Night After Night

Out on the links.

A fascinating discovery this afternoon, via Anne-Carolyn: Mezzo-soprano Rinat Shaham has a blog, Singin'rin. It's not at all new, but I'd never come upon it before. Shaham is currently appearing in Carmen at New York City Opera through October 22 (the dishy photo at left shows her singing the role in Montreal, June 2005). And for her first two performances, she was quite sick, and apparently didn't sing up to her usual standard. On her blog, Shaham not only reflects upon her decision to perform under less than peak conditions, but also reacts to the reviews that followed her first two dates. It's some provocative stuff; don't miss the comments.

Speaking of City Opera, the company added another "Opera-for-All" performance of its current Bohème on Friday, October 6. All of the tickets, which were priced at a meager $25 apiece, have already been sold. Even if this wasn't a terrific production with a solid, attractive cast -- which it is -- I'd find this news quite welcome.

While I'm in a linking frame of mind, let me welcome my old friend Brian Olewnick's Just Outside to the blogroll. I'm certain that Brian must have mentioned his blog over a fabulous Chinese lunch with me and Pete "Word of Mouth" Cherches a few weeks ago, but somehow it failed to register. If you follow the world of electroacoustic improvisation (EAI) at all, you've no doubt come upon Brian's writing at Bagatellen, The Squid's Ear or the All Music Guide. Few writers have managed to capture the gist of this musical scene and elucidate it so clearly and approachably as Brian, who also explains some of the challenges in covering this music accurately in this post. I'm looking forward to following Just Outside, much as I'm looking forward to Brian's in-the-works biography of AMM guitarist Keith Rowe, one of the major players in this genre.

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center has joined the blogosphere with Intermission: Impossible! Given all the other enterprising activities David Finckel and Wu Han are rolling out during their first season at the helm, this comes as no surprise, and it's a welcome development.

Is there anything we can do to convince Christina Linklater not to shut down St. Botolph's Town? If you're a fan, go post a comment.

Finally, I'd find Mwanji's catalog of superheroes and the music they listen to irresistable even if I weren't named in it. I do beg to differ on one point, however: Captain America may in fact be a square, but he's a Glenn Miller man through and through -- as one might expect of any American soldier frozen in an iceberg during World War Two. When he lightens up -- which is seldom -- he dances a wicked Lindy.

I don't know this world without Derek Bailey.

Warning: What follows these first few paragraphs is quite possibly the most self-indulgent concert review I have ever written, and you are more than welcome to skip it. The reason it's here is because today, I received a copy of a newly released Derek Bailey CD, To Play: The Blemish Sessions, just out on David Sylvian's Samadhi Sound label.

The quick back story is that Sylvian -- formerly of new-wave group Japan, and more recently the creator of a long string of sublime solo albums, including collaborations with Robert Fripp and Holger Czukay -- brought Bailey into London's Moat Studios on Feburary 18, 2003 for a session slated to provide raw material for Blemish, a stark, introspective album Sylvian released the following year. A solo effort for the most part, Blemish also featured a handful of wildly ambitious collaborative efforts: "A Fire in the Forest," orchestrated by laptop soundscaper Christian Fennesz, and three songs in which Sylvian took portions of Bailey's free improvisations and scripted actual songs that adhered to their contours. The result is one of Sylvian's most deeply impressive creations.

Some time after Bailey's death on Christmas Day last year (obituary here), Sylvian arranged to release much of the guitarist's raw session on disc, including one of the performances later used on Blemish. I've only spun To Play a few times now, so my thoughts about the disc are still forming. I don't get the immediate sense that it's among the guitarist's foremost solo efforts, but then, there's no reason to expect that it should be, given that Bailey knew he was effectively supplying sounds for hire. Still, it's good to have one more late example of his playing prior to motor neurone disease robbing him of his ability to hold a pick (a condition to which he responded with his final recording, Carpal Tunnel).

And there are definitely some outstanding moments. Although I believe that at the time Bailey had yet to move to Barcelona, where he spent his final years, his frenetic strumming in "Play 4" conjures flamenco guitarist and dancer at once. The disc follows six tracks played on acoustic guitar with two final performances on electric, and it's in that last pair of cuts that the disc really comes to life for me -- Bailey was always a three-limbed guitarist. Throughout, To Play is an intimate affair that Bailey's admirers will certainly appreciate, not least for sound quality surpassing just about anything else that's emerged from the guitarist's final years.

All of that said, please don't hold Derek Bailey responsible for what follows.

My penultimate live encounter with Bailey was in the Company weekend he presented at Tonic in New York City in April 2001. On April 12, Bailey played solo, then performed with Loren Mazzacane Connors and Thurston Moore. The room was packed and I didn't stay for the trio, heading off instead to catch Lamb of God and the Haunted at CBGB. But just over a week later, Bailey mounted a Company weekend, which he discussed in a fine episodic interview compiled on the AllAboutJazz website last year.

Bailey's colleagues included a handful of European players with whom he'd been working recently -- tap dancer Will Gaines, bassist Simon Fell, then-cellist Mark Wastell and harpist Rhodri Davies (surely the only musician on the planet who has collaborated with both Bailey and Charlotte Church) -- and a clutch of downtown New Yorkers -- saxophonist John Zorn, drummer Joey Baron, pipa player Min Xiao-Fen, keyboardist Annie Gosfield and violinist Jennifer Choi.

As it happened, I was also currently reading Dave Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. And for whatever reason, when I came home from the first concert I was seized by the perverse impulse to write a review of the Company performance in some halfwitted parody of Eggers's style. I sent the review off via the John Zorn mailing list, to which I was a hyperactive contributor at the time. The responses were overwhelmingly positive, although the post also had the inadvertent effect of attracting a most peculiar visitor to that mailing list, who proceeding to cause a stir in the weeks that followed. (If you were there, you know who I mean.)

I didn't save a copy of that review, and that has bugged me from time to time over the years. Chalk it up to the sentimental mood brought on by listening to To Play a few times today...through a bit of diligent Googling, I finally tracked down that review tonight. I'm posting it here for my own sake more than anything else -- and, as I said at the beginning, you're welcome to ignore it. I've added links to photos taken the following night by Peter Gannushkin, proprietor of Downtownmusic.net. Peter apparently didn't shoot Gaines, one of Bailey's most unusual and inimitable improvising companions, but this page on Peter Stubley's European Free Improvisation site offers brief video excerpts from Will, a VHS tape Bailey issued on his Incus label in 1995.

COMPANY IN NEW YORK - First Night

(with apologies to Dave Eggers, but much more to you, the reader)

April 18, 2001

A sizable crowd has convened for the first night of three Company evenings at Tonic in New York City. Most of the chairs are either on stage or have been pulled out to make more room. Most of the chairs that remain are taken by friends and family of the ensemble and by Tonic regulars who bypass the line at the door. It's going to be a long night of standing. I feel like a curmudgeon before it even starts. But at least, unlike last week's solo set by Bailey, tonight I can actually see the stage.

A portly gentleman, looking rumpled like Edward R. Murrow, with a beard sans mustache, gets up to speak. Before he says anything, I can tell he's British. No one wears a beard without a mustache except hippies and Brits, and the portly, rumpled gentleman is too old to be a hippy. When he opens his mouth, I'm proven correct in my assumption. His name is Roger Parry, and he's here to be master of ceremonies. He carries a small bag over his shoulder, the airline tags still attached.

The first ensemble, Roger Parry tells us, is "Simon's Group," and he introduces the players. Simon Fell [photo] takes the stage, accompanied by Min Xiao-Fen [photo], Annie Gosfield [photo] and Joey Baron [photo]. Min and Fell begin to flutter across the necks of pipa and bass respectively. They play a lot of notes. Their techniques are awesome. Min, however, seems somewhat mannered. What she is playing doesn't really connect with Fell's broad strokes and skittering lines. Baron accompanies with slow rubs across his drumheads; Fell responds with glissandoes while Min continues to scrabble up and down her fretboard, scraping her frets like a guiro. Gosfield stares at her equipment. She stares at the soundperson. She stares at the equipment, then the soundperson. No sound comes forth. By the time Fell, Min and Baron finally lock together, Gosfield is producing the sound of bowed metal. Then the piece ends. Roger Parry stands up and introduces the players again as they leave.

Next, Roger Parry introduces "Zorn's Group." Zorn [photo] comes up with Derek Bailey [photo], Mark Wastell [photo] and Jennifer Choi [photo]. Zorn has a few muted words with Roger as he takes his stool, then announces to no one in particular, "John Zorn with strings." He clicks, pops, burbles and squeals. Bailey joins in, playing Derek Bailey music. Wastell proves quickly that he may possibly be one of the most technically proficient and daring cellists on the planet. (Jon and Brian have told you that already.) Choi enters with a gigantic chord that sounds like the opening of a Bach unaccompanied partita. Her fingers fly up and down the neck of her violin. Her bowing technique is immaculate. No one is speaks the same language for a time, but it's an agreeable racket anyway.

Roger Parry gets up and announces who we have just heard. Then he ushers onto the stage the entirety of the ensemble: "Will's group." He announces the players as they come to the stage, one by one. Will Gaines is the last to come onstage. He surveys the crowd. "I left more people home in bed," he tells us. Bailey kicks off the performance by simply starting to play. The others enter, and Gaines begins to dance his impressions of the music. Zorn can barely contain himself. He mugs and laughs. Baron, too, is visibly beside himself. They are riveted with amusement as Gaines tries to conduct the ensemble, not unlike Butch Morris, except Butch Morris seldom tap dances.

Gaines jumps, points, shouts, gestures, tries to shape the chaos unfolding onstage. He largely suceeds, with a few exceptions. Bailey doesn't see him, because Bailey never looks up. Zorn has decided quickly that he is going to mess around with Gaines. Gaines holds his hands high above his head, then brings them down to silence the ensemble. Almost everything is quiet, except Bailey keeps on playing. Zorn blows a bark at Gaines.

"I liked that last note," Gaines says.

Gaines indicates that he wants Rhodri Davies, Min and Bailey to play together. Bailey obliges, never looking up. The sounds of the guitar, harp and pipa sound an agreeable accord. It's the first time anyone can hear the harp. After a moment, Baron bursts in with an eruption of flying limbs. Bailey lets a note hang in the air, transforming itself into ringing feedback. Zorn matches the feedback with his sax. Gaines looks on in appreciation, then jumps and waves as the entire ensemble comes crashing back in. It is a huge wall of noise with funny contours and edges, and it is beautiful.

Annie Gosfield is apparently playing something. Her hands are moving. So is her hair, which is large.

Gaines waves the ensemble out. Bailey obliges, not looking up. Gaines performs an animated duet with Min, who is clearly enjoying it. Zorn and Baron misbehave from the opposite end of the stage, shooting spitwads of sound in their direction. Gaines waves reproachfully, but the bad boys will not be scolded. Gaines finally remembers the old maxim: if you can't beat them, join them. He engages Baron in a drum battle. Of course, Gaines, like the fat, bald American wrestler Butterbean, isn't here to win any battles. He's only here to entertain the fans. Baron wins in the first round.

Gaines tries to play with Zorn as well. Zorn pulls his mouthpiece off of his horn, and blows raspberries back at Gaines. Is this how we show respect for our elders? Bailey, without looking up, has heard enough. Like a stern schoolmaster, he scolds the two with a resounding chord. Zorn blows raspberries back at Bailey. Everyone starts to play again, trying to look in the other direction.

But Bailey's guitar begins to feed back again. The ringing gets louder and louder, and the other instruments fight to be heard. (Davies and Gosfield appear to be fighting to be heard.) Gaines gestures for the noise to build and build, until finally jumping up in the air to bring it all to a halt. Zorn plays a rude note, and Gaines shoots him a smile. Zorn plays another rude note, and Gaines shoots him another smile. Zorn plays another rude note, and Gaines shoots him a smile.

Roger Parry stands up and introduces everyone. Everyone leaves the stage, except for Min, Wastell and Davies, and Gaines. Bailey, from the audience, has to talk Gaines off the stage. It doesn't happen quickly. Then Roger tells us who is going to play next: Min, Wastell and Davies. Gaines leaves the stage.

Min, Wastell and Davies play a trio of delicate and indelicate string sounds. The music teams with life, like a drop of pond water on a microscope slide. Min is playing a smaller pipa than the one she has used previously. It sounds dryer, lighter, and mixes well with Wastell, who bows a little brass bell stuck between the strings of his cello. Davies makes sounds with his harp that sound utterly alien to the instrument. It is delicate and beautiful. It is also hopelessly marred by some piece of electrical equipment onstage that has decided to buzz loudly throughout. Someone from the audience who I'll bet money to be Ben Watson jumps up onstage and fiddles in vain with Bailey's amp. He does it again a bit later. The musicians play on, unperturbed.

(Roger Parry seems to have forgotten to tell us whose group this was, but through reductive reasoning, it must be Mark's. "Min's group" and "Rhodri's group" will happen later.)

Next up, Roger tells us (after telling us who we just heard), is "Annie's group." Gosfield takes the stage with Zorn, Baron and Choi. It's the first all-American group of the night, and they seem to speak the language a bit more intuitively. But they've got an accent. Gosfield's sampler makes a pulsating bed of squizzy machine noises. Choi plays demonic music elegantly, flying up and down the neck of her instrument. Zorn and Baron make Zorn and Baron noises in reponse. Eventually, they fall into a romping funk pattern. Then they stop, and make more Zorn and Baron noises, which somehow fit together nicely with the machine sounds and the demon fiddler.

Roger Parry tells us who we've just heard. Then he tells us who we are about to hear. This group is made up of Bailey, Choi and Fell. Maybe it's "Jennifer's group," but Roger forgets to tell us again. Violin, guitar and bass intertwine into a lovely mesh of strings, slow, placid, maybe even bucolic. Of course, it can't last. Bailey puts an end to "placid," interjecting dissonant chords. Fell then ends the "slow," taking off like a racer across the neck of his bass. His fingers scamper up and down the length of the instrument, not just its neck. His technique is not conservatory-precise like Choi's, but it gets the job done. Choi takes the hint and starts flying herself. When the CDs are released in a year or two, this will be a highlight. It ends too soon. Roger Parry tells us who we've been listening to, and announces an intermission.

I want to go out to the lobby, but I'm too afraid of losing my prime, unobstructed view standing at the end of the bar. So I continue to stand there.

But by now, you're probably not as interested in the second half of the concert so much as you're wondering whether I will continue this inane imitation of the prose style employed by Dave Eggers in his much-hyped, bestselling memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. As if someone who's only 20-something should be writing a memoir anyway, no matter how privileged by the right or obliged by the duty of the tragic circumstances of his life may have made him feel. The answer is, no, I will not. I am far too tired from staying up too late Wednesday night even after coming home from the first Company night (the one you're reading about), getting up too early on Thursday morning to see my girlfriend off on a trip, and attending the second night of Company Thursday night, which, I promise in advance, I won't review in this particular manner. Anyway, we're talking four hours of sleep, tops. And now it's after two o'clock in the morning here in New York, and I'm beginning to see little spots dancing before my eyes. So I can't imagine that I'll be able to type much longer, and of course, I'm also worrying all the while that you will all hate this essay and will rise up together and will banish me from the Zornlist completely as a result, which would mean that I would never get to tell you about the second night of Company in New York, not to mention the third night or even the cool upcoming releases announced in the new Tzadik catalogs that were laying around at Tonic tonight. And of course, were I less sleep-deprived, I'm pretty sure that writing a concert review in the style of a trendy (but still very worthwhile) book would not have seemed like a good idea. In fact, it already doesn't seem like a good idea, but since I've written this far, I feel sort of committed to see it through, though I do plan to use some sort of shortcut very soon so I can go to bed. Otherwise, you might never get my review of the second night. Or the third night! The third night is tomorrow night. Tonight! It's already after 2 a.m., like I said before. Still, in a sense, you're getting two reviews for the price of one here, since what I am really doing in this essay is telling you about the first night of Company in New York, but I'm telling it in the style of a book that many of you might have considered reading (and in fact one Zornlist member even wrote me personally to ask about the book when I mentioned it as a "NR" the other day, but that doesn't mean that that particular person -- let's call him "Xerxes" -- anyway, Xerxes, you needn't feel that you and you alone were the cause of this post, and that after I myself am banished from the Zornlist, they'll be coming for you next). When I'm finished with the essay, then, you'll know what the concert was like, really like (and here I'm wishing that the use of rich text was condoned on the Zornlist, so that I could have italicized the word "really" just before the parenthesis), and you might also have some idea whether you might want to read the book, as well, as I myself am doing. I'm enjoying the book despite its obvious 20-something postmodern snarkiness, not to mention its whiny defense of same, both of which would render the writer completely obnoxious were he less talented than he is. And I hope it is clear that I enjoyed the concert as well.

Now. After intermission, Roger Parry got up again, and told us that we were about to hear "Min's group." The group was supposed to consist of Min (and it's odd, perhaps, that Roger called it "Min's group," since "Min" is, as I understand it, Min Xiao-Fen's family name, since her famous pipa-playing father's name is Min Ji-Qian, and everyone else's group was referred to by their proper name, like "Annie's group" and "Simon's group," so shouldn't the next group actually be "Xiao-Fen's group"? Just wondering.), Bailey, Fell and Davies. However, Davies, for some reason, never came to the stage. So "Min's group," or "Xiao-Fen's group," if you prefer, consisted of Min, Bailey and Fell. And the music they played was another highlight of the evening, with Min's skittering fingers and Fell's alligator-clipped strings proved nearly as otherworldly as Bailey's typical Baileyness.

Roger, in case you wondered, told us who we had just heard and who we were about to hear between each of the following combinations, and most of the time he remembered to tell us whose group it was as well. But not always. Anyway, these were the remaining combinations for the evening:

JOEY'S GROUP -- Baron, Zorn, Gosfield and Bailey. Their interplay was reasonably interesting, including a funky chase to the end by Zorn and Baron. But Bailey must have heard some potential in it, because he compelled the group to remain onstage for a second blow (Zorn called for a vote of the audience), which was far more interesting, and contained Gosfield's first really integrated playing of the evening. Her hardware knocked like a bad engine and clanked like a foundry.

WILL -- Gaines took the stage for a bit of old-style hoofing. After an impressive display of tap technique, he sat on a piano bench and proceeded to talk to the audience for a while longer about his storied past, performing with the likes of Ray Charles and Big Maybelle. He said that playing with Company was the biggest challenge, but that the challenge was for Bailey to keep him in line. Gaines kept tapping his feet throughout his little monologue, and it was impossible not to be moved by it.

JENNIFER CHOI & MARK WASTELL -- An incredible duo of staggering technical acumen. Choi's style is picture-perfect, Wastell's catch-as-catch-can, but the two meet in the middle for chamber music of which anyone from Webern to Lachenmann to, dare I say, Zorn would have been proud.

CHOI, WASTELL & GOSFIELD -- As above, but with a washing machine churning in the background. Wastell further distinguishes himself in my eyes by being the first cellist I've ever seen bowing the endpin of his instrument.

RHODRI'S GROUP -- The finale for the evening, consisting of Davies, Bailey, Baron, Fell and Zorn. The barrage you might expect, for the most part. Zorn, seemingly out of patience, blew smoky, Spillane-style sax. Davies abused his harp with a tamborine and a little dumbek. The grouping rocked out at the end. As Zorn packed his stuff, Bailey said, "John wants to do another one." Zorn replied, "I didn't say nothin,'" but he gamely pulls out his toys. The second blow by this group was as good as the first, and in some ways even more distinctive. Baron played a fractured, Beefheartean rhythm over which the rest of the group was content to play without falling in sync. When Baron exploded into a barrage of noise, only Bailey followed. The climax was a trio of Bailey, Fell and Baron, the last beating his drums with towels thrown over the heads.

And then, of course, Roger Parry told us who we had just heard, and invited us back tomorrow, which is, of course, last night as I type this. But that's another story.

[Postscript: Perhaps needless to say, I didn't review the second night, and ultimately didn't attend the third.]

Playlist:

Melvins - (A) Senile Animal (Ipecac)

Nine Horses - Snow Borne Sorrow (Samadhi Sound)

Derek Bailey - To Play: The Blemish Sessions (Samadhi Sound)

Dosh - The Lost Take (Anticon)

Delayed reaction.

Posting about Monday night's circus maximus at the Metropolitan Opera at this point seems so...redundant? Pointless? Self-indulgent? I mean, really, it's a sign of Peter Gelb's initial success that the first reports were hitting the wires and the web while the primary cast members were taking their second curtain calls out on the Grand Tier balcony. (A very nice touch, by the way, for Gelb and his players to acknowledge the hundreds who watched the big show out on the patio.) Still, I was there, I saw it and I have my opinions on what worked and what didn't just like everyone else, so what the hell?

I have little sympathy for critics who panned the production; let's just get that out of the way up front. As Maury D'Annato pointed out, this was the most beautiful conception to appear on the Met's stage since Herbert Wernicke's Die Frau ohne Schatten in 2001. The stage was saturated in painterly colors, subtly adjusted to underscore mood. Minimal sets were employed to masterful ends. Powerful images were revealed one after another: the Act One love duet, set in a darkened void amidst paper lanterns and a shower of petals, and Pinkerton's literal disappearance at the beginning of Act Two were two of the most striking. And the final scene left me speechless, practically unable to breathe, for a good 20 minutes. (Minghella also choreographed the most artful curtain call I've ever seen.)

Debate over the use of bunraku puppets -- in particular the one that represented Butterfly's son, Trouble -- continues to rage. I am firmly in the "pro" category here. The character, if you can call it that, is a cypher, a symbol; portraying it in so obvious a symbolic manner does no harm to this work unless you're dead set on some sort of old-fashioned verisimilitude -- and an opera that coasts so close to banality can definitely stand a bit of freedom in its visual interpretation, anyway. It's a choice, not a child...and so what? Kudos to Mark Down, Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell for creating one of the most deft portrayals on that stage.

On camera, I'll just bet that Cristina Gallardo-Domâs was spectacular, all uncertain, quivering girlishness and slightly hunched deference. At times, her mannerisms seemed to verge on nervous tics, but for the most part you could tell that she'd genuinely put a great deal of time and effort into creating the character. That just made her vocal performance all the more disappointing. I would not go so far as to suggest that it was fatally flawed, although others certainly have. As it happens, just yesterday I was discussing via e-mail my impressions of Gallardo-Domâs's singing with a very dear old friend, my original operatic enabler. In response, he pointed out something he'd written in a review of Harnoncourt's Aida that I'd commissioned for Time Out New York in 2002:

In the title role, Cristina Gallardo-Domâs is vividly dramatic. When called upon to sing softly, she has some lovely moments.... Elsewhere, however, it's painful to listen to her fling her lyric voice repeatedly against Verdi's large orchestra and choral forces. Her tone curdles, and the top of her voice wobbles alarmingly for a singer so young.

Too true, and a fair analysis of what we heard Monday night, as well. Her colleagues fared better. Marcello Giordani, slimmed and virile, was a potent Pinkerton; the top notes were thrilling, as you would expect, but what no one seemed to have commented upon was the genuinely creepy, almost feral quality that he brought to his physical bearing in the Act One love duet. Some have suggested that Giordani's Pinkerton was almost too polite and respectful, but his wolfish clutching and pawing during this scene made no mystery of the character's real motivation.

Dwayne Croft was a sturdy, sympathetic Sharpless, and Maria Zifchak's Suzuki was every bit the success that everyone else has claimed. As for what went on in the pit...well, it was wonderful to see Levine back in action at last, and it was this, more than anything else, that compelled my presence on opening night. (Seeing Salman Rushdie and Jimmy Fallon pass by within five minutes of one another during intermission was simply icing on the cake.)

But in the end, Levine's participation redoubled my intention to see this production again later in the run. His slow, deliberate interpretation may well have paid dividends in the kaleidoscopic colors and vivid textures produced by his orchestra, but at the expense of sapping momentum and urgency. Asher Fisch demonstrated a greater affinity for Puccini in a few relatively brief interludes during the New York Philharmonic's otherwise rather dire Andrea Bocelli engagement a few weeks ago than Levine managed to do all night here.

On the whole, the positive very much outweighed the negative on Monday night. And while bringing this particular production into the Met for opening night was surely far less of a risk than it was made out to be, the fact that Peter Gelb was able to command the city's attention for an evening was a major coup. This company may be sustained by the mighty force of its traditions, but it's buzzworthy productions like this one -- and, most likely, the forthcoming Bartlett Sher Barber of Seville and Zhang Yimou's The First Emperor -- that stand the best chance of bringing new energy and blood into this old house.

=====

In the two days prior to the Met opening, I caught productions at New York City Opera that were very nearly as innovative and noteworthy, even if they didn't attract a fraction of the attention. On Saturday night, Semele extended this company's winning way with Handel. True, the overall impact wasn't as striking as that of Alcina a few seasons back, but the production made its point in a not-overbearing manner. Summoning the shades of Marilyn Monroe and JFK was a playfully smart move; I also enjoyed the brief invocation of Dubya's bomber-jacketed bravado, but felt that an obvious opportunity was missed in the final scene by the absence of a chunky brunette in peacoat and beret -- stained blue dress optional.

As others stated of previous performances, the Baroque is hardly Elizabeth Futral's metier; she got by on presence, boldness and force of will, but as Sieglinde noted, she definitely sounded like a visitor on these shores. Vivica Genaux, on the other hand, simply killed, and looked stunning as well. Matthew White made less of an impression than I'd expected, Robert Breault grew stronger as the night wore on, and Sanford Sylvan claimed top honors for style and presence. Constance Hauman was vocally solid and visually daring.

The following afternoon brought the season prima of Frank Corsaro's innovative take on Korngold's gloomy, spooky Die tote Stadt. Ronald Chase's films and projections provided a novel vision of scenery, which very nearly made the notion of watching an entire stage production through a gauzy scrim palatable. George Manahan steered a heroic rendition of this rich score, but even with his orchestra covered by a hood, the two primary singers -- Dan Chamandy as Paul, Susan B. Anthony as Marietta/Marie -- had trouble cutting through the opulent din. Some of Anthony's early lines were completely inaudible; how much more rich and secure she sounded when delivering Marie's lines offstage, and amplified. Kathryn Friest Allyn and Weston Hurt, in the secondary roles of Brigitta and Frank, fared far better.

Still, overall this, too, was an effective production, especially when choral parts in the final act seemed to emanate from various points throughout the theater. Korngold's music proved more superficial in some respects than my memory of the Leinsdorf recording had maintained. But on the whole, this is an opera worth reviving from time to time, and the New York City Opera production does a good job of illustrating why that is so.

Playlist:

Vivica Genaux - Handel and Hasse Arias - Les Violons du Roy/Bernard Labadie (Virgin)

So Percussion - Amid the Noise (Cantaloupe)

Evan Ziporyn - Frog's Eye; The Ornate Zither and the Nomad Flute*; War Chant; Drill** - Anne Harley*, Evan Ziporyn**, Boston Modern Orchestra Project/Gil Rose (Cantaloupe)

Tito Schipa - Lebendige Vergangenheit (Preiser)

Titta Ruffo - The Early Recordings 1906-12 (Preiser)

Isis - In the Absence of Truth (Ipecac; due Oct. 31)

Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Quintet - ONJQ Live in Lisbon (Clear Feed)

Cordis - Here on Out (Playnice)

Sunn O))) - Black One (Southern Lord)

Peter Evans - More Is More (Psi)

Pissed Jeans - Shallow (Parts Unknown)

Metallica - Master of Puppets (Elektra)

Anton Bruckner - Symphony No. 5 - Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra/Eugen Jochum (Deutsche Grammophon)

Epitaph.

Boz Burrell would probably be appalled to hear it, but ever since I learned of the former King Crimson and Bad Company bass player's death earlier this afternoon, the song that's been stuck in my head is "Islands," the title track from King Crimson's fourth studio album. Issued in 1971, it's hardly the band's best work. But neither is it the wobbly disaster that it was so often made out to be back in the early '80s, when I was first getting to know the group's catalog.

The first King Crimson lineup -- Robert Fripp, Ian McDonald, Greg Lake, Michael Giles and Peter Sinfield, the one that recorded In the Court of the Crimson King -- had fallen apart somewhere near the end of its first American tour in 1969, a victim of youthful angst and too much success that came too quickly. McDonald and Giles announced their resignation somewhere in California. Lake stuck around long enough to record the second album, In the Wake of Poseidon -- a wan copy of the debut, for the most part -- then accepted an invitation from Keith Emerson to form a group that went on to define prog-rock excess and bloviation.

Left to their own devices, Fripp and Sinfield eventually assembled a new working band, with Fripp's old friend Gordon Haskell on bass and vocals, the tremendously gifted Mel Collins on woodwinds and mellotron, and Andy McCullough on drums. This lineup recorded Lizard, arguably King Crimson's most baroque creation, and certainly, given a phalanx of hired horns, its jazziest. But Haskell, a soul singer at heart, couldn't stomach the thought of continuing in this vein, and left the band before it could play a single gig. Fripp and Sinfield were once again back at square one. Auditions for a new singer-bassist commenced; one vocalist who failed to make the cut was Bryan Ferry, whose subsequent band Roxy Music signed with King Crimson's management.

Raymond Burrell, a relatively unseasoned scenester who didn't know how to play bass when his path crossed with Fripp's in 1971, probably wasn't the right man for the job, and he likely knew it. (His motivations for taking the gig will now forever remain his own, sadly; he was the sole former member of any King Crimson incarnation who refused to speak with biographer Sid Smith, author of the admirable 2001 biography, In the Court of King Crimson.) Burrell signed on as vocalist, and when a suitable bassist failed to materialize, Fripp took it upon himself to teach Burrell how to play the instrument.

Going by the name "Boz" only, Burrell made his live debut with King Crimson at Frankfurt's Zoom Club on April 12, 1971; Mel Collins and drummer Ian Wallace completed the band. A tape of the gig, which was recently made available for purchase in download format by Fripp's DGMLive.com website, reveals little sense of hesitation; Burrell might have been uncomfortable with some of Sinfield's toothier lyrics, such as the phantasmagorical "Cirkus," but that didn't stop him from giving it his best shot. More straightforward, grittier songs such as "Get Thy Bearings," "Pictures of a City" and the band's signature number, "21st Century Schizoid Man," seemed to present no difficulty. (Ironically, Smith's book reveals that Burrell was so disspirited by the debut that he nearly quit on the spot; walking around Frankfurt the next day, he happened into a cricket game and somehow regained his courage. The remaining three nights of the engagement, also available via DGMLive, grew stronger one by one.)

As a vocalist, Burrell possessed neither Lake's epic grandiosity nor the dusky machismo of John Wetton, his eventual replacement. His voice was light, plain and true, and no other Crimson singer before or since has sounded more convincing in blues-based material. Of course, that seldom mattered in any King Crimson before or since (although it has once again become something of an issue in the current Adrian Belew-fronted era). Similarly, Burrell's bass playing wasn't as skilled or ornate as that of anyone else who has held the position, but it was never less than solid and appropriate, a center of calm in the midst of the band's flashier players.

Much of the material that eventually turned up on Islands was played in on British dates in early 1971, which probably accounts for why the band already sounded so tight. The languid, ostinato-driven "Formentera Lady" revealed the influence of Miles Davis's modal jazz, simmering along at length until climaxing in overblown contributions from Paulina Lucas, a soprano from the Sadlers Wells Opera. The track segues into "The Sailor's Tale," an inexorable instrumental with a torrid, Sonny Sharrock-inspired guitar solo from Fripp, and a highlight of live shows from the period. "The Letters," a reworked version of the unrecorded 1969 song "Drop In," features some of Peter Sinfield's most utterly grandiose lyrics:

With quill and silver knife
She carved a poison pen
Wrote to her lover's wife
"Your husband's seed has fed my flesh."

As if a leper's face
That tainted letter graced
The wife with choke-stone throat
Ran to the day with tear-blind eyes.

How Burrell got through that one was anybody's guess; what's more, he spits a later line ("Impaled on nails of ice") with a terse fury that still provokes a chill.

The singer was most in his metier on "Ladies of the Road," the angular, lurching blues number that is this band's best-remembered contribution to the Crimson ouevre. Apart from Wetton, no Crimson singer could have delivered this kind of thing so convincingly:

Stone-headed Frisco spacer
Ate all the meat I gave her
Said would I like to taste hers
And even craved the flavour

Of course, Sinfield reverts to form with the next couplet:

"Like marron-glacéd fish bones!
Oh lady, hit the road!"

"Prelude: Song of the Gulls," an instrumental interlude, was a melody from a song by Fripp's pre-King Crimson band, Giles, Giles and Fripp, arranged for oboe and string orchestra. Quaint and pleasant, it nonetheless alludes to the guitarist's lofty ambitions. But the closing track, "Islands," is a gentle masterpiece: a simple ballad hymning the invisible threads that bind us even in isolation. Collins's rich bass flute, Sinfield's warm pedal harmonium, Keith Tippett's understated piano and Marc Charig's plainspoken cornet all contribute to this luminous meditation; Burrell's vocal delivery is ideal here.

According to Smith's book, it may actually have been Fripp's resentment of a 50/50 royalties split with Sinfield that poisoned the well for this fledgling Crimson; on tour, the guitarist became increasingly antisocial, even hostile. Added to this was the fact that for his young, inexperienced bandmates, America was a land of temptation -- and no one knew the consequences of cocaine yet. While Fripp abstained, his bandmates indulged, further egged on by their putative leader's distance. It led to a fraught atmosphere, from which glimmerings of genuine brilliance could only struggle to emerge.

For many years, the only official documentation of this band in concert was Earthbound, a live album issued in 1972. To call it desultory is to be generous; the album, recorded to cassette (!) during this Crimson's second American tour in 1972, has long struck me as deliberate sabotage on Fripp's part. True, it contains blistering versions of "21st Century Schizoid Man" and "Groon," two compositions that predate this particular group. As for the rest, a truncated version of "The Sailor's Tale" offers an adequate representation of this band's own book; the title track and "Peoria," on the other hand, are relatively empty blues-based jams that suggest this version of the group specialized in lumpish groove music. Fripp's own view of this lineup seemed clear from the album title, not to mention the shoddy packaging, scappy sound and bargain-basement pricing. (Proving that diehard fans love what they love, popular demand compelled Fripp to reissue a remastered but essentially faithful Earthbound in 2005.)

Bootlegs of this band circulated all along, presumably. But in the early '90s, the floodgates opened and a different story emerged. Collins and Wallace in particular benefitted from illicit documentation of King Crimson's 1971 shows in England and America, but even Burrell was revealed to be not merely competent but frequently inspired. Even if it's patently clear that he was never an ideal fit for this band, his performances gain a heroic element for the sheer vibrance and tenacity he brought to the effort...usually. Dates from 1972, such as those featured on Earthbound, paled by comparison, but then, that tour was probably doomed to fail: this Crimson had effectively broken up in January of that year, then regrouped due to contractual obligation. Small wonder that its performances, at least as we know them on record, are less than optimal.

By the end of 1972, Fripp was working with a new band -- David Cross, John Wetton, Bill Bruford and Jamie Muir, a phenomenal combination and the group on whose achievements much of King Crimson's current renown is based. From the official record, the transition from the Islands band to the one that recorded Larks' Tongues in Aspic seems inexplicable -- as if the band had somehow, Athena-like, burst forth fully formed from Fripp's noggin.

A thaw between formerly incommunicative former bandmates began when Fripp underwent the arduous, lengthy process of extricating King Crimson's recorded legacy from the hands of the band's former management during the '90s. Bridges long burned were rebuilt; in the process, a body of live recordings was reconsidered, polished and made available for mass consumption. What's eminently clear is that the group that most benefitted from a posthumous re-evaluation was the one fronted by Burrell.

A live radio broadcast performance taped in Denver, Colorado on March 12, 1972, revealed a band that could think and act on the fly, delivering a viable set without access to the mellotrons that were so much a part of King Crimson's sonic signature. That much had been revealed on bootlegs, but an official CD issue via the King Crimson Collector's Club offered more: a previously uncirculated cover of the Pharoah Sanders tune, "The Creator Has a Master Plan." Another KCCC release, recorded in Detroit on December 13, 1971, features a version of "In the Court of the Crimson King" served up as a dirty 12-bar blues. ("I'm here, and I've been caught with my Crimson Thing in my hand!" Burrell shouts impertinently, while Fripp plays the nastiest guitar spurts of his career-to-date.) The sanctioned DGMLive release of the April 1971 Zoom Club shows demonstrated to a general audience what bootleg collectors already knew: the King Crimson of Islands was playing a bit of material that ended up in "Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Part One" on its very first gig.

Proving that the band's fractious history isn't entirely being retroactively whitewashed, however, a DGMLive release of a concert from March 6, 1972 in Pittsburgh -- not even a full week before the abovementioned Denver show -- fully reveals the manner in which this band was largely going through the motions in 1972. Despite numerous instances of excellence, in particular Collins's contributions to "Cirkus," this performance reveals more than the normal quota of warts -- most especially the repulsive vocals Burrell and Wallace supply in "Ladies of the Road," as well as their inane between-song banter. The public release of this recording reveals that Fripp remains a realist with regard to this quartet's relative merits -- certainly in 1972, the bad came with the good. Still, even so rough a show demonstrates how quickly Burrell had become a genuinely estimable bassist.

My favorite live recording of this particular King Crimson remains unreleased, even now: the band's late show at the Academy of Music in New York City on November 24, 1971. (It's on the bootleg CD Cirkus.) As I understand it, Procol Harum was the headliner; Yes opened and King Crimson was in the middle slot. It's the most apocalyptic show I've heard from this version of the band. It's as carefully a nuanced set as the band ever presented, but its climaxes are of Last Exit intensity: Mel Collins blows with a fury reminiscent of latter-day saxophone beasts like Peter Brötzmann; Fripp answers with acetylene-torch incandescence. Peter Sinfield's gargantuan VCS-3 synthesizer swoops and bombs clinch the deal. Were I a member of Procol Harum, I don't know that I could have taken the stage at all that night.

The end of this band came at the conclusion of the 1972 American tour; Fripp went home to England and summoned the Larks' Tongues band, while Collins, Burrell and Wallace took up with British blues guitarist Alexis Korner, perhaps the polar extreme to Fripp.

The punch line, I suppose, is that Burrell, a singer who didn't originally play bass, ultimately found his greatest fame as a bassist who didn't sing, alongside Paul Rodgers, Mick Ralphs and Simon Kirke in Bad Company. Eventually, that band also ran its course, and Boz Burrell faded from the public record, seemingly of his own accord. Collins went on to become one of England's most highly demanded session players (if you know the Wang Chung single "Dance Hall Days," you know Collins's soprano sax at least), while Wallace would play behind Bob Dylan and Don Henley. Both have recently participated in the 21st Century Schizoid Band alongside Ian McDonald, Peter Giles and former Level 42 guitarist Jakko M. Jakszyk, playing music from the first two Crimson working groups (1969 and 1971) with a handful of latter-day additions.

Burrell's aversion to lending his voice to the ever-continuing reweaving of the King Crimson mythos is certainly lamentable. Sid Smith posted some timely words on Burrell's passing on his blog, Postcards from the Yellow Room. (The recent photo posted just above, by Mark Marnie, is borrowed from Sid's site; I hope he won't mind.) Over at DGMLive, you can download free of charge an unreleased remix of "Ladies of the Road" that was prepared for but ultimately omitted from the King Crimson box set Frame by Frame, on a page that also includes remembrances from the band's fans -- including, I notice, latter-day prog-rock bassist Fred Chalenor.

As I said at the beginning, Boz Burrell might well have been appalled to have a King Crimson song serve as his epitaph. Even so, the lines that have been passing through my head (and I'm not the only one, to judge by that DGM tribute page) are these, penned by Peter Sinfield:

Beneath the wind-turned wave
Infinite peace
Islands join hands
'Neath heaven's sea.

R.I.P. Raymond "Boz" Burrell, August 1, 1946 - September 21, 2006

Playlist:

Genesis - Archive 1967-1975, CDs 1 & 2 (Atlantic)

Robert Plant - Pictures at Eleven (Rhino; from the Nine Lives box set, out Nov. 14)

Giacomo Puccini - Madama Butterfly - Renata Tebaldi, Giuseppe Campora, Giovanni Inghilleri, Chorus and Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Rome/Alberto Erede (Naxos); and Madama Butterfly, Act One - Renata Scotto, Renato Cioni, Alberto Rinaldi, Orchestra Sinfonica e Coro di Torino della RAI/Arturo Basile ("Unnatural Acts of Opera" podcast from Parterre Box)

John Adams - The Dharma at Big Sur*, My Father Knew Charles Ives - Tracy Silverman*, BBC Symphony Orchestra/John Adams (Nonesuch)

Robert Plant - The Principle of Moments (Rhino, from the Nine Lives box set, out Nov. 14)

King Crimson - Zoom Club, Frankfurt, Germany, April 12 and 13, 1971 (both DGMLive.com); Islands (Virgin); Cirkus (Scorpio; bootleg); Stanley Warner Theatre, Pittsburgh, PA, March 6, 1972 (DGMLive.com)

Bitter chill.

I never had a chance to sound off about last week's Celtic Frost reunion tour stop at B.B. King's on Thursday night...and wasn't sure how much I ought to say, anyway, given that thanks to a miscommunication, I only caught roughly the last half of the show. Thankfully, pretty much everything I might have wanted to say has been covered by my pal Elisabeth Vincentelli -- Time Out New York arts czar, and the most broadly cultured person I know -- over on her blog, The Determined Dilettante. Her post-concert wrap-up is vivid and detailed, and includes coverage of opening act 1349, which I missed altogether.

The fact that Celtic Frost, one of the most influential bands in modern metal, is back at all is fairly amazing. That the rejuvenated group also managed to issue one of the year's strongest metal releases, Monotheist (on Century Media), is nothing short of astonishing. The disc kicked my head in the very first time I heard it, and I'm still finding new things in it with every spin. It's less ornate and experimental than the quirky masterpieces of the band's late-'80s heyday (To Mega Therion and Into the Pandemonium), but it's unquestionably worthy of sitting beside those hallowed discs.

Monotheist presented a new sound for Celtic Frost: a massively downtuned, lurching grind, bleak and desolate. But what I wasn't prepared for when I entered the club was the physical force of that sound: It wasn't overbearingly loud by any means, but it was dense, and hit you somewhere squarely in the sternum. Elisabeth is quite right when she says that the currently in-vogue low-end posse on the Southern Lord label -- Sunn O))), Boris and the like, all of whom I admire -- has nothing on Celtic Frost circa-now. And I love the way that "Ground," the titanic dirge that serves as the album's defining moment, put her in mind of Hannibal crossing the Alps!

The ponderous disc-closer, "Synagoga Satanae," was somehow even more impressive live than it had been on CD. And more adventurous, as well -- there was actually a stretch in which the guitars completely escaped their "guitar"-ness, coughing up instead a grey buzz of between-the-channels static the likes of which you rarely hear outside the rarefied domain of electro-acoustic improv -- only here, you could headbang to it without embarassment. (Which, y'know, I did.)

Stepping back a minute, I interviewed the band's two protagonists, guitarist-vocalist Thomas Gabriel Fischer (formerly Tom G. Warrior) and bassist Martin Eric Ain, back in late spring, for a piece that ran in TONY when Monotheist was released. Both were erudite and forthcoming; otherwise, their characters couldn't have been more different. Ain sprawled on an armchair next to me in a small East Side apartment rented for a few days of press, sleep-rumpled and crunching breakfast cereal. Relaxed and easygoing, he spoke freely and at length about his political and spiritual beliefs, all of which filtered into the album (and none of which ended up in my piece).

Fischer, on the other hand, was tightly wound to an extent I'd never witnessed: what you see in the photo above is essentially what faced me across a coffee table, minus the kohl, and many of the entries on his blog confirm that this is no put-on for the press. A favorite entry, which Elisabeth also quoted, refers to the then-upcoming American dates:

Finally we will be able again to convey the dusk of our musical processions to the masses that have been deprived of sufficient morbidity for so long. They shall never forget.

Polite but intense, Fischer answered questions in clipped, exacting phrases; more than once his response was prefaced by the suggestion that the question could have been better phrased in some other way. He doesn't dispute the fact that this once-mighty band lost its way perilously during a brief, ill-advised glam phase at the end of the '80s, and he's clearly on his guard. (There was, in fact, one light moment, when Fischer paused mid-phrase to make sure his eyeliner wasn't trapped in the bathroom when the label publicist stepped in to take a quick shower.) Still, to see this important and influential band receiving its due once more is a thrill I'm glad I'm around to witness.

Celtic Frost hits Chicago on Saturday night, and Time Out Chicago music editor Antonia Simigis (who doesn't get to update Aural Fixations nearly as often as we'd like) has set the stage with a terrific article on the band -- she captures the voices of Fischer and Ain precisely as I remember them, but covers some altogether different topical terrain. Horns up!

=====

While I'm handing out accolades to my Time Out colleagues -- and really, I do feel blessed to be interacting daily with this bunch -- I'll direct you to coverage of a major event that pretty much slipped under the radar in the New York City media, since it took place way out in the wilderness of Montclair, New Jersey, under the aegis of the often stunningly adventurous Peak Performances series at Montclair State University. TONY theater editor David Cote has blogged a valuable report on The Difficulty of Crossing a Field, a new multimedia opera by Bang on a Can composer David Lang and librettist Mac Wellman, produced by Bob McGrath's Ridge Theater with video projections by Laurie Olinder and film by Bill Morrison. I was sorry to have missed this production, and I'm even sorrier now -- although, as David notes, a fuller production in New York City certainly seems likely. Nicely done.

Playlist:

Tangerine Dream - Essential (Caroline)

Isis - In the Absence of Truth (Ipecac; out Oct. 31), Clearing the Eye (Ipecac DVD; out Sept. 26) and Celestial (Escape Artist)

Mikel Rouse - The End of Cinematics (DVD-R demo)

Richard Wagner - Tristan und Isolde - Christine Brewer, Dagmar Peckova, John Treleaven, Boaz Daniel, Peter Rose, Apollo Voices, BBC Symphony Orchestra / Donald Runnicles (Warner Classics)

Christian Wolff - Ten Exercises (New World)

Keith Rowe and Toshimaru Nakamura - between (Erstwhile)

The invisible man.

Ensemble XX. Jahrhundert at the Austrian Cultural Forum
The New York Times, September 20, 2006

Weekend engagement.

Dr. L.P. admires her newly bedazzled digit, Sunday, Sept. 17 in Richmond, VA.

(Ring designed and created by Adel Chefridi.)

Barbeque dog.

I held out for as long as I could. The riches now available on YouTube are truly, truly staggering, as absolutely everyone knows...which means that I never felt compelled to embed a video on this blog, because anyone can go to the site and dig up all manner of unimaginable treasures.

I resisted posting, for example, the incredible footage of Jon Vickers agonizing through the final delirium of Peter Grimes, not to mention the rather delectable homemade video someone produced for what is quite possibly the utter nadir of western pop music to date, "My Humps" by Black Eyed Peas. (Hang in there for the piano break -- it's so worth it. Mute it if you have to, won't make any difference.)

But on Wednesday, the fine folks at Destination Out celebrated Ronald Shannon Jackson's 1983 masterpiece, Barbeque Dog, in the process uncovering an old discography I spent long months compiling and had no idea was still to be found on the Interweb. Sadly, as I commented there, despite my having compiled this third and last version of the discography in 1998, it's still essentially up to date apart from a handful of Knitting Factory-released reissues and archival live dates.

In reponse to the original post, commentator Peter Breslin noted that a 1979 Saturday Night Live performance by Ornette Coleman's Prime Time -- with Charlie Ellerbee, Bern Nix, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Denardo Coleman and RSJ -- had been posted to YouTube. It's an amazing clip, as much for the fact that this aired on national television as for the performance itself. Poking around just a little bit more led me to another clip uploaded by the same user: a performance by the avant-punk-splatter-metal supergroup Last Exit, a band I'd never actually seen in action. My conception of the group was completely overturned; I'd always imagined a fairly stolid presence, but these guys were AC/DC onstage.

Exploring further still, I found this tiny, indescribable gem -- and found myself unable to keep it to myself...

EDIT: It seems that YouTube and TypePad aren't embedded with one another any more, so to speak. So I can only urge you to follow this link, to witness a collaboration even Ronald Shannon Jackson couldn't have imagined.

P.S. Unlikely as it might seem, my efforts to find a way to embed the video I wanted to share somehow also led me to discover that former Texas governor Ann Richards passed away yesterday. This flamboyant yet utterly down-to-earth woman, who gained national acclaim by proclaiming that George H.W. Bush had been born "with a silver foot in his mouth" at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, was also my last point of pride in my more-or-less home state. Unless Kinky Friedman wins the current gubernatorial race, I guess I'm at long last officially a New Yorker, no longer an estranged Texan.

Guitar army.

Rhys Chatham at Issue Project Room
The New York Times, September 13, 2006

You can hear a recording of Rhys Chatham's Guitar Trio on his MySpace page. It provides a sense of the piece's architecture, but absolutely no clue as to how loud, dense and vibrant the music is in a live setting. Metal chairs vibrated throughout the gig, and numerous times my friend Karissa and I wondered if the wooden floor at Issue was actually going to survive the pulsations this band kicked up.

I'm happy to see that Times photographer Hiroyuki Ito snapped an image that included guitarists Alan Licht and David Daniell (L-R behind Chatham in the foreground) -- two vital, inventive players who are also incredibly proactive facilitators of creative musical expression in New York City and points beyond.

Start spreading the news.

David Cote, Time Out New York's stylish, perceptive theater editor and critic (and a regular face on the New York 1 network), has joined the culture blogosphere with Histriomastix. I've always wished that I attended more live theater, and David has a knack for making me feel even more guilty about the lack. Welcome to the web, David!