes bam-bam. Bam! Bam! -- it’s very shocking,” Livingston says, waving his fist in the air. “[French composer Erik] Satie was shocking but friendly. Antheil didn’t write anything friendly.”

And for a pianist, the music is “a workout,” he says. “You can’t play any of his music without sweating.”

A willful prodigy, Antheil grew up simply wild -- in both music and behavior.

In Paris, he lived above the legendary bookstore Shakespeare & Co. and while in Europe became friendly with Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Joan Miro as well as Ezra Pound and Ernest Hemingway -- people whose ideas about art and modernism inspired his music. Igor Stravinsky was another friend and influence. But his most important inspirations were ragtime and Creole music.

“He was the only composer who sounded like cubism or futurism,” Livingston says.

Although “Ballet mecanique” -- scored for 16 mechanical pianos, airplane propellers and sirens -- became his best-known work, its first performance at Carnegie Hall, in 1927, was a disaster.

“It was so violent,” Livingston says. “He was pushing the limits of what people could play -- or even imagine -- at the time. It’s not so shocking now. But in 1927 ...”

The composer, who relished his reputation and titled his autobiography “Bad Boy of Music,” was known to carry a gun in his dinner jacket and, if a concert crowd got too unruly, fire a few shots at the ceiling.

At his home, a large fishbowl stood on either side of his piano so he could cool his hands after marathon rehearsals.

In 1933, Antheil traded Europe for Hollywood. But he left his avant-garde aspirations behind. The composer of riot-inducing music began composing neo-romantic movie scores.

“He decided to get out of the business of provoking people,” Livingston says.

“Or perhaps he had said everything he wanted to say with the ‘Ballet mecanique.’ ”

Forever restless, Antheil came up with several get-rich-quick schemes, envisioned television being available over phone lines 40 years before the fact, and held one patent for a “secret communications system,” which he invented with actress Hedy Lamarr. The code was developed into what is now known as “frequency hopping,” used by the U.S. military and in cellphones.

Antheil also wrote a romantic advice column -- “Boy Meets Girl” -- for Esquire magazine.

And between writing hundreds of musical works, including symphonies, chamber pieces, film music and operas, he found time to attend Hollywood parties and create a fake orchestra that Groucho Marx wanted to join. (It didn’t want him.)

Fights with publishers and a change in musical sensibility meant that over time, his music entered obscurity.

Of his 13 piano sonatas, only two were in print when he died in 1959.

“The music died with him,” says Livingston, who is hopeful that recent recordings and scholarship may resuscitate it.

“I really connect with this character, although certain things I find repulsive. He was not the most honest or reliable guy. He was paradoxical. But then, who isn’t?”

*

‘Guy Livingston as George Antheil’

Where: Bing Theater, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.

When: Today, 8 p.m.

Price: $14-$18

Contact: (323) 857-6010