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<\/p>\nBritish Progressive legends Jethro Tull have been around in one form or another for nearly half a century. From 1967 until now, the group’s mainstay has always been Ian Anderson: as songwriter, singer and flautist, Anderson has long cut a distinctive figure. His trademark standing-on-one-leg flute solos accent the band’s reliably high-energy performances. Even today at age 69, Anderson still leads the current lineup of the group through projects that combine new and older music.<\/p>\n
These days Jethro Tull is best thought of as a concept rather than a band; shows are billed as \u201cJethro Tull by Ian Anderson.\u201d Anderson’s most recent studio project is a collaboration with the Carducci Quartet, Jethro Tull: The String Quartets<\/i>. Re-imagining a dozen Jethro Tull songs in a classical-styled format, the album explores the nuances that have long existed in those songs, while removing the tunes’ rock and roll components. As far back as 2005 Anderson merged favorites from the Jethro Tull catalog with classical trappings.<\/p>\n
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But for most dates on the current U.S. tour, it’s back to a rock format. Anderson’s arranger and orchestral leader for various projects is longtime associate John O’Hara; O’Hara doubles as the keyboardist in Anderson’s band. Anderson and O’Hara are joined by three other musicians \u2013 the standard rock lineup of guitar, bass and drums \u2013 and the accomplished ensemble sinks its musical teeth deep into the music of Jethro Tull.<\/p>\n
Anderson has always aimed to provide audiences with high value for their concertgoing dollar. In 2017, that means an impressive multimedia component to the shows. \u201cMore and more,\u201d Anderson observes, \u201caudiences have grown to expect something more than just a bunch of distant bodies on the horizon wearing T-shirts and jeans.\u201d And he’s quite happy to oblige; he views that reality as \u201can opportunity, rather than some kind of penance to suffer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Multimedia technology allows Anderson’s show to \u201cexpress visually an accompaniment to the music,\u201d he says, \u201cand sometimes that is quite abstract and gentle.\u201d Sometimes that’s achieved through creative lighting, controlled by an off-stage lighting director. Other times it’s more direct and literal. \u201cIn a couple of places I have a guest vocalist who pops up and sings a few lines in a song.\u201d That provides interest, and sometimes allows the vocalist to play a character in a lyrical fashion, giving added life and dimension to songs like \u201cAqualung,\u201d \u201cLiving in the Past\u201d and \u201cLocomotive Breath.\u201d And big-screen video projection finds its way into the performance at key moments.<\/p>\n
But Anderson stresses that all of these extras (beyond him and the band itself) are what he calls \u201cbenign illustration. It’s not as if somehow we are accompanying a video; we try to keep it the other way around. A video is just an additional visual effect.\u201d Theatricality has long been a key component to the music of Jethro Tull, especially in the context of a live concert, Anderson says, rather than \u201cjust straight-ahead walking on the stage and playing the music.\u201d<\/p>\n
One thing Ian Anderson strives to avoid is the now-popular practice of projecting close-up shots of the musicians onstage as they play. That decision is based on a very practical concern. \u201cThe time lag between the camera recording the action on stage and it appearing on the screen can be half a second or even more,\u201d he explains. And that presents a real problem, because the result is a visual and auditory dissonance. And that’s not an effect most bands are going for.<\/p>\n
Describing the limitations of high-definition video in a concert setting as an inevitable \u201csystem latency,\u201d Anderson provides a specific example of just how badly things can go wrong. \u201cI was at [another well-known band’s] concert a few weeks ago, and the delay with the on-stage cameras was so much that it actually had got so far out that it looked like it was in time again. It looked as if the drummer was playing on the off beat!\u201d<\/p>\n
With a wry chuckle, Anderson adds, \u201cYou won’t find that at our concerts.\u201d For the Jethro Tull by Ian Anderson concerts, onscreen images are synchronized. \u201cAnd our drummer, God bless him, is having to follow a time code,\u201d Anderson explains. \u201cAnd we play with him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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