My friend Hank Shteamer -- TONY colleague, math-metal drummer and Dark Forces Swing blogger -- has posted a detailed, insightful and highly entertaining account of the concert that Tashi presented at Town Hall yesterday. The performance was the quartet's first New York appearance in some 30 years.
Hank, as you might know, is a musical polymath but by no means a classical-music specialist. He is, however, exactly the kind of open-minded, open-eared listener that Tashi was originally after back in its heyday, and that Alex Ross set out to court with The Rest Is Noise, which was why I urged him to produce this fine TONY feature on Alex and his book last fall.
Among my favorite bits from Hank's post:
Basically that was a disclaimer because I don't want to be That Guy, i.e., the classical nonenthusiast who goes around raving about Messiaen. But alas, I am Him whether I like it or not.
And:
Had this been a rock show, it would've been something akin to All Tomorrow's Parties' Don't Look Back series, i.e., Slint playing Spiderland live or somesuch. In the program notes we're told that Tashi was--in their early '70s heyday--"on the level of Jimi Hendrix in the classical music counterculture." ... Quartet was their signature work then, and if Ross's list is any indication, their recording of it is still the One to Get.
I'm very sorry that I couldn't make it to this concert. Of course, I'm sorrier still that I didn't make it to the Midori concert scheduled for exactly the same time, which I was actually assigned to review -- my excuse being that I was stuck in a derailed subway car.
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