Dallas, 2.22.2022

Took off from making phone calls for the Dems to celebrate this palindrome week and ambigram day with a visit to the Nasher Sculpture Center for the first night of "Sculpting Sound: Twelve Musicians Encounter Bertoia" (which I wrote about for the Nasher's magazine), in which, on six succeeding nights, duos of world class musos interact with Harry Bertoia's sounding sculptures. 

My sculptor buddy Mark and I arrived early to receive a tour of the Bertoia exhibit, which encompasses monotype prints, jewelry, furniture, and larger metal pieces as well as the "tonals." It's an imposing body of work, showing the influence of nature and industry, perhaps undervalued because of its ubiquity in domestic spaces (his famous chair) as well as public ones (over 50 commissions from architects for large pieces) in the mid-20th century.

Producer David Breskin told me it took three days to prepare the Nasher Hall space for the performance, which required wall treatments to deaden the sound for six nights of live recording, using hanging microphones like the ones Bertoia employed to record concerts of his sounding pieces in his "Sonambient barn" -- basically a big sounding chamber. The sound in Nasher Hall was drier than Bertoia's barn, which was probably necessary to capture the sounds of the added instruments (in tonight's case, Nels Cline and Ben Monder's electric guitars). It was notable to me that the decay of the sound from the pieces was faster than I expected after hearing Bertoia's recordings; probably a function of the room sound.

The performance was total wish fulfillment. After two years of pandemic, it was kind of overwhelming to sit in the middle of maybe a hundred people -- all masked without complaint, thank Ceiling Cat -- involved in energy exchange with the players. Cline and Monder had only had today to interact with the sculptures (although Cline had been aware of Bertoia's work since the '70s) before incorporating them into their performance. (One is reminded of Don Cherry's European group incorporating gamelan instruments into their 1968 appearance at the Berlin Jazz Days with little or no preparation.)

I loved the way the players seemed to cue off each other, rhythmically and dynamically, while extemporizing. I have long believed that if you take people who understand how musical composition works and give them tools or materials with which they are unfamiliar, they'll make music. These men surely did. Monder's orchestral way of playing -- lots of dark chords with moving voices, fast runs played with an overlay of effects that muted his pick attack and transformed the sound into Something Entahrly Other -- provided a nice contrast to Cline's array of extended techniques and mastery of effects. For me, though, the best part of the performance was Cline's manipulation of the Bertoias. He came to make a big noise, and the physicality of his interaction with the pieces -- stalking the space and attacking them with vigor -- was stunning.

I'll be back at the Nasher later in the week for acoustic instruments (Jen Shyu and Brandon Seabrook) and pianos (Kris Davis and Craig Taborn, who'll then visit Fort Worth's Modern Art Museum with a different program of material). After famine, feast. Now to see if I can get my ailing laptop repaired.