Tag: Live Music

In 2008, The Bridge PAI hosted a month of sound-related programming entitled Audio January. The next year, January seemed unfeasible, so the Belmont-based arts organization followed up with Audio February. The joke amongst Bridge staff was that the annual event would cycle through the months of the year, and for three successive years (including Audio March 2010 and Audio April 2011) that actually happened.

When Kevin Davis and Chris Peck, both graduate composers in UVA’s music department, took over the reins of the Bridge’s “noise committee” from departing Ph.D. student Jonathan Zorn, The Bridge proposed following up with Audio May. “We said, ‘May’s too busy, and the summer’s dead, so why don’t we just do Audio September?’” said Davis. With help from other UVA music students and Bridge volunteers they spent months assembling a calendar of events devoted to sound, including performances of jazz, rock, hip-hop, and experimental music, live readings of fiction and poetry, and radio broadcasts from the gallery.

Audio September also coincides with the centennial of John Cage, the 100th birthday of the influential thinker, composer, speaker, writer, performer, and mycologist whose avant-garde theories changed 20th century music—and fittingly, The Bridge chose Cage as the unofficial patron saint of the series. “Actually, there’s plenty of events that aren’t Cage-themed” said Peck. “When a lot of people celebrate Cage, it’s just chamber music. But we were really influenced by his philosophy, which had to do with things happening not just at a concert hall, but with sound everywhere.”

Discussing the guiding principles behind organizing the Audio September calendar, Davis said “The Bridge is a non-profit organization, and we wanted to bring things to town that wouldn’t necessarily work at a for-profit event, things that couldn’t happen anywhere else in town. We were focusing on things you wouldn’t necessarily hear at a rock concert, or at UVA. We’re excited by really good multimedia or sound installation art, something that happens in the space between an installation and a performance. The Bridge PAI is the perfect location for that.”

The two organizers are particularly excited about Chris Heenan, a contrabass clarinetist who performs with accordionist Jonas Kocher on Thursday, September 27, as well as Fred Moten, the theorist and poet whose September 22 appearance is being sponsored by the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American Studies and the UVA English Department. Another highlight is the work of Jason Ajemian, a double-bassist, composer, and former Waynesboro resident who has gone on to acclaim in the Chicago jazz scene, although these days he mostly lives on tour, performing solo, in duets and trios, and a variety of bands including Hush Arbors and Born Heller.

Ajemian’s music is wildly entertaining, but difficult to categorize, mixing elements of jazz, folk, pop, rock and experimental music. The parts are easily identifiable, but they add up to a whole that sounds totally unique. “We were excited to have Jason because he’s originally from around here,” said Davis, “and he has a really novel combination of Appalachian music and improvised music that you don’t really hear anywhere else.”

Last Friday, the Bridge hosted an art opening of Ajemian’s “graphical scores,” which he calls Teleport Tone Poems—a combination of traditional music scores and abstract visual illustrations, meant to be creatively interpreted by performers. Ajemian performed at the opening, and will appear again on Wednesday, September 12 with a large ensemble called the Breath Orchestra. A group of 15 musicians that play a wide variety of instruments, as Davis explained, performing “patterns of music based on the length of a human breath,” rather than a fixed time signature.

“A big question facing music today is how to deal with chaos of individuals,” wrote Ajemian. “First thing to do is to embrace that chaos within yourself. Musically, this is the style of each musician. What I’m trying to do is let that style express itself. In other words, letting people be themselves in chaos. It’s not music, it’s a moment of shared chaos.”

The Audio September calendar is also impressive for its wide range of performers and styles, including last Sunday’s prose and poetry reading, part of an ongoing monthly series entitled Scheherazade, and the upcoming Hip Hop Showcase on September 15, featuring students and alumni from the Music Resource Center, the after-school program that has mentored generations of young Charlottesville musical talent.

Audio September continues through the month with a closing party on Saturday, September 29. Most events are either $5 or free, and a full schedule is available online at www.thebridgepai.com.

Have your say. Drop a line to mailbag@c-ville.com or send a letter to 308 E. Main St.

Chris Corsano is one of most restlessly inventive of contemporary improvisers, a jazz drummer reminiscent of Max Roach, whose work is thoughtful and open-minded enough to collaborate with noise and rock musicians as well as more traditional hard bop players.

Corsano made his name as part of a loose scene from Northampton, Mass, attracting notice for his duets with free jazz saxophonist and living legend Paul Flaherty, but he’s also spent significant time in the UK and collaborated with artists ranging from Jim O’Rourke and Thurston Moore to Björk.

But his best work might be his solo improvisations; LPs like the Young Cricketer and Another Dull Dawn list percussions instruments such as “toy gamelan,” “pot lids,” “baritone sax mouthpiece on a 2-foot metal pipe,” and “metal strips from windshield wipers and street cleaners’ bristles,” often played simultaneously.

Chris Corsano will appear at the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar on Monday, September 10th, with several local opening acts including Dais Queue, Nue Depth, and a duet of Golden Glasses and Matt Northrup. The cover charge is $7 and the concert begins at 9:00pm.

Here’s a video of a performance from Corsano’s upcoming solo album, Cut:

I can vividly remember hearing Dan Deacon for the first time. His debut full-length album, released in the spring of 2007 (with the unfortunate title of Spiderman of the Rings) begins with a dense burst of buzzing electronic harmonies and sampled Woody Woodpecker sound-effects, and I was instantly a fan. Deacon’s music is exuberant and impossible to ignore—dense, rhythmic and filled with chirping and chiming. It’s laughably absurd and infectiously ridiculous, but too finely crafted and unforgettably unique to be dismissed as a novelty.

Tracks like “Crystal Cat” and “Snake Mistakes” retain the basic skeleton of a pop/ rock song (albeit the kind of song a hyperactive 4-year-old would write), but deeper cuts like “Big Milk” and “Pink Batman” reveal an almost-perfect ear for melodic composition and counterpoint, reminiscent of electronic founding fathers such as Kraftwerk, Raymond Scott and Jean-Jacques Perrey. He’s got the serious mind of a composer (with an actual degree in composition) and the soul of a lovable class clown (he’s perhaps the only contemporary artist who can successfully cover Bobby Darrin’s “Splish Splash”), and he’s able to combine his skills in the service of a larger musical vision.

I was able to catch one of his early performances in Baltimore. The phrase on everyone’s lips was “Wham City,” the short-lived Baltimore warehouse and performance art space of which Deacon was a co-founder, but also the title of Spiderman’s much-loved centerpiece, a 12-minute epic that frequently breaks down into a chipmunk-chirping choir singing a preposterous paragraph-long chant describing a fantasy party. It’s the most outlandish and attention-getting moment on the record, and the biggest source of anticipation among the crowd that night was if, and how, Deacon would perform it live. He did, and the solution was that Deacon distributed photocopied lyrics sheets so that the crowd, enamored with the album, the song, and the myth of Wham City, could form a chorus and perform together (we did). Many were Baltimore concert regulars, others (like me) were outsiders, strangers who had come from out-of-town for a festival, but for the duration of Deacon’s performance it felt like we had formed a community.

Deacon’s brilliance as a performer is that he’s able to take that sense of community with him everywhere he goes, building it from scratch in a new town in each night, starting over at the beginning of every performance. He has been ambitiously busy in recent years. The sophomore album, Bromst, managed the not-insignificant feat of sounding more somber and mature while also containing a song whose melody is performed by synthesized woofing and meowing sound effects. He’s been invited to perform serious orchestral works in classical music venues, led a DIY stand-up comedy tour, released a video collaboration with Baltimore artist Jimmie Joe Roche (Ultimate Reality, a musical epic set to appropriate footage from 1980s Arnold Schwarzenegger films), and has scored a horror film by Francis Ford Coppola (2011’s Twixt, which has yet to see a wide release).

During his last appearance in Charlottesville, a 2010 concert at The Southern, Deacon set up his card table of gear in the middle of the audience, and asked for all the venue lights to be extinguished—he’d brought his own lighting rig, too (including a few strobes). As he performed songs both familiar and fresh, he led the sweaty crowd through a strenuous series of simple synchronized dance routines, culminating in a finale in which every member of the audience formed a circle and held hands, before acrobatically turning the circle inside-out.

It sounds like a child’s game or a corporate team-building exercise on paper, but at a concert it was a joyful revelation, a temporary disbanding of the rules of a “rock show.” At one point the 7′ tall, black-clad, severely pierced gentleman whose hand I was tasked with holding exclaimed “Wait, a minute, this is just like gym class!” in a tone indicating both skepticism and wonder, but soon enough he—along with every other person in the room—joined in and was giggling with glee as the crowd formed a tunnel that extended out the venue’s fire exit, down the street, and back in the front door.

Dan Deacon will perform at the Jefferson on Saturday, September 8 to promote his third album America, out now on Domino Records. Last week, it was announced that Deacon’s tour will make use of a mobile phone app that will turn the crowd’s phones into a spontaneous light show during the concert. He will be making his first appearance in Charlottesville with a full ensemble, and is supported by three Baltimore-based opening acts: Height With Friends, Chester Endersby Gwazda, and Alan Resnick. Tickets are $12 in advance or $15 at the door.

Now in its 13th season, the Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival has become a local institution: a fortnight’s worth of nationally and internationally renowned composers and performers sharing the most intimate and contemplative form of music stretching back through centuries of western civilization. It has been said that chamber music is a conversation amongst friends, so we spoke via e-mail with former Charlottesville resident and Charlottesville High School grad, one of the festival’s co-founders, the internationally renowned cellist Raphael Bell (via e-mail).

C-VILLE: What can newcomers to the festival expect to find? What will festival frequenters find unique or interesting about this year’s festival?

Raphael Bell: “I think the audiences that come to the Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival each year love the festival for many reasons, but mostly for the dynamic and engaging performances given by some of the most exciting and interesting musicians we know from both Europe and the USA. There is always a good mix of returning musicians that the public can look forward to hearing again, and new musicians coming for the first time. The players this year come to Charlottesville from New York, London, Paris, and Berlin, as well as Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Seattle. The musicians always love Charlottesville and the atmosphere surrounding the Festival. They are often surprised to find an American city with such a charming Downtown, full of cafés and restaurants, bookstores and galleries.”

In its 13th year, how do you keep the festival growing?

“Having a weekday lunch concert Downtown is something we have thought about doing for a long time, and the opportunity this year seemed right with the [Celebrate!250] anniversary, where we thought we could give something back to our city and to the supportive audience in Charlottesville. I hope there will be a good turnout for it, and hope that some people who have never attended the Festival will come check us out. I think if they do, they will be pleasantly surprised by the fantastic musicians who come to Charlottesville to play.”

A free concert is likely to bring in folks who might be new to the festival or chamber music in general; what considerations did you make when choosing the program of music for the Paramount show?

“For this particular concert we found a little piece written by Mozart that was dedicated to Queen Charlotte after visiting and performing for her in London in 1764. He wrote it when he was eight years old! The program follows this with some Variations by Beethoven on a theme from Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute”, written at the end of Mozart’s life, then a gorgeous piece by Schumann for viola and piano called Marchenbilder, and a wonderful and rarely heard piano quartet by Carl Maria von Weber.”

As an internationally touring musician, what is the process of setting up a festival like this every year? 

“I love finding pieces that the audience has never heard before, and I think it is fantastic when people come out of a concert and their favorite piece was the one from the composer they had never heard of! In this case, it’s a relatively unknown 19th century piece, but this thrill is also special when we’re talking about new pieces from contemporary composers. I think the festival has been great over the years at introducing new music, and often these performances are the ones that people continue to speak to me about years later. There is lots of great stuff to look forward to in this year’s festival, both old and new, and I can’t wait to get home and get it started.”

Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival/September 9-23/Info at www.cvillechambermusic.org

Wednesday 9/5

Workbook

Being innovative is exhausting work. Nick Zammuto could have decided that, after a prolific stint with cellist Paul de Jong as The Books, he’d coast with the street cred he got for experimenting with what he calls “collage-pop music.” Instead he takes up the loop and synth mantle with an eye towards layered sound, building the fullness and flavor of the songs—like a club sandwich you can dance to. $10-12, 9pm. The Southern Café and Music Hall, 103 S. First St. 977-5590.

A local bluegrass band being asked to play for the President of the United States…what are the odds? That’s what we thought until a dear friend with a connection to the Obama Campaign called to ask if Gallatin Canyon could warm up the crowd of 7,500 that would assemble at the rally for President Obama last Wednesday. Needless to say, we jumped at such a rare opportunity and honor. After a few background checks and a Tuesday night rehearsal, we were ready for our sound-check at the Pavilion, early Wednesday morning. The lineup for the day would be Andy Thacker, Landon Fishburne, Ben Hernandez, Stan Marshall and Joe Simpson.

We arrived and were escorted backstage by Secret Service while the crews put the finishing touches on the elaborate stage where the President would later deliver his speech. We had to vacate the premises by 10 am sharp so that the agents could secure the area before opening the venue to the general public. This left us with just a few hours to gather ourselves before our performance.

Back at the Pavilion, we were again escorted backstage by Secret Service where we tuned our instruments and befriended an agent who had served the last three Presidents. With a friendly smile he asked if we knew any Jack White songs. Moments later, we took the stage, playing for a solid hour and listening to the loud roars of anticipation from 7,500 eager folks awaiting the President’s arrival. At one point, we jokingly asked the crowd if they had heard a rumor that the President was going to be delivering a speech. That, of course, was met with a resounding burst of cheers, the likes of which none of us have ever heard.

It was our job to entertain and warm up the crowd even in the unbearably hot and humid weather. Hot enough that we actually had to help direct paramedics to a person in the crowd who had collapsed! That was a scary moment, for sure. We played to cheers and even a few friendly boos near the end of our set when we said that the Campaign needed us to do “a few more tunes.” Incidentally, the boos quickly became cheers again once the Campaign changed it to “one more song.” It was truly the honor of a lifetime to be on that stage, helping ready our hometown friends for President Obama’s electrifying speech.

After we played, the campaign arranged for us to be seated on stage. There, our mandolin player, Andy Thacker, was, for the second time in two years, the first person to shake the President’s hand as he walked onto the Pavilion stage to a deafening eruption of applause.

After the rally, we craved air conditioning and hydration! So we walked down the Mall to Positively 4th Street, where we have a standing gig every Thursday night. As we began to notice some commotion out on the Mall, our contact throughout the day from the Campaign’s advance team made his way into the bar. That’s when we learned that the President was on his way. Once again, we found ourselves in precisely the right place at the right time.

While the President made a stop in the Campaign office next door, Secret Service arranged to get us to the front of the rope line outside where he was to make his way back to the motorcade. To our surprise, one of the agents stopped the President, introduced him to us, told him we were his warm up band and arranged for a photo op. Obama’s exact words were, “How come I haven’t gotten a photo with the band yet?”

The President then made his way down the rope line and even got an unexpected surprise greeting from hometown Academy Award winner, Sissy Spacek, who had been dining at 4th Street. This meeting left a number of folks in the crowd to wonder exactly which one of them was more star-struck!

It was a day full of exciting and memorable moments. And, for a small town bluegrass band, it was the experience of a lifetime. Thank you, Mr. President and thank you to our hometown friends in Charlottesville. It’s a day Gallatin Canyon will never forget. —Ben Hernandez and Landon Fishburne

Wednesday 9/5

The sound of shroomin’

The work of John Cage can hardly be categorized. A revered audio experimentalist, sound pioneer, writer, and insightful painter, he is lesser known as a mycologist. The Bridge PAI’s Audio September series pays tribute to Cage’s posthumous centennial with a walk in the forest and an unintentional “natural concert” composed of the sounds heard while seeking mushrooms. Heady stuff. Let’s hope a tree falls and the birds join in. Meet at the gallery and carpool to Secluded Farm (off Thomas Jefferson Parkway). Free, noon. The Bridge PAI, 209 Monticello Rd. 984-5669.

Monday 9/3

Greasin’ the groove

In an age of dub step and rap versions of ’80s new wave, Black Joe Lewis and The Honeybears stand apart with gritty, funky, dirty-picking, soul-howling blues. But don’t mistake Joe’s crew for a novelty act. This band is puttin’ hands on hips, lettin’ backbones slip, and establishing themselves as protectors of the flame, traversing the path made by Howlin’ Wolf, Joe Tex, and James Brown, and providing the world with just a little more soul. $14-16, 8pm. Jefferson Theater, 110 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. 245-4980.

Second lining is a tradition that stretches back through centuries, thought to have originated as the outer circle, or second line, of West African circle dances. The tradition evolved from jazz funerals to choreographed, brass band, dance party parades that are inextricably associated with the life and spirit of NOLA, the city that incubated them. Get a taste of it on our own Main Street, as the Rebirth Brass Band schools us on how to lead a proper “Second Line” parade, followed by a concert to benefit the Jefferson School African-American Heritage Center. Parade begins at 3pm, Saturday, September 1 on Hardy Drive and ends at the Jefferson Theater. www.jeffschoolheritagecenter.org.