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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2011 > January > 28 > Entry
Review: Bang on A Can All-Stars with Glenn Kotche
Bang On a Can have been banging on pianos, drum kits and strings since they formed in 1987 to fill in the gap between avant garde classical and experimental pop.
Their All-Star descendants played a compelling show at UT’s Bass Concert Hall on Wednesday, with special guest, percussionist Glenn Kotche.
Kotche is the drummer for beloved alt-American band Wilco, but he’s also released three solo record. This concert gave evidence that he writes absorbing, original music outside the rock sphere.
Uniting with percussionist Ian Ding, Kotche starred in the second half, with a dazzling expansion of Steven Reich’s “Clapping.”
Reich’s piece was a spare work for four hands — an academic response to African rhythms. Kotche’s variations are for four hands and four feet, challenging the ears to anchor onto an individual rhythm before it morphs to another.
Ding and Kotche then swap drum kits for the floor, covered in resonant metal plates, and pick up a new rhythm. You almost pine for Reich’s simple handclaps.
The next two works were equally engaging, and a generous transition from the first half, which pushed the boundaries of how long an audience can withstand a single musical motif.
The All-Stars began with the first movement of Brian Eno’s seminal ambient work “Music for Airports.” It’s astounding that such a modern piece was written in 1978.
The problem with a long ambient work is that its purpose is to be stimulating background music. It served that purpose phenomenally well, but after the initial theme began to loop for the fourth or fifth time, with only microscopic adjustments, it became apparent that the piece just doesn’t work on stage. It lacks a visual stimulus, of say, travelers and aircraft landings.
A similar issue occurred with a frenetic, devil’s-workshop interpretation of Workers Union by Louis Andriessen. The piece allows the musicians to choose their own notes, but not rhythms or dynamics.
Pieces like this are why Bang On a Can exist, and it was thrilling to watch them play it, at first.
But after ten minutes it was like listening to a thousand third graders eat lunch — in synchronized, polyphonic rhythm.
Thank goodness for Michael Gordon’s beautiful and brilliant “For Madeline.” An elegy to his mother, it’s melancholic, with little dark melodies, glissandos angling up and down against the background of pulsing marimba.
Luke Quinton is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.
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