audialist

there was a concert today

2008-01-28T00:30:00.000-06:00

it was classical music, it was short, and it was at heaven.

people came, though the room was by no means full.

the event got off to a rocky start, at least for me, personally, as i found out at about 5:10 (10 minutes after it was supposed to start) that one of the groups, an awesome string jazzish/classicalish string quartet, wasn't going to make it. i was really looking forward to hearing them, and in my head, their different sound/style was going to round out the program quite well.

but, oh well, such is life.

the concert was good...

i played first, Mozart Concerto in G, 1st mvmt. with piano... i felt bad because the piano desk is apparently very upright and it was hard to keep the piano music open. mabel needed a page turner, but we didn't know this until too late. besides the piano music struggle though, i think it went well. mabel follows well, and i felt good about certain things about my playing... wished some things went a little better...

mabel played next, with 2 of Kyle Gann's "Private Dances." i missed most of the 1st one, sadly, while talking to the next players on the program, but the what i did hear was nice, pleasing to listen to, and mabel did a fantastic job of playing opposing rhythms side by side in a seemingly effortless manner.

next was a piece called "eight" composed by chris dammann, local bad ass bass player/jazzer/composer/classicalist (you cant' say classicaler, can you?)... it was for solo cello (apparently sightread on stage by the cellist, danah boo, who did a really good job) and cymbal hit with a stick, by chris. i got chills at one point, mostly due to watching performers who were not afraid to be completely unconventional. chris was singing and yelling at points and the play between the cymbal hits and some crashes onto the floor, and the rhythmic banging on the cello, was wonderfully intense.

last was a man i just met tonight for the first time named leon shernoff. he sang 3 songs by faure, and talked about each one beforehand with an obvious, natural, and calm affection for each one. his piano playing was gorgeous and his ability to sing so well over his own playing was inspiring to hear. i really enjoyed the songs, i want to find myself a recording...

food was eaten afterwards, good vegan treats from the following sources:

http://www.theppk.com/nomicon.html

and

http://www.theppk.com/recipes/dbrecipes/index.php?RecipeID=92

many thanks to everyone who came, and for those who did not, come next month! feb. 24th. heaven gallery. wicker park. 5pm.

atom bombs and lovers...

2008-01-16T00:16:00.000-06:00

Hello hello you fine Chicagoans. Does anyone actually read this blog? I have no idea. But, you should, and you should add to it. Please!

Here's a link to an up and coming beautiful organization started by the wonderful Joel Masters... keep checking in on it, it's going to be sweet.

http://chicagoisforlovers.net/

I got inspired to write in this tonight because I had the luxury of going to hear the Lyric Opera tonight! It was a crazy experience as that hall is possibly the largest in this city (?) and is gorgeous... it actually feels historical, I think.

The opera I saw was Dr. Atomic... and though I had every intention of writing about it right now, I think this will have to wait for the morning.

So, be in suspense. All you people not reading this...

Merrrry Xmas!!!!

2007-12-25T01:07:00.000-06:00

Good things about wrapping with newspaper:

you can choose pictures/articles to go along with the person whom the gift is for

you can write directly on the paper

you don't contribute to this strange and wasteful invention of wrapping paper, which is pointless except to make things way too sparkly and festive...

I think we should start an anti wrapping paper movement.

Anyway. Merrrry Xmas to everybody. Much peace and love is being sent from me out into this internet world. :)

Engines

2007-12-20T13:48:00.000-06:00

It was a rare treat to see the vastly different sensibilities of the musicians collectively known as The Engines combine in always surprising, and usually incredible ways last night at the Hideout's every-Wednesday Immediate Sound series. What was perhaps most striking was that none of the four members--Dave Rempis on saxes, Jeb Bishop on Trombone, Nate McBride on bass and Tim Daisy on drums--seemed to act as the prevailing influence over the music. The Engines are a band without a frontman. Instead, their compositions and free improv are each collective projects unto their own, and the quartet shows little concern for establishing a "signature sound". Though this leaves you wishing, once in a while, that they'd settle into some sort of groove, it also makes for an astonishing repertoire of hard-hitting and meticulously crafted songs, each full of spontanaeity and surprise, if not always a sense of coherence and flow. In fact, flow seems to be consciously avoided here: a wailing, chaotic, out-of-tempo flurry of improvisation will be truncated by a unison staccato gesture by the whole quartet, from which silence a serene bass drone and sustained note from one of the horns will emerge. Or, as was the case in the opener, what appears to be a straight-ahead 4/4 head played in unison by the horns will soon show itself to be little more than a vamp for an impassioned, madly intervalic bass cadenza. One tune, by Tim Daisy, did hew to a simple in-tempo ballad feel, complete with poignant swishing brushes on the snare and a tender bassline, and a Jeb Bishop tune near the end of the first set took a simple counterpoint between bass and trombone and gradually expanded it into an epic, but never grandiose conversation among all four players, complete with the traditional return of the head and a melancholy coda. But the lasting impression The Engines left was one of visceral free jazz with an underlying integrity of innovative song structures and a wealth of ever-changing tempos and textures that suggested that said "freedom" came at the cost of a lot of meticulous preparation and the excersize of a staggering level of creative intelligence.

makin a show

2007-12-18T22:07:00.000-06:00

So as a little follow up to my previous entry that came out of pure disappointment, mostly in myself, I thought I'd write my afterthoughts in this here blog.

I need to start promoting better. The concerts are good, they have a cool idea behind them, and it would all be better if people could come out and actually experience them. All people, not just those I know that are on my mailling list.

So, I suppose this means that I need to start advertising more. And this means that I need to come up with a real something to lure people in, make them intrigued by the concert.
Here are ideals that I'd like the series to be about:

- Classical music in an intimate, laid back environment- enjoyable to performers and audience
- both p and a should want to come again

- Audience members and performers learning a little something from the performances
-performers talk about pieces- and as they are most likely playing something they truly enjoy, the talks usually have interesting tidbits of info

- People hanging out during intermission and after the concert, eating food and talking
-no wall between performers and audience members
-contacts/networking occurring between all those involved

I want to come up with a better title for the series that would kind of make obvious that the concert has a purpose (not just "Heaven Classical Series").

Anyway, if anyone who might read this has ideas for a series title, PLEASE comment! I want a title that will become associated with this thing and make it a regular name in these parts.

Once I got that covered, I will get myself ready to start planning and advertising well in advance of the next show (January 27!) and there WILL be an audience there.

a concert series, and a good one it is

2007-12-16T23:11:00.000-06:00

Tonight's concert at Heaven was good. All very strong performances, all good pieces, I thought some nice contrast between works and ensembles. Not too long. Good food was had.

However, maybe 5 people came out for it besides the people who performed.

I know that there was a blizzard this weekend and that made travel, and just being outside difficult; I know there were plenty of other shows to see and things to do- but it made me sad. It's fine to play for ourselves, I mean, we're all musicians, we can all appreciate it. But, part of why we play, especially as young musicians, is because this music is something that is extremely important to each of us. For some reason, us strange young people were drawn to Classical music. But, see, that's the problem right there is that it is STRANGE that we are drawn to it. Unusual, maybe that's a better word for it. What I liked about these Heaven concerts when I first started doing them was that a lot of people came out who wouldn't normally go to hear a Classical concert because it's usually in a different world of its own-Classical music is not at all part of everyday life and it probably never will be ever again, at least not in the US. But, us young Classical musicians were lucky enough to find it and seek it out further and now we want to share it, or I do. I want people to come out and hear what we have to share and learn a little bit about old composers and about old music and just kinda chill with it. I wanted that to happen today at least...

Anyway, I really do understand the various reasons for people not coming out today, but I want to stress 1) that the concert was GOOD and should have been heard by more people and 2)there is somewhat of a personal goal behind these concerts for me and I'd love it if that goal could be reached every month.

Mark Elder with the CSO II

2007-12-11T22:09:00.000-06:00

Mark Elder's haphazard program of Delius, Webern, Sibelius and Brahms Tuesday night at Orchestra Hall turned out (through no fault of Elder's, I should add) to be only a partial success. And the succesful moments were indisputably his doing. One suspects that the mammoth Brahms Double Concerto hitched incongruously to the end of a program of short, musically concentrated works was the result more of insistence from CSO higher-ups on including a Romantic masterwork than on Elder's programming sensibilities. The glowing pastoral impressionism of the Delius, the bracing intensity of the Sibelius, and the extreme economy and surprising expressiveness of the Webern were wonderfully complementary. The Brahms seemed to impede on the sense of focus and subtlety achieved by the combination of works preceding it rather than make for a rousing finale.

The disappointing effect of the Brahms, though, went beyond how out of place it was in this program of short 20th century works. This is a work that, because of the modest use of tutti orchestral passages ("modest" at least in relation to Brahms' greatest concertos, which really resemble symphonies as much as works for soloist and orchestra) depends on great chamber music from the violinist and cellist. The cellist this night was Jan Volger, appearing for the first time with the CSO, and his exuberant unpredictability made for some awkward moments (and slippery intonation) when set against the effortless virtuosity and generosity of CSO concertmaster Robert Chen on violin. Still, while Volger's risk-taking made for an incoherent reading of the part, it also yielded some wonderful moments: for one, the full-throated, cellistic sound he brought to bear on the opening movement's second theme, which, presumably because it's introduced delicately by the violin, most cellists play with a sort of affectedly lilting and thin vibrato that doesn't match the instrument's sonority. Another memorable note struck byVolger was the daring rubato with which he played the second movement's main tune when it re-entered at the end of the movement. Here he lingered bravely over tastefully chosen downbeats and Chen seemed obliged to follow his lead.

I was worried that an over-familiarity with favorite recordings of the Sibelius 6th (namely those by Lorin Maazel and Paavo Berglund) would make it hard to appreciate Elder's reading of this little masterpiece. But just the opposite occurred: Elder launched into this taughtly melodic, alternatingly pensive and light-footed, profoundly unusual little masterpiece with a sense of rhythmic drive I've never heard. And Elder wisely let the sinuous, scalar, modal lines, rather than accompanying vamps, establish the work's sense of pace. This is a symphony with such a memorable, other-worldly repertoire of melodies that too many conductors allow themselves to linger with ill-fitting Romanticism over the "landmark" moments. Against this approach, Elder drove what was sadly a sometimes sluggish and unresponsive orchestra through these moments with a sense of beautiful inevitability, rather than heavy significance. This confirmed, for me at least, that he's a musician with an uncanny ability to truly work from within a piece of music, with interpretations that come pretty close to nailing what a composer has to say.

presenting...

2007-12-10T23:55:00.000-06:00

HEAVEN GALLERY CLASSICAL CONCERT SERIES
Sunday, December 16^th, 2007
5pm

Les Folies d’Espagne- Marin Marais

Jennifer Swanson, flute

Sonata No. 28 in A Major, op. 101- Ludwig Van Beethoven

III. Adagio, ma non troppo, con affetto

IV. Allegro

Mabel Kwan, piano

Three Fantastic Dances- Dmitri Shostakovich

Stephen Hill, piano

INTERMISSION

Suite No. 2 for Solo Cello- Johann Sebastian Bach
I. Prelude

III. Allemande

Fabiana Aiko Mino, cello

Trois pieces breves- Jacques Ibert

1. Allegro

2. Andante

3. Assez lent

Aires Tropicales- Paquito D’Rivera

4. Vals Venezolano

6. Contradanza

Eliza Bangert, flute; Amaris Carlson, oboe; Carmen Izzo, cinet; Erin Koertge, horn; Matt Lano, bassoon

Heaven Gallery is located at 1550 N. Milwaukee on the 2nd floor. A $10 donation is suggested.

Also, I should give you a heads up about a fabulous young harp duo that will be gracing the Heaven stage on Wednesday January 2nd. They are in town from Paris briefly and I can promise an awesome concert with some great sounds. Go here to find some info on them:
www.parisharpduo.com

Also, major props to Matthew Golombisky, Quin Kirchner and everyone else involved with the Ears and Eyes Festival this weekend. It was a great success, with great music and video from this wonderful creative Chicago scene. More on that later when my fingers aren't going to fall off of my hands from all this typing and fluting and typing and fluting...

Mark Elder with the CSO

2007-12-08T12:00:00.001-06:00

Thanks to Jenny for getting the Ears and Eyes propers taken care of. Since everyone's appraised of that business, I wanted to give a heads up that one of the CSO's more intriguing series of the season is currently underway, and wraps up Tuesday the 11th at 7:30. (I haven't heard it yet, by the way: I'll be going to the Tuesday show.

I say "intriguing" for two reasons. For one, the guest conductor, Mark Elder, is a young and tremendously gifted and sensitive musician, as well as an innovative programmer; he is really worth making the trip to Michigan and Adams. Interestingly, (and very encouragingly), he's been given two subscription series this season, (most guest conductors get one), which may mean the CSO wants to take a longer look at him as a candidate to fill the vacant principal conductor position. Let's hope they look long and hard, because Chicago really deserves someone young and open-minded enough to forge a long relationship with the orchestra, which is really how major orchestras get their "signature sound", as the CSO did with Solti and Barenboim or the way Los Angeles is right now with Esa-Pekka Salonen. Elder would be both a better and less easy choice than some 75 year old European, a type the CSO seems overly enamored with, who would be simply too steeped in a bygone era of classical music to be able to grow with--meaning, shape and be shaped by--an orchestra over a long period of time.

Just as intriguing as the possibility of Elder taking up residence in Chicago is the quirky program he's put together. He seems incapable of putting together a "give them what they want" bill, and this series is definitely no exception. There is one familiar warhorse on the program: Brahms Double Concerto for Violin and Cello. There aren't many, (including myself), who would put this piece in the same class as Brahms' greatest symphonic works. But strangely, despite its lack of Brahms' usual formal integrity and ingenious sense of motivic flow, it contains some of his most memorable moments. And the question of its "success" as a symphonic work aside, the writing for the solo instruments is totally captivating: violin and cello, often in double stops, weave sinuous lines around each other with a proximity that enticingly approaches but rarely reaches the point of unison. And when unison lines do show up (as in the opening theme of the Adagio, a stately pentatonic tune delivered by the soloists in stark octaves) they are all the more bracing for the brilliant economy of their use.

I'm most looking forward to Elder's reading of Sibelius' 6th Symphony. This is a tremendously vital, compact work which is, confoundingly, almost never played. The CSO hasn't played it since the 70s, and that was probably an accident or something. At any rate, I hope Elder brings his ability to get inside unusual music to bear on this decidedly unusual symphony. Sibelius' post-Romantic phase, (the 3rd Symphony on, roughly), is sadly under-appreciated, probably because his emphasis on a sort of profound, inscrutable and warm formal heart underlying the music takes too much trouble for people to recognize as innovative when his contemporaries were turning music into chaos. At any rate, the Sibelius 6th is the piece I think most perfectly realizes his late-period symphonic ideal of cohesion and fluidity through the use of brief, bracingly original motifs that are expanded upon through accumulation and subtle metamorphosis rather than through sprawling, Beethoven-esque development sections.

"Searching" is a word one hears now and then to describe certain music: that of, say, Coltrane, Beethoven, and Mahler. (Though Mahler, for all his bombastic yearning and searching, never seemed to have much trouble finding, and then wallowing grotesquely in, big, universal, but ultimately banal emotion. The same could be said of another inexplicable celebrity in classical music, Shostakovitch. In fact this gripe with Shostakovitch--that is, too much easy, transparent emotion--is one that was an absolute conviction of Daniel Barenboim, and the relative dearth of Shostakovitch during the Barenboim era was one of the reasons I thought that conductor was such a big loss to the orchestra.)

The notion of music that is always searching or striving is useful in describing what Sibelius' music is decidedly not like. There is an almost mystical surety and a sense of the music being inexplicably "found" and realized from the downbeat to the final bar line of the 6th Symphony. The opening strains in the high strings, recalling sublime Rennaisance polyphony, rooted neither to harmony nor tempo, seem to just materialize from the very air. No self-aware compositional ego there. I'm guessing music as beautiful and yet anti-egoistic as this will get wonderful treatment in the hands of a fundamentally generous musician like Elder.

The other composers on the program are Webern--all I know about him was that he aped Schoenberg's 12-tone style and was a real-life Nazi!--and Delius, who was English I think, and who wrote a string quartet I really like, and...actually that's all I got on Delius. Perhaps an aficionado of the obscure out there (Brian?) could fill out the portrait of Mr. Delius a little.

So, yeah: let's all go see Elder with the CSO on Tuesday, and remember that there's a vitally important campaign going on: Elder for music director!

Been listening to:
Jean Sibelius: Symphony No. 6 (Lorin Maazel with the Vienna Philharmonic)
Fridge: Happiness
Norman Blake: Fields of November
Jason Moran: Soundtrack to Human Motion
The Sonny Stitt Quartet: Personal Appearence

Xenogenesis

2007-12-08T01:18:00.000-06:00

Today and this week has been a whirlwind of activity... I've gotten perhaps an average of 5 hours of sleep a night and I'm feeling like I'm in college again. However, I did get an application in and a recording done, a rehearsal and a small performance done, 2 full days of work, and I found some churches in the Oak Park to practice in. So those things make it worth it. Perhaps. If I can now slow down and find time to actually practice.

Anyway, I'm not writing to complain about my week, but rather to set the stage for what happened, today, Friday, the last day of this week.

I had worked, then gone to the Churches, walked a few miles, finally got home at around 6pm... come about 6:10pm I get a phone call from Nicole Mitchell who has a 7pm performance and she tells me her flute is unplayable and I'm kind of her last hope. SO, I hop in my car, eating a sandwich, drive faster than I've ever driven through not very fun traffic, make it to the Cultural Center at about 6:50 where I hand off my flute to her so she can have the amazing performance she deserved to have.

And DAMN. I'm glad that happened because otherwise I wouldn't have gone. That was one of the most intense performances I've seen from the Black Earth Ensemble. From what I gathered, she wrote the music based off of texts by an African American sci-fi author who wrote about waking up in a dream state where everything has changed and nothing will ever be what you once knew, etc., etc....as a metaphor for how the African people came here, by force. I didn't even fully understand that until I heard an African American man telling Nicole how much he appreciated it, and very passionately going off on how they came here "packed like goddamn sardines". It made me sad. However, it really made for amazing and passionate music, in this avant garde, free jazz form. Nicole sounded amazing. I don't think she sounded as good on my flute as she does on her's, but it was awesome to hear her play it and see what my flute is capable of. I'm in no way a match for it yet, but she's much closer to it than I am.

Directly after that show I ran off to play the Ears and Eyes opener show with Camilla Rhodes. I was not happy with my performance. I am feeling a need for comfort lately. Or familiarity. The group I played with had all played together a total of one unorganized hour prior to this gig, and that showed. I had the first solo and it was senseless and unconfident. My solo in the last tune was better, but still, my confidence lacked.

I was talking to Chris afterwards, and we both agreed that sometimes this sense of uncertainty can be good. IT keeps people on their toes and makes for constant excitement. But, sometimes, not all the time, and not this time.

QMRPlus played an amazing set though. Their completely free jazz felt like it had been inbred in all of them, or something. Very natural and the chemistry was amazing.

Come to the rest of Ears and Eyes this weekend!! The next two nights will rock and rock and rock some more.

newspapers

2007-12-06T16:08:00.001-06:00

Check out this great review the Reader did for Ears and Eyes! Yay for all my friends listed!

http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/musicreviews/2007/071206/

speaking of war...

2007-12-02T23:04:00.000-06:00

Check this out!! And then go see it!! With me!!

http://www.lyricopera.org/productions.aspx?arrRef=20084

another night in

2007-12-02T22:38:00.000-06:00

It's a sad night for me when there are multiple concerts occurring, both of which I had hopes of attending, and neither did I attend. Reason was, 1)the birth day of my father 2)my own practicing taking, as usual, much longer than I anticipated 3)i live in oak park

I've been putting my own music first lately, which I feel is good for me, but ultimately I just wish there was more time in the day, or that our bodies didn't TRULY need sleep, and I could just do everything!

Shout outs to Tyler Beach's Leafbirds at the Empty Bottle, I'm positive it was good music, and to the Hungry Brain on Belmont and Western(ish) for having a solid Sunday night series.

Last night I attended a Chicago Symphony Concert. Ravel's G Major Piano Concerto and Shostakovich's 7th Symphony, the Leningrad Symphony, made the program. I completely enjoyed the concert. I will say the pianist could have been MUCH more exciting and excited, but he's young, like 25, and while his technique was flawless as far as I could tell, the music was, eh. It was nice to have a light piece though before the big Shosty symphony. Which was wonderful. I thought that Bychkov (the conductor...) did a great job of interpreting, allowing for moments of calm lightness when possible so as not to make the loud heavy parts entirely overwhelming. The Symphony SHONE in this piece. I would say that every single section, particularly winds, harp, piano, percussion, BRASS, VIOLINS... had moments of noticeably wonderful music. Special props to the piccolo player who played a hard part like it was nothing.

A little bit of history: this piece was written as World War II was overtaking Russia. When it premiered in Leningrad, there were only 14 members of the Leningrad Radio Orchestra left alive and though orchestra members were given special food rations so they could have the energy to rehearse, 3 of them died of starvation before the performance.

I feel like I'm being constantly reminded lately of the horrors of war and how removed we Americans are from it. Lucky us.

"What is the What" by Dave Eggers talks about the Sudan Civil War told firsthand by one of the Lost Boys, and damn.

Look at me and my stream of consciousness.

Goodnight.

Alex Ross

2007-11-29T21:19:00.000-06:00

The New Yorker's really excellent music critic Alex Ross has just written a very big book, And The Rest Was Noise, which gives an account of classical music in the 20th century. He's a terrific writer; I've learned quite a lot from him. He's also an unabashed geek. Example: he put up juxtaposed photos of a recent vacation on his website; one of was of a gloomy, blustery, industrial dusk in St. Paul, Minnesota, the other was palm trees and bright blue water on a sunny day in Miami. The awesome caption is, "Possessing a Sibelian mentality, I felt more at home in St. Paul." Ha ha! The loveable nerd-dom of it. (Also, mentioning you're into Sibelius is going to win me over every time).
Anyway, I definitely recommend you pick up the book, and then lend it to me when you're done so I can stop reading 15 pages, doing a whole bunch of other shit, then having to take it back to the library.
Also, check out Sibelius' 4th Symphony and you'll see what he means.

grasping for words about Nicole Mitchell

2007-11-26T22:57:00.000-06:00

Hello. My name is Jennifer Swanson and I play the flute and I am a big music nerd.

This is my first of hopefully many guest posts on this lovely idea for a blog that I sincerely hope becomes something that many Chicagoans, or at least those in our widespread group of friends, frequent and add to. !!!

I want to write about a recent musical experience I had that taught me about the beauty of instrumentation and instrumentalists and how choosing a good combination of both things will make music a beautiful adventure.

I had the amazing and lucky opportunity to play with the Nicole Mitchell Large Ensemble last Monday. Nicole Mitchell is one of the few jazz FLUTISTS, pure flutists, in this country, maybe the world, and she is a brilliant composer-performer-flutist. Her sound on the flute is one of the best I know, and I believe this is largely due to the freedom she has when she plays. Jazz=improv=freedom=no limitations, or at least not a constant awareness of them. She has all this plus a complete and utter lack of ego- she exudes an innocent and soulful beauty in all of her endeavours.
She comes from an initial education in Classical music, but has since separated from it, though still holds it in great regard.

The concert on Monday was a tribute to her father who loved Classical music. The compositions thus made use of her Classical knowledge, but allowed for times of improvisation. In the Nicole way, everyone got to solo, and all solos were played energetically and fearlessly.

What was so wonderful about this gig was to play with this technically and musically amazing person who can see the beauty in everyone and who seems to truly believe that every musician has something to say and just needs to find their way of expressing it. I think that playing for someone who believes that makes it happen.

There was a certain "specialness" to the gig that I believe stemmed from that.
And, on a personal note, I don't think I could have soloed for my first time with a group of professional jazz musicians like that for anyone else. Which is why I feel so very lucky.

The instrumentation was innovative and made for some surreal moments--- 3 flutes, 3 violins, 2 vibraphones, trombone, bass clarinet, and double bass. Unusual, but it worked. There were moments where we had an almost Bach-like chamber symphony sound. The harmonies Nicole wrote highlighted this beautiful and unusual instrumentation and made for some great sounds.

Nicole has been criticized in the past for writing too much melody, AKA cheesiness. I have criticized her in the past for the same... but at the same time, when watching her play it, I don't really care because she sounds so damn good.

The music she wrote for this gig threatened to be "cheesy" as it was supposed tribute music to her father; but I would say that very much due to the unique instrumentation, and the musicianship and accepting personalities of all musicians involved, the music was only exciting, emotional, and beautiful.

Anyway, there's my first post... it's been awhile since I've written anything of substance, so pardon the low level writing style. Thanks for reading if you made it this far. :)

A Few Propers and Dust From 1000 Years

2007-11-19T02:03:00.000-06:00

Welcome! I spose it would be reasonable, as I embark upon this thing, to lay out a few of the broad goals I have in mind, though I'm sure I'll waste no time in veering happily off topic. I'd like this page to serve a few main purposes: to articulate, in some detail, my experiences of live music in Chicago as well as of various sounds of the recorded variety; to direct readers' attention and eventually affection towards groups who are producing terrific and flavorful music and making a totally vital contribution to the life of live music in the city without being much recognized for doing so; and, maybe most ambitiously, to provide a forum where I, at times, become just a contributing voice and moderator in a larger conversation among and about Chicago artisans of sound. Essentially, bring something to say about the sounds around you and about the sounds you make and that should do the trick. This would be a way of getting us, the music making community into a dialogue with us, the listening community. Make any sense? Yeah!!

Well then, maybe I should get right to it. Friday night I had the pleasure of hearing a stripped down, even thoroughly hushed set from frequent Chicago visitors Dust From 1000 Years of Bloomington, IN at a house-show in Logan Square. First of all, there is no venue quite like someone's living room. The hugely diminished sense of distance, both physical and metaphorical, between musicians and audience gives rise to this sort of personal, privileged, and immediate "living" of the music passing between performers and listeners that can just not be realized in a traditional concert setting. And the way "Dust" crafted their set and their sonorities to this distinctive dynamic was thoughtful and effective. Main vocalist/guitarist Ben (last name unknown--by me) made no pretenses of being too absorbed by the music to notice the several dozen people crowding in upon him on couches, stools stolen from the kitchen, or sitting tight packed on the living room floor. Explicit nods to this brand of audience included leaning his head back in feigned(?) ecstasy when an exuberant fan and friend of the band gave him a shoulder massage mid-song and taking (without asking) healthy swigs from paper-bagged 40s and PBR bottles borrowed from the scrum of generally silent, attentive, even enthralled listeners. The rest of the band acknowledged the at times irritating (and drunken) banter from a few of the listeners with smiles and genial, measured, comments that were neither dismissive nor over-indulgent.

One indicator of how good a band is is their ability to depart in all kinds of ways from their "bedrock" or recorded sound and still deliver coherent renditions of their tunes. One gets a sense of just how good Dust is by comparing the sound of amps, varied instrumentation, and complex layers on their three full-lengths to the utterly soft-spoken, bare-bones set they delivered Friday night while drawing largely on the same pool of songs. The drums were graced (and "graced" is definitely appropriate) by soft-rattling brushes alone; the two acoustic guitar parts at times sounded like a single, subtly contrapuntal instrument, so restrained and precise was the playing; and the keys were kept to such a low level, even when they carried the melodic line, that they sounded almost underwater, or wafted in from far-off. Even when Dust's folk-hearted, plaintive strains reached a rare climax in volume, everything was in proportion to both the small size and, perhaps, the easy, downright familial atmosphere of the room. I think it's well to remember that these sorts of musical experiences can be just as vital and just as transporting as their big-stage, big-venue counterparts. Dust From 1000 Years certainly seems to know it.

Dust From 1000 Years on Myspace