Six percussionists participate in the music performance: Fedor Teunisse, the artistic leader of Slagwerk Den Haag, and Marcel Andriessen, Niels Meliefste, Pepe Garcia, Juan Martinez, and Frank Wienk. By turns, the sounds are of a pulsing rhythm, and a pecking sound that becomes lower then rises and becomes low again, and a rattling and rolling that is then ringing, a hammering that heralds, and finally something clocklike, with a quickened tempo that subsequently slows. It is fascinating.
Tag: music
The Small Town New York Boy Became a Good Singer and Songwriter: Brian McKnight and his album Just Me
McKnight’s two-disk Just Me collection is, obviously, a generous set. The first part, the studio album, shows that McKnight, whose career has lasted twenty years, has not lost his appeal or his vigor; and were it not for the age-related exclusions of current radio formats, the presence of his work would shame younger artists.
The Varieties of the Rock Experience: Ben Harper’s Give Till It’s Gone
The bearded, brown-skinned, tattooed Ben Harper has been the natural man as rocker and activist, friend and lover; and on the album Give Till It’s Gone, he explores different attitudes and sounds, spanning generations and genres, producing what could be seen as a concise dictionary of rock.
Adventurous American Journeys: Mary Joyce Project: Nothing to Lose, by the Claire Daly Quintet
The Claire Daly Quintet’s album Mary Joyce Project: Nothing to Lose, beautiful and fun music I only have begun to delve into, comes to an end with a multi-part composition containing spoken comments directly addressing the life and spirit of Mary Joyce, her response to nature, her sense of wounds and recovery, her imagination and vision, with music that contains echoes of American blues and gospel, different traditions that have become part of a shared musical language.
It’s Going to Be a Long Fifteen Minutes: On Lady Gaga and Her Generation
Gaga is one of an emergent generation that has acquired great attention in the last three years or so; among them, Taio Cruz, Jason Derulo, Ke$ha, Bruno Mars, Travie McCoy, Owl City, Katy Perry, Mike Posner, Rihanna, and Taylor Swift, performers whose songs do possess a certain seduction, an energy and personality that are first irritating, then persuasive, and finally irritating again.
The Gorgeous Fragments of a Genius Child: Underneath the Pine and Causers of This, two albums by Toro Y Moi, featuring Chaz Bundick
Like the snatches of song heard in a crowded club, “Fax Shadow” is a kind of coda to what came before. Chaz’s voice is full of force in “Thanks Vision,” in which the instrumental sound, delicacy under pressure, is carved, stretched, and twisted, with floating voices, a big beat, and a clatter of voices near the end. It is rare—I thought while listening to “Freak Love—that a performer makes you think of the legacies of A.R. Kane, My Bloody Valentine, Prince, the Temptations, and This Mortal Coil.
Classical, Contemporary, Creative (Indie-Classical?): Place, an album by the band Build
It has a slippery groove featuring a beat that glides and stops, glides and stops; and that first part is appealing but not soothing. The second part is quiet, slow, almost tense, with a sprinkling of piano notes, and a heavy, slow bass—until what is ponderous achieves beauty. The third part—the fast tempo of the piano, staccato string rhythm, and jazzy percussion—creates and maintains a tension between rhythms (the way one instrument complements and contrasts another reminds me of jazz, as does the jittery energy).
Chamber Music of Memory and Mischief: Now Ensemble, Awake
The Now Ensemble—Alex Sopp, Sara Budde, Mark Dancigers, Logan Coale, and Michael Mizrahi—are playing music and also playing with our expectations. After a pleasantly quiet beginning, a strong rhythm emerges in “Burst,” and I thought I heard, faintly, the blues in it (its inspirations are Mozart and Ali Farka Toure); it is a merry score for memory and mischief—one can dance to it, or enter a reverie.
With Voice, Will Travel: Susana Baca, Afrodiaspora
Afrodiaspora, Susana Baca’s voice is almost plaintive in “Bendiceme,” a song devoted to the infant Jesus, the kind of Catholic processional tune popular among black Peruvians, and her voice— which begins with a nearly formal firmness and goes high and tender—and that near-plaintive or plaintive tone touches something within the listener. Baca is joined by a chorus, which can seem like a false accent, a cliché—but not here: the chorus is the community and a musical strength; and theirs is an old, possibly timeless, sound, echoing beyond logic.
Shocking Story, Significant Sound: Julia Wolfe’s Cruel Sister, featuring Ensemble Resonanz
In the New York performance of the piece, it was accompanied, as on the Wolfe album, by “Fuel,” a score for a Bill Morrison film “that shows time-lapse images of cargo ships, trucks being loaded, drilling rigs and highways in New York and Hamburg,” with the music described as “all spiraling rock riffs and whirring clusters of notes” (Tommasini, Times, February 4, 2011).