MusicNOW 2008 Night 1: Introductions, Heartbeats and Sufjan!

Just in from the first night of this year's four-day MusicNOW festival, and already I have experienced some of the most unique musical performances I've ever witnessed.

Thursday, Friday and Saturday night will feature more streamlined programs featuring guitar, Jazz and modern music, but tonight's itinerary is a veritable galaxy of bright young stars of the avant garde. Hosted by one of the event’s main organizers Bryce Dessner, this evening features one incredible performance after another by a host of young composers, most performing their own pieces, including some which made their debut here.

Built early in the 20th century, Memorial Hall is an incredibly beautiful old theater in Over-The-Rhine. With a 600-seat capacity and seemingly frozen in time, the hall languishes in relative obscurity in the shadow of its better-known big brother next door, Music Hall. Picking up our tickets at will call, photographer Keith Klenowski and I do our usual bit of nervous milling around the lobby trying in vain to act cool before giving up on that just a few minutes later in favor of finding good seats in the balcony.

A few minutes after 7 p.m., Dessner begins the evening with a brief introduction and round of thank yous. Instead of the customarily silent dimming of modern houselights, Keith and I clearly hear the loud, metallic clicking of two dozen light switches being turned off backstage, darkening the beautiful old hall one fixture at a time.

Dessner and his brother Aaron both play guitar for The National, but tonight we hear a completely different side of their musical personas. For the first song of the evening, they sit on opposite sides of the stage and perform a sparse, hypnotic guitar duet. On a screen at the back of the stage, we see the first in a series of experimental films that are an integral part of this evening’s presentation. Ranging from 1940 right up to 2008, the films run the gamut from primitive hand-drawn animation to black and white character studies, nature films, home movies, and more.

During the quieter segments of Dessner’s composition “Jumeaux,” the sound of the movie projector can be heard throughout the theater. Its antique rattle and buzz are relics of the past, bringing back long-faded memories of sitting in a darkened classroom watching educational films in grade school. Most of tonight’s performances accompanied these short films, selected and supplied by another Dessner: sister Jessica, who works closely with a group dedicated to art film restoration in New York City.

This first set of the night also featured a classical guitar arrangement of one of The National’s songs performed by Dessner’s guitar teacher Ben Verdery, and a smiling but sinister romp written for solo bassoon by post modern composer David Lang of Bang On A Can.

Throughout the evening the audience was quiet and attentive, giving this modern recital the respect and reverence it deserves. At times the theater was so quiet you could hear every squeaky chair, every sniffle, every dropped program, and even what sounded like the shuffling around of equipment backstage. Damn, y’all. Fold up them metal chairs later!

Dessner enjoyed a few well-deserved minutes of relaxation sitting in the balcony enjoying a piano and guitar duet performed by his brother Aaron with pianist Thomas Bartlett, only to run back down to stage level to breathlessly introduce the final song of the first segment. Mentioning that not much music has been written for string quartet with guitar since the 18th century, Dessner explained this as his motivation to write the trio of pieces we were about to hear. As the quartet took their seats, Dessner cradled a black hollow-body Gibson plugged into an amplifier. Before they’d played even a note, I thought, “I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that this is probably the first music ever written for string quartet and electric guitar!” A moody piece flanked by two more upbeat, angular and anxious pieces closed out the first set with a rousing ovation from the audience.

During the first intermission I get a closer look at artist Karl Jensen’s installation, which was commissioned for this weekend: two giant hand-painted light boxes hanging on either side of the stage suspended over the front rows of the audience. It is said that Jensen and his 75-year old father were on-site working all night Tuesday, completing the piece at 5 a.m. Wednesday morning. MusicNOW organizers promised the piece will continue to grow and evolve over the course of the weekend.

The 2nd segment of the evening began with one of the most original musical ideas I have ever seen executed on stage. Composer/pianist Richard Parry (of The Arcade Fire) performed a piece of music built around his heartbeat. Wearing a stethoscope attached both to his chest and with the little earbuds in his ears, he performed on piano a duet with a violinist that pulsed slow and steady along with his heartbeat. We in the audience couldn’t hear the heartbeat; only he could. I couldn’t help but wonder if pre-show anxieties and stage fright wouldn’t cause his heart rate to go up, forcing the public performance of this song into a faster tempo than previous rehearsals leading up to the gig.

The second segment was more piano-centric than the guitar-heavy first half. Before it reached its end we’d been treated to Australia’s Padma Newsome on piano and violin solo pieces, and a pair of very interesting pieces for piano, violin and programmed sound effects — including percussion, bassy organ swells, and gurgling voices — composed and performed by Nico Muhly. Some of the short films contributed interesting and unpredictable counter-rhythms, both challenging and enhancing the musical performances.

A clear highlight of the evening and a personal favorite for this writer was a solo piano piece performed by Sufjan Stevens, who was the only performer of the evening to accompany a film also of his own making. Explaining his recent dabblings in Super-8, Stevens told of visiting his sister’s family in Hong Kong where he did not expect to find a beach but discovered that everywhere he went there he was “only a few miles from paradise."

The film Stevens shared tonight was a three-minute slow-motion collage of his nephew Gavin cavorting on the beach, dancing and contorting himself like a 4-year-old Iggy Pop desperately trying to get the sand out of his underpants. Stevens gently coaxed pretty chords out of the piano as his nephew’s frantic frolicking seemed to narrate a fantastic story the child was making up and acting out as the waves crashed on the shore behind him. A sparkling metaphor for the whole evening perhaps, it was a brilliant marriage of experimental, yet deeply personal music and film.

After a second intermission, Dessner sat with 17 other musicians spread around the stage and performed his composition “Raphael." A riveting finale to an unprecedented evening of truly new musical experiences, this 20-minute piece was a dizzying drone of tonal shades that ebbed and flowed with instruments coming and going out of the din with spooky grace. Building to a striking mid-section of urgent power, followed by a Fripp-like dual guitar loop joined by the string section then horns and percussion too, the piece soon fell back into its comatose opening motif with the middle segment’s melody still faintly lingering like a ghost. At the song’s conclusion I was in a trance and barely able to find my feet for the inevitable standing ovation.

Tonight was of those rare soul-expanding, life-enriching experiences that fills a musician and music lover like myself with a feverish flood of sweet sparks, the rhythm and riddles of an intensely fascinating new musical dialect.

All it takes is a cursory glance at the full itinerary of this weekend’s MusicNOW festival to see that Dessner and his associates have put in many long weeks and months of hard work and preparation for the event. In addition to being a fine guitarist in a bloody original and exciting Rock band, tonight Dessner proved himself to be an artistic entrepreneur of the highest order and a singularly gifted composer as well. My hat is off to you, my friend.

MusicNOW is just what this city needs. Tonight’s lineup alone — stellar musicians and composers, live performances intertwined with great cutting edge experimental films — seemed like the kind of thing one might only see in a world class cultural center like New York City. Amazing work, really. This city owes Dessner and his crew a huge debt of gratitude. And we’re only one night into this thing.

See you tomorrow for An Evening Of American Guitar, featuring Bill Frisell and lots more!

— Ric Hickey

(All photos by Keith Klenowski)

Comments

[Joe]

Great writeup! Glad you enjoyed the opening night.....