Nile Rodgers’ artistic battle goes live

Chic’s Nile Rodgers’ participation in the Edinburgh premiere of a new performance artwork promises to be his most unique project of 2013.

Indigo Night is an extension of French artist Jean Pierre Muller’s 7x7, a series of sound installations featuring seven musicians (including Rodgers, Robert Wyatt and Terry Riley), which was shown at Edinburgh’s Summerhall during the Edinburgh Festival last August, and which assigned each musician a numerological constraint: each piece was based on one of the colours of the rainbow, notes of the scale, days of the week and so on. It was Rodgers’ idea of a live-action version.

“Nile is indigo, that’s Saturday, and who else but Nile Rodgers could be Mister Saturday Night?” says Muller.

“It’s a tribute to the Harlem Renaissance and the spirit of Duke Ellington. It’s not a regular concert, he’s going to sing, he’s going to talk, I’m going to paint. It’s going to be a kind of battle between art and music, responding to each other.”

‘Indigo Nights’, Summerhall, Edinburgh, 21 and 22 June (summerhall.co.uk)