{"id":5577,"date":"2014-04-02T05:30:38","date_gmt":"2014-04-02T09:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=5577"},"modified":"2014-04-02T05:30:38","modified_gmt":"2014-04-02T09:30:38","slug":"festival-review-big-ears-2014-day-2-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2014\/04\/02\/festival-review-big-ears-2014-day-2-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Festival Review: Big Ears 2014, Day 2 (Part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

After getting (respectively) a headache and a power nap<\/a>, my sweetheart and I headed back to the Tennessee Theatre, remarking all the while how well-thought-out Big Ears 2014 is as a whole. The four primary venues all lay in a straight line in downtown, the farthest apart being no more than about six blocks. And while the lack of crowds might not have exactly been part of the game plan for the organizers, it sure made things nice for those of us who were attending. No lines, no jostling…just music and good vibes.<\/p>\n

Wordless Music Orchestra<\/strong>
\nI wasn’t altogether sure what to expect from this outfit. The festival guide described it as performances of film music, mostly by Jonny Greenwood<\/strong> (Radiohead<\/strong>), and mostly from a handful of critically well-received films, There Will Be Blood<\/em> and Norwegian Wood<\/em> among them.<\/p>\n

Greenwood himself wouldn’t figure into this particular performance (that would come on Sunday), and what concertgoers got instead was a smallish ensemble mostly made up of violinists (with some celli, some basses), seated in rows facing each other. The sight of a projection screen above the musicians led me to anticipate scenes from these films flashing by whilst the players ran through the scores, but that was not to be. Instead, the screen merely indicated the name of each piece, its composer, and the film from which it came (if it was a film piece; some weren’t).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/center>Overall, it was a bit monochromatic. The musicians were all fine; excellent, probably. But the music was less varied than I might have hoped, and a good portion of it was melancholy, sometimes almost dreary. The Greenwood pieces were the best; some of the other pieces bordered on the unpleasant. As a way to spent an hour on a Saturday afternoon, it was worthwhile, but the excitement quotient was largely nonexistent.<\/p>\n

Steve Reich’s <\/strong>Drumming<\/strong><\/em>
\nAnother case of the putative marquee name not being part of the performance, this one was nonetheless a stunning showcase. Featuring a pair of ensembles called So Percussion<\/strong> and nief-norf Project<\/strong>, this concert was one nonstop piece of percussive music. The work started from nearly nothing \u2013 one person hitting some small tuned drums \u2013 and built to a climax. Then it ebbed, flowed, swelled and receded. Players were added. Players sat down. The music never stopped, and the audience was held in thrall.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/center>Occasionally vocalists were added to the mix; while the piece was totally scored, it had an organic, seemingly improvised feel to it. The vocalists, for example, seemed to seek out the patterns and melodies as opposed to merely react to them. A recognizable pattern would emerge, and then as soon as a listener such as myself started to groove on it, it would disappear into the percussive maelstrom. I’d never seen nor heard anything like Drumming<\/em> before (and no, the drum circles here in Asheville don’t compare), and felt honored and awed to be in the presence of such an amazing performance.<\/p>\n

Television<\/strong>
\nIt was quite a temporal shift, then, to remain in our seats when the next act came out. New wave \/ no wave\/ punk heroes Television took the stage at the Tennessee Theatre. With three-fourths of the classic lineup \u2013 guitarist\/vocalist Tom Verlaine<\/strong>, drummer Billy Ficca<\/strong> and bassist Fred Smith<\/strong> \u2013 the band was joined by longtime Verlaine associate Jimmy Rip<\/strong> (guitarist Richard Lloyd<\/strong> left the band amicably in 2007).<\/p>\n

Television have long held an odd place in rock history; they’re often (rightly or wrongly) lumped in with the late 70s NYC scene that included The Ramones<\/strong>, Blondie<\/strong>, Talking Heads<\/strong> and the like. But with two stellar lead guitarists (there’s rarely any \u201crhythm guitar\u201d in Television songs) the group came on more like the era’s answer to Thin Lizzy<\/strong>. Or something.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/center>Guitar heroics without all the histrionics and posing: that was a big part of what made Television great then, and it’s what brought the house down this night. Rip is an ace player, and did a great job of both satisfying those who wanted to hear the songs done the way Lloyd woulda done ’em and<\/em> making sure that people knew he’s his own man with plenty to say in his own playing.<\/p>\n

The songs were long, but never meandering; the guitar dialogue between Verlaine and Rip was electric, and Ficca and Smith provided a thrilling yet rock-solid foundation for the guitarists. The group even pulled out a new song that will hopefully show up on a new Television album…some day.<\/p>\n

Stay tuned for more Big Ears 2014 coverage.<\/p>\n

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After getting (respectively) a headache and a power nap, my sweetheart and I headed back to the Tennessee Theatre, remarking all the while how well-thought-out Big Ears 2014 is as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,40,44,54,59,62,70],"tags":[305,1209,1589,1992,2055,2124,2396],"class_list":["post-5577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-classical","category-instrumental","category-live-shows","category-post-rock","category-punk","category-rawk","category-soundtrack","tag-big-ears","tag-jonny-greenwood","tag-nief-norf-project","tag-so-percussion","tag-steve-reich","tag-television","tag-wordless-music-orchestra","cat-17-id","cat-40-id","cat-44-id","cat-54-id","cat-59-id","cat-62-id","cat-70-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5577\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}