LIC Notes
| May 2012 |
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
| 29 | 30 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 1 | 2 |
LICNotes Events:
J Walter Hawkes residency at LIC Bar featuring JWH Trio and special guests The Jacob Varmus Group!
Catch Steve Blanco Trio Tues and Fri nights at Domaine Wine Bar!
Catch Steve Blanco Trio Tues and Fri nights at Domaine Wine Bar!
The Hand Band at 8pm, Dave Diamond at 9pm, Jason Crosby at 10pm live at LIC Bar!
The month of not understanding, Part I
This has been the month of not understanding.
There’s music going on that I can’t get a grip on, so I figured I’d grumble about it to you. Sometimes that helps, right?
Monday night at LIC Bar, I heard the final installment of Anthony Cekay’s Spectacular War Museum. After catching fragments of it over the first few weeks of his residency there, and interviewing Anthony for a Conversations at Cranky’s [Coming Soon to LICNotes! -Ed.] vlog session, I had a decent feel for what the SWM is, where it comes from, what he’s trying to get to. I hadn’t felt I’d heard enough of the music itself for the project to cohere; this week’s segment featured, among several other pieces, the world premier of a string quartet. Now I’m really confused.
Not that I didn’t love the music, though. The quartet, while at times a touch naïve and foursquare, is close to the quality of much I hear on the Manhattan contemporary classical scene. That’s astounding, since Anthony is self-taught in composition! I can hear Jon Schaefer now: “So there’s this guy in Queens who listens to a ton of music, including jazz, pop, older and newer classical, and then proceeds with no instruction to write an extended piece like a string quartet that’s about as good as 90% of what those folks who’ve spent their lives focused on this can do.” But don’t take that 7 train, Gothamites; Queens is as remote as Idaho and as barren as the exurbs.
{Bonus capsule mini-review of the quartet… voice more husky and a half-octave lower: While generally less spiky or angular than what many composers are turning out, Mr. Cekay’s quartet provided a number of charming facets, featuring an especially lively, compelling main theme in the first movement. Lovely voice-leading propelled by a constant rhythmic drive produced harmonic sophistication that you’d expect from a jazz composer, and held your ear attuned through all those changes. And in particular, the third movement began with a gorgeous pizzicato cello solo that prefigured some of the quartet’s most lovely melodic sections. The players, veterans of both the rock and classical scenes, were lead by first violinist Amanda Lo, who fiddled with verve and precision. All in all, a quite promising debut from a new, young composer.}
Amazingly, the LIC Bar crew hung on it all, whooping and cheering as if this were a dirty blues band at a humid Sunday afternoon BBQ. Strangely, folks coming inside from the courtyard winced as if intruding on a “serious music” concert, as if breaching the etiquette of solemn listening that obtains at Alice Tully Hall. But the atmosphere was nothing like that inside, or most likely for the equal-sized audience listening via livestream.
The show closed with a Billy Strayhorn tune arranged by Anthony for jazz trio and string quartet. To reinforce that what’s difficult for many is fun for some, the writing and playing seamlessly integrated the two genres, with Anthony wailing on tenor sax while maintaining interplay with and space for the strings. Christian Coleman on drums and the ever-melodic Leon Boykin on bass provided the bones tying them all together.
So now I’ve rambled on, and I think that’s what my problem could be. The Spectacular War Museum has grown in several directions at once; instead of having a grasp of it, I’m lost in all that space it’s created. I know there’s plenty of wonderful, engaging music around that space, I just can’t cat-herd it. Almost eight hours of music is tough to summarize after one incomplete listening, sure. As worthy as this project has been, I’m left wondering if there isn’t some more compact way to present it. I know Anthony is working on a few ideas, one or two of which I hope work out. Both the work and its potential audience deserve that.
The Silver Shark is always moving, just under the surface of the LIC scene. He comes up suddenly to snap up some wine and music, and perhaps bare his teeth at nearby lovely mermaids – though he generally doesn't bite. You can catch an occasional glimpse of him at your favorite LIC venue, and regularly here at his blog.
More:
Spectacular War Museum on UStream
Anthony Cekay on Twitter
Spectacular War Museum RocketHub
Article: Bringing Jazz Into The 21st Century With Crowdfunding
