COMPARISON OF THREE PERFORMANCES AT NEW YORK

Writings on performing practice are changes according to a genre. This article explores the performances that happened at Red Bull Music Academy New York at three different nights and make connections with genre of music. It’s also examines perception of performance criticism.

Red Bull Music Academy is a two weeks music workshop. In past years it has taken up residence in places like London, Barcelona, Berlin, Sao Paolo, Cape Town, Rome, and Melbourne. Last year it has taken in New York City. There were two groups of selected participants -60 uniquely talented DJs, producers, musicians and vocalists from all over the world.
For two weeks, each group attend lectures by musical legends, work together on tracks, and perform in the city’s best clubs and music halls. For the public, it’s got a impressive program of film screenings, parties, lectures from musical legends like Brian Eno and Erykah Badu, and concerts that range from hip-hop and improvisational jazz to traditional house and experimental drone music.
In Red Bull Music Academy, in addition to the sounds filling the recording studios and lecture halls, there were installations by lots of local artists.

Wednesday 01 May – A Night of Improvised Round Rubin Dueds: Red Bull Music Academy Special

Night of Improvised Round Robin was at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple. There were serious of improvisations.

Red Bull Music Academy site explains the concept;

Format was simple. One musician starts a solo improvisation lasting five minutes. Another musician then joins for five minutes of duo improvisation. After those five minutes, musician #1 leaves the stage and musician #3 joins musician #2 for another five minutes, and so on and so forth for two hours. (1)

The night featured a ton of incredible performers from different genres including (in order of appearance) Jameszoo, Questlove, Matana Roberts, Mary Halvorson, Thundercat, Julia Holter, Kim Gordon, Dosh, Roy Hargrove, James Chance, Kim Gordon, Andrew WK, Bernie Worrell, Glenn Gotche, Erik Friedlander, Vijay Iyer, Robert Glasper, DJ Spinna, Don Byron, Andrew Bird and Joe Lovano.

It’s easy to think that it’d be a very enjoyable event for the audience who see a lot of legendary and new emerging artist at the same stage, improvising.
The show begins with academy participant Jamezsoo. After five minutes, Questlove’s drums accompanied performing an improvisational jam with Jamezsoo. When Jameszoo left, alto saxophonist Matana Roberts’ melodies heard with Questlove for five minutes. When Questlove left, New York guitarist Mary Halvorson took over to jam with Roberts. Parliament-Funkadelic keyboardist Bernie Worrell and Andrew W.K. talked to each other through keyboards. Creation was occurring simultaneously with performance.

The New York Times writer Jon Pareles describes the performances;

It was an experiment in personal and musical interaction, and most of the time it was successful — particularly when jazz musicians, who make improvisation and interaction their mission, were involved. There were various strategies, conscious or inadvertent. Musicians tried dialogue and simultaneity, drone and dissonance, deference and competition, empathy and obliviousness; idioms mattered, but were permeable. There was a lot of careful listening onstage — and some in a surprisingly chatty audience.(2)

Again according to Jon Parales the best five minutes of the event belonged to two jazz keyboardists:

The best five minutes of the event belonged to two jazz keyboardists: Vijay Iyer on an electric piano and Robert Glasper on a grand piano. Mr. Iyer had been playing with the cellist Erik Friendlander, harmonizing behind full-throated cello melodies. Mr. Iyer was repeating a terse hint of a bass line as Mr. Glasper arrived. He immediately topped it with a two-handed ostinato, high syncopated chords that encouraged Mr. Iyer to poke through and twinkle from within, bouncing his own syncopations into the rhythm, pushing elsewhere. The duo went on to segue pattern into pattern, limpid and shimmering, lingering in one harmony a while and then darting together toward a new one; it was a marvel of affinity.(3)

When he hear the grand piano from Robert Glasper we know that the sound is caused by physically pushing grand piano’s keys. The writer is writing about what he sees and the whole review is about physical acts of musicians and music.

Thursday 02 May – Drone Activity In Progress

Drone music is a musical style that emphasizes long sustained tones enlarged through overdrive, repeated sounds of distortion usually rather low in pitch, notes, or tone-clusters-called drones. Nowadays it’s a word that connects metal, industrial music, power electronics and classical minimalism. It consists sharp transient waves, enthusiastic provocation through sound or just a physical action on instruments.

Drone Activity In Progress was one-day festival of music at Knockdown Center in Queens. There were 16 act, 3 stages and 6 hours show in a renovated century-old door factory.

Vatican Shadow, who performed with pair of iPods and effect pedals is a noise, techno and drone artist also know as Prurient and he is also the helm of the Hospital Productions label. His records concern terrorism in a really interesting way in the Middle East and all over the world.

The Fact Magazine describes his concept;

His set lies in its deliciously paranoid, War On Terror-obsessed aesthetic. Track and release titles have been drawn from newspaper headlines about military and terrorist operations in the Middle East, while cover images have depicted a range of characters implicated in the W.O.T., from Hilary Clinton to Nidal Malik Hasan the former Us Army psychiatrist who shot 13 people dead and wounded 30 in a lone gun attack on the Fort Hood military base where he was stationed. Meanwhile, other verbal and graphic touches embedded throughout the releases hint an occult lineage of religious extremism that transcends geographical and temporal boundaries.(4)

John Calvert from ‘’Thequietus’’ explaines Vatican Shadow’s concept related to terrorism:

Instead of hypocrisy or criminality or free thought, what Fernow's live set evokes, quite explicitly, is the power and the glory of military might. What before was the sound of lies is now the sound of fanatical allegiance, the image a patriot roaming the earth on steel tread, making the world safe for democracy, a soldier of Christianity. The beats are undanceable, the tracks senseless and interminable, because the only object of power is more power, and there is no conclusion. (5)

His live set is pure techno and it is a performance art. Most of the people may never saw someone playing live with a pair of iPods before. But atmosphere was great. He has all of the audience jumping up and down, thrashing around, headbanging, directing his flashlights to audience etc.

Sunday 05 May 2013 – Red Bull Music Academy Presents Flying Lotus

This night I watched Flying Lotus. Flying Lotus is hip-hop producer and beat-maker Flying Lotus named Steven Ellison. He is the grandnephew of the late jazz pianist Alice Coltrane and her husband saxophonist John Coltrane. Also he is the grandson of singer/songwriter Marilyn McLeod. Ellison’s work as Flying Lotus tends to inspire lofty comparisons—Aphex Twin, Dilla and of course, his own Coltrane lineage.

Flying Lotus’s performance was electronic music performance. When listening to a audio recording of Flying Lotus, it can be difficult to imagine his live performance because in such a subgenre of electronic music called instrumental hip-hop, structure is very complicated, there are movements of sounds every second. So we can talk about complexity of structure, style and fashions, new songs, freedom of forms, and timbral infinity for hours. But there’s something tricky about criticizing live electronic performance.

In his thirty minutes live set, Flying Lotus made a lot of noise with his Roland SP-404 sampler. It is a verycreative sampler with lo-fi sampling and performing effects and his computer (Digital Audio Workstation). He twisted, bended and animated his sounds and manipulate them in real time. Mostly played his prerecorded stuff on SP-404, it was apparent that he mastered his sampling techniques. So when we hear a bass in a Flying Lotus set, there isn’t necessarily physical act associated with the creation of the sound. He blazed through track after track of beats, sound and atmosphere. There were droning, wet chords combine with off-kilter percussion. It’s certain that he has a gift for layering and developing soundscape and while his set was mellow, the crowd was doubtlessly into it.

COMPARISON OF LIVE PERFORMANCES

We can compare three different performances by different perceptions. The first one was improvisational performance which attended by most of good instrumentalist. Accroding to writers, improvisations were most of the time successful and the critics were mostly about physical acts of musicians. We can easily think that when writers writing about this kind of events, the subject is generally closer to musical terms.

The live electronics criticism is rather different from that of general music performance criticism. When we were listening Flying Lotus’ performance, we used our critical listening skills of live performance.

Mostly, when electronic music producer performing live electronics like Flying Lotus, it’s hard to say what he has been dealing. Even when facing the crowd, a producer whose action is generally consist of pad triggers, knob turns, and other such gestures which simply do not have the same expected sonic correspondence as playing hands on instruments.(6) .

As a critical listener or music nerd, we identify when performers shifts happen and how sound change the variability of the setup because performance is about manipulation of fixed pre-recorded sounds.

There are lots of distinctions of live electronic music performance so there are also lots of differences between criticism writings of subgenres of electronic music performances. Vatican Shadow’s performance was totally different from Flying Lotus. He was playing with pair of iPods so there shouldn’t be any creative tension on performer but we wouldn’t know it actually. Raymond Monelle defines primitive criticism in ‘The Criticism of Musical Performance’;

This is primitive criticism, neither showing nor demanding any sophisticated knowledge of music or singing.

It may be a primitive criticism but what should music writer write about Vatican Shadow’s performance? It will be normal if we expect writing mostly about atmosphere and audiences mood. In his performance any act or behavior may be examined as performance and most of the act was about an idea of his project, his military costume, the atmosphere of the hall, his manic physical activities on the stage. His body was a real instrument. When he is playing ‘House of the Followers’ the Red Room of Warehouse was a siege in Iraq or somewhere in Middle East.

There are many ways to define and understand performance. Some music performances like improvisations criticized by musician skills, talents and training etc. Some other performances like live electronics are mostly defining by mood and atmosphere.

REFERENCES

Book

MYL506 Performance Studies Book

Website

(1) A Night of Improvised Round Robin Duets: Red Bull Music Academy http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/events/new-york-2013-a-night-of-improvised-round-robin-duets (2) Jon Pareles - Round Rubin Duets at Brooklyn Masonic Temple http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/03/arts/music/round-robin-duets-at-brooklyn-masonic-temple.html?_r=1&
(3) Jon Pareles - Round Rubin Duets at Brooklyn Masonic Temple http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/03/arts/music/round-robin-duets-at-brooklyn-masonic-temple.html?_r=1&
(4)The Fact Magazine – Vatican Shadow A Lie Must Tell A Single Story http://www.factmag.com/2012/05/03/vatican-shadow-a-lie-must-tell-a-single-story/ (5)John Calvert - The Power & The Glory:Vatican Shadow Live http://thequietus.com/articles/10428-vatican-shadow-live-review-blackest-ever-black (6) Toward a Practical Language for Live Electronic Performance
http://soundstudiesblog.com/2013/04/29/toward-a-practical-language-for-live-electronic-performance/