Rock Me, Amadeus

Just back from a week in New York City that was pretty rockin’, and for once I almost mean that in the literal sense.

There was the Bang on a Can Marathon, an annual event that now feels like a new music reunion of sorts (at least to me)–always providing the opportunity to catch up with scene fans I haven’t seen in ages, alongside the chance to encounter new pieces and performers and hear plenty of old friends. Spilling down the marble steps and tucked around the palm trees that make up what is usually something of a food court for the World Financial Center, the crowd in the Winter Garden was hundreds strong and as enthusiastic as ever. Free music, many great performances, sunlight streaming through the windows, the freedom to walk around, the comfort of knowing that, even if a particular piece doesn’t catch my ear, a new group would be on stage bringing something completely different in about 20 minutes: I wonder if these are the things that make the Marathon so popular, or just what brings me back each year.

A few nights earlier I was a guest at the final Undiscovered Islands show, the last of a four-concert series New Amsterdam Records put on at Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn. Approaching the venue, what to my wondrous eyes did appear but a line snaking around the building and down the block (also two pet pigs on leashes(!) but let’s leave that be for the moment). It felt amped up and exciting in a way new music shows sometimes don’t. Missy Mazzoli and William Brittelle each presented…well, we could call them “new dramatic multi-song art pieces,” but you might not expect the attendant level of screaming from the crowd that accompanied the performance with so uptight a set-up from me. The guy who was sitting next to me can fill you in on the stage action.

The thing I left musing over was the whole package deal–or perhaps, rather, the joys and pitfalls of packaging. If I hadn’t read in Time Out New York that this was a “classical music” show, it would never have occurred to me to file it that way. (Well, except for Mark Dancigers in the “Classical Music is Dead” t-shirt. That might have given it away.) I can’t credit this genre confusion to the “classical influenced by rock music” mantra (lord knows what isn’t these days) because I’m not convinced that saying this music was “influenced” like that is in any way accurate in either case (though for different reasons). Past work and degrees held by the participants aside, no one was playing that awkward game of genre dress up. This was just performance with spilled drinks and mic feedback and cramped seating and high energy, like a lot of music performance. Set changes took their good sweet time in this non-union house, and Brittelle did have to pause to shush the crowd before launching into a quiet section of his piece–all of which seemed to bother no one–and I was thankful for the setting. As far as consuming new art that I really want to dig my teeth into, this was up close and personal enough to taste. The crowd certainly swooned over both Mazzoli and Brittelle’s works (and over the composers themselves after the curtain came down), so I think it safe to say they’d be more or less with me on this point.

On the down side of these scenarios, the caveat I must acknowledge is that in both venues the sound left a bit to be desired (and lord knows I’m no audiophile). The Winter Garden rings like a cathedral, but with crying kids and chatty patrons, the din rises pretty quickly. At Galapagos, the levels never did seem comfortably balanced, even when they weren’t feeding back on the artists. I don’t mean to nit pick, but it is the music we are gathered together to hear, whether we like to be rowdy about it or not. An unsolvable conundrum?

Sadly for me, a last-minute work commitment meant I had to miss the final event on my itinerary: Green Aria – a ScentOpera, a piece created by Stewart Matthew, fragrance designer Christophe Laudamiel, and composers Nico Muhly and Valgeir Sigurdsson. It was advertised with the explanation that “original scents and music will be performed in the dark via a customized scent organ for a world premiere unlike any other.” I was really looking forward to this show, both because I’m a fan of Muhly’s work and, I admit, just because it sounded crazy and I completely wanted to try it. I give these guys mad props for the confidence I imagine it must take to premiere a piece that already has the bad version of the review set up by the concept. Anyone experience this piece? The guy I gave my ticket to had, well, a rockin’ good time of his own.