Dallas, 2.27.2022

Introducing the last night of the Nasher Sculpture Center's "Sculpting Sound: Twelve Musicians Encounter Bertoia," Nasher director Jeremy Strick remarked that another title for the series -- six successive nights of duets between musicians performing on their regular instruments and interacting with Harry Bertoia's sounding sculptures -- might have been "Proof of Concept." Strick was referring to Bertoia's hope, expressed to an interviewer for the Archives of American Art, that serious musicians might one day use his creations to "explore some possibilities to express their personality."

That idea was brilliantly realized when pianists Kris Davis and Craig Taborn took the floor at Nasher Hall, a Steinway baby grand surrounded by 40 of Bertoia's "tonals." The two have been collaborating since 2016, touring and recording under the rubric Octopus, but this was far from a typical duo performance for them. From the moment they entered the space, both musicians were mobile and active, engaging with the Bertoias more completely than the other duos I witnessed, demonstrating the range of sounds residing in each of the pieces. Both are familiar with prepared piano, and they treated the Steinway as another found object, albeit one with great expressive potential they could access.

Davis and Taborn utilized a number of objects inside the piano: metal objects that looked like chess pieces (magnets?), a pair of eBows (reminding me of the time Paul Quigg showed me I could use one to activate a kalimba Terry Horn had made using the tines of a garden rake), strips of duct tape, the beaters that were provided for use with the Bertoias. Although I don't believe either is a trained percussionist, the pair (Taborn in particular) used sticks and beaters very effectively. They were also the first musicians I saw or heard of this week using the wet sponges provided to create friction-generated sounds from the large gongs.

The musicians' movement provided visual evidence of their thought process and communication, and the way they created musical form in the moment. Once they realized that the suspended "singing bars" didn't contact each other as soon as they were activated, they changed their method of handling them. Something Taborn played on piano sent Davis rushing to the gongs to respond, while something he played on the gongs sent her with haste to the piano to play a rumbling response from the bass notes. At one point Davis circled the area rapidly, activating all of the Bertoias and eliciting a crescendo from Taborn. (This effect became a theme that was repeated later in the performance.) A rhythmic figure Davis played with beaters inspired a driving ostinato from Taborn.

At the piano, the two were alternately ruminative, lyrical, and visceral, with moments of dissonance and wide intervallic leaps that invoked the spirit of Cecil Taylor. There was excitement in their performance, but not the stagey, showboating kind. It was the thrill of watching a high level of spontaneous creation take place in real time -- emblematic of this week at the Nasher, and of Octopus, whom we look forward to hearing perform a totally different set of material tonight at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.