Concert review: John Zorn at Christ Church, Philadelphia (March 6, 2011)

There is something irreducibly strange about contemporary music for the pipe organ. Perhaps more than any other instrument, the organ is indelibly associated with deep cultural traditions: its sound evokes ceremony, worship, and divine cosmic order—all very well suited to the grandeur of a Bach fugue or Mozart mass, but not so much to the spirit of most contemporary music.  But on the other hand, on a technical level the organ can be seen as the ideal instrument for 20th century music: long before electronics, it allowed allowed the creation of synthetic timbres, and its sheer sonic force lends itself readily to clusters and “wall of sound” effects so dear to many modernist composers.

On Sunday, March 6, New York-based composer John Zorn came to Christ Church in Old City Philadelphia to play the church’s pipe organ in the final event of the Blindspot festival, a ten-day series of contemporary dance performances and organ concerts co-presented by Bowerbird and Ladybird. Zorn was originally scheduled for a single appearance on the festival’s opening night, but he came back at the end for an encore performance.

Zorn’s playing was effortless, joyful. As expected, his performance was rich in juxtaposition: the music passed from angular atonal counterpoint to bright chordal blasts of sound; gently flowing melodies over modal ostinati gave way to huge, glorious clusters that shook the windows of the church. What was so remarkable about the performance was how self-evidently all these elements seemed to fit together. In Zorn’s hands, the contrast of this heterogeneous material was anything but forced or bombastic; he convinced the listener that these sounds belong together by nature.

The leadership of Christ Church has declared its commitment to establishing an ongoing connection with contemporary music, and their hosting of the Blindspot festival certainly shows they mean business. Here’s hoping the collaboration continues and grows stronger in the future.

March 07, 2011, 7:05pm

Concert review: Tony Conrad and Keiji Haino

International House, Philadelphia, April 26 2009

The pair presented a striking visual contrast: the older, somewhat portly Conrad looking rather grandfatherly in a white suit and hat, and the diminutive Haino dressed in black and sporting distinctive long hair and bangs.

They changed instruments repeatedly over the course of the show.  Conrad began by bowing what looked like a lid to a cooking pot, creating an unbelievably abrasive amplified rubbing.  Later he moved on to a steel guitar and what looked like the world’s smallest violin.  But for the majority of the concert, Conrad sawed away at his fiddle, creating bright bands of sound that often stabilized Haino’s more frenetic contributions.  It may be bias on my part— I find the violin extremely obnoxious and over-valued— but I thought Conrad’s playing became monotonous about halfway through the set.  There’s only so much the instrument can do, even when it’s heavily amplified and run through a battery of effects.

Haino was even more versatile than Conrad.  For the first 15 minutes or so, he crouched out of sight behind a table, operating a bank of processers that were sampling and mangling Conrad’s horsehair-on-glass bowing.  Later he played drum machine, setting up a sparse and erratically funky percussion loop with which he accompanied himself as he shouted indecipherable interjections into the microphone.  For most of the second half of the show he played electric guitar, using his pedal bank to turn his spasmodic thrashing and noodling into sustained, ricocheting sound masses.  Toward the end, Haino sang slow, wordless, minor-key melodies like a demented songbird lost in a thicket of noise.

Overall, the show was an impressive feat of improvisatory noisemaking, but the chemistry between Conrad and Haino was tangibly lacking at times.  Conrad’s violin in particular was a drag on the sonic dynamism of the performance, and it dominated the mix, even against the incredible volume of Haino’s electronics— you could feel the hair cells in your inner ear withering under the onslaught.

April 28, 2009, 11:48am