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Le Poisson Rouge

First of all, the title looks a bit like an emoticon, but “Vcl” is short for “violincello” which is long for “cello,” and ^8 means to the eighth power. As in, if you have eight cellists sitting next to each other, you have Vcl^8. Also, 400 years ago today (yesterday) the Dutch settled “New Amsterdam” (that’s here).

“You’ve probably never heard a cello octet before.” Actually, Mr. Romanian cellist, I have. Twice. So I’m well-versed in the cello octet repertoire, thank you very much, and–oh, wait, what? One of those times was you guys? You just changed your name? Interesting, because I remember distinctly only sort of agreeing with your choices last time you came around, and I’ll do the same this time. First of all, Arvo Pärt, Estonian-Mystical-Orthodox-Minimalist Composer, I’m a sucker for solo pizzicati. I always go into Pärt’s stuff cynical (it’s just a few pretty major-key melodies repeated over and over!) but come out in awe. Minimalist in the best sense: not as a crutch (i.e., let’s repeat these three notes a hundred times, or let’s paint this canvas all white lol) but in order to focus deeply on timbre, on repetition and memory, and on the sound itself. His “O Antiphonen” pieces were (I think) antiphonal, meaning that the two groups of cellos talked back and forth.

Terry Riley continues to be one of the few composers who can convincingly use jazz structures (that is, “trading fours,” blues licks and fills) in a convincing way, and “ArchAngels,” written in response to 9/11 and the Iraq War, continued to affirm that. Not that it was a blues–blues in the best sense, where, like the Mississippi Delta guitarists, the cellists would play their instruments like they were broken, making noises more evocative than notes–but it was actually informed by old black blues music without being pastiche. The only problem is that I’ve never heard a convincing performance of this. Groups either go all crazy on the classical-informed parts (which Vcl^8 Amst. did well on) or they (like this performance) play the blues-influenced parts in such a stilted way that they become significations of blues, rather than the blues itself.

Don’t worry, there were bad ones too: cheesy Penderecki, some Spanish dude who was obsessed with sounding like 1810, and some Polish dude who I completely forgot. Completely.

IKEA, Shuttle Bus

Technically not a concert, but Nirvana came on the IKEA radio just after I spent a day writing about them for my job (textbook), and I thought, what a strange choice for shopping (adj.) music. But it’s really a song (more or less) about shopping (v.) music, so maybe it was apt. Also, IKEA wouldn’t give me the spare part that they I said they forgot to package, and I strongly considered shoplifting it (just a tiny plastic bag) but decided that any imminent decision that causes flashbacks of being arrested is likely a bad decision.

Brooklyn Bowl, Williamsburg, Brooklyn

“The guy at the door usually knows my name, but I haven’t been here in a few weeks,” this girl says. Seriously? I don’t care that the VJ’s name is Dustin. I don’t care that you know him (or his name), or that your flannel shirt has never been near the forest. Seriously. Haven’t been to Williamsburg in a while, and it just reminds me why I never go. This place is a bowling alley slash local microbrew-only bar slash hipster dance floor, with an ironic disco ball and exposed brick walls, and I don’t actually recall hearing much of that duo, Eclectic Method. They did some mash-up stuff, usually with videos that were unrelated to the music, but it didn’t even touch these two (Lucky Dragons), or really much else. Also, $50 for BOWLING? It’s per-lane and a two-hour block, but still. $50? BOWLING? It’s only ironic until it becomes expensive.

This guy promoted his show to the list serve for ChucK, this musical programming language developed in Princeton that I’ve been using for a while, and when I responded to his e-mail with a confirmation that The Stone is an awesome place he was pretty excited.  I missed the first part of his concert/lesson, but apparently he explained what granular synthesis was and had participants/audience members demonstrate by clapping their hands to make some music.  He had this innovative method of analyzing recorded sounds, breaking them down into their constituent parts, and manipulating those parts to reach new timbres and rhythms.  So, it was interesting from a technological standpoint (actually, from a ChucKist’s standpoint, very interesting) but not exactly artistically visionary.  The entire process of breaking something down into its individual parts–analysis and reconstitution–is so interesting, both artistically and philosophically, that it seemed conspicuously absent from the artistic vision of the performance.  That said, there were definitely parts that caught me off-guard, especially toward the end when he forsook explanation of the art for performance of the art and just went for it.

So, I met up with this girl who was a composition major at Willamette before leaving and going to the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in NYC (the school whose students jam at Washington Square Park all day, keeping the chess hustlers company) and went to this jazz club called Zinc Bar in Greenwich Village. First of all, the place didn’t have a piano, but even aside from that it was a bit too classy for my taste. The jazz singer performed with a trio, and it seemed like she wrote the poems (like fake Jack Kerouac plus John Coltrane) while the pianist played some licks on his simulated Fender Rhodes. No real melodies, which was the only real engaging part, and wasn’t taken far enough to be complex and interesting–more just made up on the spot. But it’s the first jazz singer I’ve heard in years, so I’m wondering if there’s an opera in the works, collaboration between jazz singers and jazz musicians, but not a musical.

No, seriously, this guy had hands. The bone-crushing works by Boulez, Murail, and Ligeti were offset by The Art of the Fugue, the Bach late work that seems to just consume the entire room. Boulez (as a 20 year old in 1945) seemed approachable; Murail was rhapsodic; Ligeti was the energetic highlight. The polyrhythmic etudes are a must have–I bought this CD in Hungry that juxtaposes the old modernist’s finger crunchers with recordings of the Aka Pygmy tribe of Africa, who sing these wonderful polyrhythms. The études explode all over the piano, strange and surprising but jubiliant in parts. It’s refreshing to hear someone who treats the piano as a percussion instrument, rather than some cheap fake orchestra.

Works for Piano Four-Hands by Ligeti and Stravinsky

Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleeker St., Manhattan

Ligeti’s complete works for piano four-hands were at the top of the show, and they include these Hungarian “peasant dances” a la Bartok.  But should pseudo-folk music syncopations be played with Chopin delicacy?  Is the goal of the interpretation (whatever that means) to pretend the peasants are dressed up in tuxes and gowns, or is it like when Elvis stole “Hound Dog” from the loud, black R&B lady Big Mama Thornton, keeping just enough sass to score a Top 40 hit?  I wonder if Ligeti, playing the piece himself, didn’t just lay into those folk dance syncopations, hammering the off-beats like he just took a shot of panlinka.

Second up was Stravinsky’s four-hands reduction of the ballet Petrushka, in which puppets come to life and dance and get into a love triangle.  Although Petrushka (spoiler alert!) dies, the piano four-hands (piano reductions were often used for rehearsal purposes) version of his ballet manages quite well without him up through the end.  Stranvinsky always seems like a bit of a time warp—Romantic, but without tonal gestures or too many regurgitated harmonies—where he is all too eager to forge ahead with new harmonies and rhythms, but can’t let go of the Romantic drive to kill someone off and finish the act.

Bobby Previte and Benton-C Bainbridge

The second set at The Tank, with the shape-shifting percussionist Bobby Previte and visuals by Benton-C Bainbridge was energy fused with enough anarchy/coherency that it started to make sense by the time it ended.  While in most cases it would be easy to pin the politics (the “message”) on the one in control of the visual cues (that is, the mosque moving back and forth across the bottom of the screen, shooting down Jesus-fish space invaders) Previte’s pounding, terrifying electronic drums shocked and awed as much as Bainbridge’s epileptic flashes across the screen.  Add to that the occasional W. sample and you have a full-on polemic.  But it would only be a polemic, after all, if it weren’t done so well; if the electronic chaos hadn’t made me think of 80s Berlin long before W. came into the picture, I don’t know that it would have had the same effect.  The strategy: go for the jugular, then let us know you don’t like U.S. foreign policy.  Aside: one of Previte’s long-running bands, Bobby Previte’s Coalition of the Willing, is on my must-see list.

(left to right) Bobby Previte, W., Benton-C Bainbridge's Son, Benton-C Bainbridge