Music Friday, January 25
Brooklyn Rider
Fri., Jan. 25, 7:30 p.m.Classical
It’s no longer unusual for a classical group to have a name that doesn’t include a word like “quartet” or “ensemble,” or for it to focus on new compositions or on music that draws on pop, jazz, electronica, and the like. All of which means New York string quartet Brooklyn Rider isn’t an oddity these days—but it’s one of the best of this new generation. Violinists Johnny Gandelsman and Colin Jacobsen, violist Nicholas Cords, and cellist Eric Jacobsen (Colin’s brother) formed the quartet in 2006, while playing together in Yo-Yo Ma’s expansive Silk Road Project. In Ma’s group they adapt music from all over Asia, and in Brooklyn Rider they’ve done likewise—for the excellent 2008 album Silent City (World Village), they collaborated with Iranian kamancheh virtuoso Kayhan Kalhor. That’s not to say Brooklyn Rider restricts itself to Asian music: last year they released a double CD collecting the complete string quartets of Philip Glass, plus an album called Seven Steps (In a Circle) that collides a dramatic rendering of Beethoven’s meticulous String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp Minor (with heavy use of glissando and less vibrato than is traditional) with the dense 2008 work Together Into This Unknowable Night by New York composer Christopher Tignor (who leads the rock-flavored new-music group Slow Six). The real oddity on the album, though, is the title track, a response to the Beethoven quartet composed collectively by all four members of Brooklyn Rider, who write in the liner notes that they were “guided by a spirit of free play rather than the heavy hand of the auteur’s pen.” It’s just 12 minutes long, in contrast with the 40-minute Beethoven quartet, but its scratchy textures, extended techniques, and rapid-fire movement make up for in impact what’s missing in duration and exposition. For tonight’s concert the group will play Seven Steps, but the centerpiece of the program isn’t the Beethoven but rather another classical warhorse, Felix Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 1 in E-flat. Also included are John Zorn’s The Alchemist, Colin Jacobsen’s “Three Persian Miniatures,” and works by Christina Courtin, Dana Lyn, and Vijay Iyer, all from a series of commissions called the Brooklyn Rider Almanac, for which the group asks composers to use any artist from the past 50 years as an inspiration. —Peter Margasak
$35, $5 students
773-702-8068Circuit des Yeux, Rabid Rabbit, These Wonderful Evils, Nad Navillus
Fri., Jan. 25, 8 p.m.Rock, Pop, Etc
When Robert Fripp broke up King Crimson in 1974 (for neither the first nor the last time), he explained that he didn’t want to work in an unwieldy, dinosaur-dimensioned formation but rather operate as a “small, mobile, independent, and intelligent unit.” Fripp may not have foreseen what four decades would do to the price of gas (and thus the feasibility of touring in a group with a big pile of gear), but he looks like a soothsayer when you consider the current wave of performers who take the stage with just one instrument and some electronic augmentation. These Wonderful Evils is Zak Boerger, an artist from Bloomington, Illinois, who like Chris Forsyth and Steve Gunn plays solo guitar music informed by eclectic influences and a rock ’n’ roll mind-set. The inexorable flow and slow-burn drone of the long pieces on his most recent LP, Little Church (Sparrows & Wires/Horror Bag), make them sound like what would’ve happened if Pete Cosey had traded licks with Davey Graham over a beat laid down by one of Brian Eno’s drum machines; on a live recording from last month that’s available on his Bandcamp page, a loop pedal provides an undulating foundation for Boerger’s lyrical fingerpicking and thoughtful, fuzz-coated extrapolations. This concert is part of a series of benefits (here and in Barcelona, Madrid, and New York City) to help musicians and artists Dan and Letha Rodman Melchior pay for Letha’s cancer treatment. —Bill Meyer Circuit des Yeux headlines; Rabid Rabbit, These Wonderful Evils, and Nad Navillus open.
$10 donation requested
Erin McKeown, Jenn Grant
Fri., Jan. 25, 9 p.m.Rock, Pop, Etc
Erin McKeown shows off the malleability of the songs on the new Manifestra (TVP) by including a bonus disc that acknowledges her coffeehouse roots with ten acoustic-guitar versions of the polished full-band tracks on the album proper. McKeown has always seemed to me like a pop polymath trapped in the body of a protest singer, but here she approaches politics with a heavy-handedness she’s previously kept in check. “The Politician” helpfully points out that corruption is bad, and “The Jailer” notes that current border policies are fucked-up. “Baghdad to the Bayou,” which channels the swamp-rock grooves of CCR and ties the war in Iraq to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, was cowritten via text message with Rachel Maddow. I’m down with what McKeown is saying, but I’d personally prefer to find such opining on the op-ed page. Thankfully her delivery—with the exception of the horrible rapping on the title track—redeems these lapses in judgment. Like the proverbial spoonful of sugar, her effortless singing and charming melodies help even bitterest lyric medicine go down. McKeown is joined here by Marc Dalio on drums and Matt Douglas on horns. —Peter Margasak Jenn Grant opens.
$12
Ultraista, Prefuse 73
Fri., Jan. 25, 10 p.m.Rock, Pop, Etc
Between them British producer Nigel Godrich and American drummer Joey Waronker have been intimately involved with some of the most popular and influential music of the past couple decades: Godrich has worked with Radiohead, Pavement, and the Flaming Lips, among others, while Waronker has played with Beck, Nelly Furtado, R.E.M., and a zillion more. But they’re finally calling their own shots in Ultraista, a trio rounded out by unremarkable British singer Laura Bettinson. Unfortunately, though their self-titled debut for Temporary Residence shows off many of their trademarks—densely percolating polyrhythms, overlapping synths playing terse licks and colorful washes, and metronomic bass lines, here by Gus Seyffert—too much of it feels unfinished. Bettinson tries to caress the modest melodies, but she lacks the charisma and range to bring the songs’ skeletal blueprints to life. And because Godrich and Waronker are both members of Thom Yorke’s Atoms for Peace—who release their first album on Tuesday and will likely follow that with loads of touring—I’m thinking it’s unlikely we’ll ever hear Ultraista evolve their approach to the point that they’re writing real songs. —Peter Margasak Prefuse 73 opens.
$18
Flatfoot 56, Crombies, 3 Blue Teardrops, Sore Subjects, Brick Assassin
Fri., Jan. 25, 8 p.m.Rock, Pop, Etc
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