Happy Holidays!

I can hardly believe it's that time again already, but all the Christmas decorations are up, so it must be true! Wishing you the best of the holiday season and all good things in the New Year!

Roomful of Teeth with William Brittelle, Caleb Burhans and Merrill Garbus

Saturday night, I went to the Ecstatic Music Festival with my friend Julia to see the vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth singing compositions by William Brittelle, Caleb Burhans, and Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs. Roomful of Teeth filled the hall with throat singing, exhalations, yodeling, and more. This drawing was made over two of William Brittelle's compositions "High Done No Why To" and "Done No Why Say Do." Sometimes, their voices would hover in the air, melting all together into something striking and beautiful.



Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs joined Roomful of Teeth onstage for the second half on the concert to play several compositions. I've heard a song or two from tUnE-yArDs from the first album, but the concert converted me into a fan. Garbus has a warm stage presence, and even invited people to get up and dance if they felt like it.



And here's Caleb Burhans playing his super cool violin. At least I think it was a violin. He joined Roomful of Teeth and Merrill Garbus for a few songs. This one was very moving, as you can probably tell from the title "why must you leave me now, when you're so far away?"



Last but not least is a drawing of Garbus and the ladies of Roomful of Teeth performing one of my favorite pieces of the night. Garbus cited the music of West Africa as her inspiration, and dedicated the song to the women of West Africa. The sound of the drum, her ukulele, and the swooping, yodeling voices of the women combined to create something kind of magical and joyous.




Be sure to check out Julia's beautiful drawings and her write-up here and special big ups to Judd Greenstein, the curator of the festival, for the tickets. You can see my other drawings from the Ecstatic Music Festival here.

So Percussion and Dan Deacon at the Ecstatic Music Festival

Thursday night I went to Merkin Concert Hall to hear So Percussion and Dan Deacon play the first concert in the Ecstatic Music Festival. I'd never heard Dan Deacon play, although I've been to several So Percussion shows (see here and here). Their shows have never failed to surprise and delight. Beginning when you walk in and see something unexpected on stage - a cactus, like last time I saw them - or in this case, a stand holding several two liter bottles of soda. Turns out, if you wire it up right, you can percuss just about anything. But more about that later. Jason Treuting was absent, but he gets a free pass because his wife had just given birth two hours before! Josh Quillen called him on his cell phone from the stage so that we could all sing happy birthday to little Elsie. Sweet!

The first drawing is actually a conflation of a couple of the first So Percussion pieces, from Imaginary City and Amid the Noise. The video screen behind the band was playing a clip of Jason Treuting's baby niece playing with an orange balloon, so of course, music was made with an orange balloon. Of course! And just for fun, several orange balloons were tossed out to the audience. In another selection, DJ Schmidt of Matmos was featured, playing various...objects? I'm no musician, but I'm pretty sure there was a kazoo or two. His is the face that looms large over the band.


If you are wondering how there are five people in this drawing with with only three members of So Percussion, Eric Rosenbaum was filling in and Greg McMurray was accompanying on guitar.

For Dan Deacon's piece, entitled Take a Deep Breath, he explained that we were all going to create the piece together. A guide was passed out for the audience consisting of twenty four instructions for the audience to follow. Deep breaths were taken. Also there was a lot of humming, oooing, aaaahing, clapping, shuffling, calling friends on cell phones and having them sing on speakerphone, and many many blood-curdling screams. It was rousing and fun, although perhaps a tad long? Still, when's the last time I helped create a musical piece in a concert hall performance...um, never? Everybody wins!

After intermission, we heard the collaborative piece by Dan Deacon and So Percussion. The piece is called (I kid you not) Ghostbuster Cook: The Origin of the Riddler. And it featured the soda bottles being percussed - finally! It's like Chekhov's gun - I'm all atwitter since the beginning of the show to see how they'll come into play. The bottles were wired up to Dan Deacon's rig to make some surprisingly beautiful sounds, at least when played by very talented people. And just when I thought the possibilities of the soda bottles had been exhausted, the bottoms of a few were pierced and the escaping liquid hit a plastic bin underneath to make a sound like rain. Using everyday mundane objects is the surprise. But the delight happens when that everyday thing makes a sound that is so unexpectedly beautiful, even sublime. And then, when the liquid ran out, I never listened to soda bubbles so long and attentively in my life. Surprise and delight.




Here's Dan Deacon making the magic happen with his magic machine.





And the percussive finale!



My friend Julia has posted her review and her amazing drawings of the show on her blog. Be sure to check them out here!

Matmos and So Percussion at (Le) Poisson Rouge

I went with some friends to hear Matmos and So Percussion play a show at (Le) Poisson Rouge this week. Lichens opened for them. I've never heard of him, but he played an interesting set consisting of only one song. Although perhaps when a song passes the ten minute mark, you make some allowances. It was just one guy, whom the interweb tells me is named Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe. I'd like to tell you more about how he made music, but all I can say is that it seemed to come from a box with a lot of wires coming out, which he would manipulate to different effects. And his incredible voice. It was an ambient swirl of sound with his otherworldly vocals on top. His visuals were extra trippy too, with brightly colored shapes dripping into each other.



I've seen So Percussion a couple of times (see my earlier post about them here), but never Matmos. While waiting for them to come on, my friends and I discussed the cactus sitting on a stool. It seemed to be wired up, but just how would it be "played" or "percussed?" Our only answer: very carefully.

So Percussion did not disappoint. They did indeed "play" the cactus, coming out one at a time, and gathering around it, plucking the spines in playful counterpoint. The cactus is a good example of the unexpectedness and the humor that I've come to associate with So Percussion. They seem like pretty quiet guys. They don't do a lot of stage theatrics and hardly any talking, but they always provide some surprises and a lot of their humor comes through in the music.







So Percussion moves around a bit onstage, but the duo who are Matmos pretty much stay put behind tables. From where I was standing, I had a hard time seeing them. Now that I've been introduced to their music, I'd love to hear more. Matmos makes music out of everything from pouring water to samples of heart murmurs. And it's not just an exercise in musical idiosyncrasy, they actually make it tuneful and exciting to listen to. They also seem like the Gilbert and George of the experimental music world and how can you not like that? Also, I read that Drew Daniel teaches at my alma mater, Johns Hopkins! Charm City, indeed. Despite my obstructed view, I managed one drawing of MC Schmidt as he told a ridiculously funny story.

Look and Listen Festival

This past weekend, I went the Look and Listen Festival to see and hear! The stated mission of the festival is to allow audiences to "simultaneously experience a stimulating visual environment for new music and a vibrant aural context for contemporary visual art. " That sounds about perfect for me, since everything I experience wants to come out of my hands as drawings. It was a varied program and first up was So Percussion, a group I had heard back in March at Carnegie Hall (You can see some of my iphone drawings of that performance in my friend Julia's blog) playing a piece by John Cage called "but what about the sound of crumpling paper." I could only see a couple members of the group, but here is Jason Treuting scribbling on paper during the piece.

The inspiration for the colors and shapes that surround him came from the paintings in the gallery by Beatrice Mandelman. They seemed to go perfectly with Cage's composition, with their playful and surprising swoops and blocks of color. The piece had a lot of quiet spaces, punctuated by the sounds of scribbling, or crumpling paper (for instance) and it's true what I wrote at the bottom of the drawing that sometimes I was afraid to make a mark because I felt shy about the sound it would make.
Between musical pieces, journalist Lara Pellegrini interviewed the gallery owner, Gary Snyder, who gave us some background on Beatrice Mandelman. I loved the paintings, and if you're in the neighborhood (26th and 8th Ave), you should definitely check it out.


Next, Phyllis Chen played three pieces on the toy piano, and if you think that sounds cutesy, then just check out the drawing I made of her while she played:

"Intense!" is what I wrote there on the side, and she and the pieces she played definitely are. While you might think the sound of the toy piano is sweet and tinkly, Chen's approach is more like an attack and she really fights that sweetness to create some surprising and stirring music. She debuted a piece by Karlheinz Essl, here where she reaches into the piano to stir the strings. A microphone inside the piano fed the sound into a computer which gave it back as an echo, a reverberation, a memory?


Here's the composer, Karlheinz Essl as he was being interviewed about the piece.

The choral group Meridionalis gave their debut performance. Their focus is ecclesiastical music from the colonial period of Latin America. Hopefully the drawing gives you an idea; it was just beautiful. They were all holding their music books, but I loved how gracefully they all held their hands. I think it was the sublime music directing their body language.

Later in the evening, the conductor of the ensemble, Sebastian Zubieta, was interviewed. Every sentence was accompanied by a flowing gesture, as if he were still conducting.


After the intermission, Jason Treuting of So Percussion played a piece called "The King of Denmark" which was one of the quietest pieces of the night. The program notes tell me that the composer, Morton Feldman, wrote it to only employ the performer's hands, fingers or arms as opposed to sticks or mallets. And the delicate gestures of the musician's hands were what I noticed most of all in this piece, which is why it's mostly hands.

And cropped and cleaned up to emphasize the hands.


The only drawing I didn't get to finish was for one of my favorite pieces of the night, So Percussion playing "an imaginary city," composed by Jason Treuting (below, during his interview) as a site specific work for the train stations of Brattleboro and Bellows Falls, VT. The piece was perfect, but I could wish it longer so I'd have time to finish the drawing!

iDrawing Guest Blogger

Go check out my post on my friend Julia's blog iDrawing where I am guest blogger today. Is it cheating, or at least double-dipping to post this here? It's cool, on my blog, I'm the boss!