Laurie Anderson is a gifted composer
and should be content with that. Her performance with the Kronos
Quartet at Bing this weekend was a testament to her skill in this
area and her belief that she has skills in others like poetry and
performance art.
The show consisted of music from
Kronos with Anderson accompanying on electric fiddle, synthesizer and
spoken word as projections appeared above house left and house right.
These projections and the spoken word covered varying subjects, such
as an alphabetical list of galaxies, a denouncing of Lincoln as a
liar, a complaint about people who share their dreams, a story of a
trip to a Dutch karaoke bar, and meditations on extinction and the
Hebrew alphabet, among other things. The poetry that this sought to
be was unfortunately lost in cliches and heavy-handedness. This
wasn't helped by the cheesy Arial font over a gradient background
used for most of the projections, especially when Wingdings was used
liberally to hammer in her theme, viz. language is just a series of
inscrutable symbols, or something equally
coffeehouse-slam-poetry-night-esque. Ironically, her greatest lyrical
work came when the poetry felt most slam, as in a moment where each
note of a viola solo triggered the switch to the next word. Dictating
the time for the audience to read each note gave the work an
immediacy that was gripping. This sense of importance was lacking in
the rest of the piece, however.
The projections had the effect of
showcasing the beauty of Bing's interior. The lighting designer's
contributions gave the impression of total immersion, and the soft
lights and curved panels inside Bing wrapped up the audience. The
idea of the projections is cool in its own right. The subject matter
just left something to be desired.
The music itself was unique in that it
used fairly gimmicky elements without sounding gimmicky, which is why
the gimmicky nature of the vocals was even more disheartening. The
music was a subtle blend of acoustic and electric music, the
synthesizers filling in for the natural holes of a string quartet.
Anderson's score helped Kronos do what they do best, which is to make
Western sonorities feel like more than their constituent parts,
causing the listener to feel free of their musical preconceptions and
simply experience the movement through time of the music without the
detritus of expectations. At its worst, the piece felt like a movie
soundtrack done in a simultaneously Asian and Celtic medium. At its
best, it felt like that, but in a good way. There were many
interesting moments: the aforementioned viola solo, which was a
passionate spiccato atonal attack with lovely changes in timefeel; a
vamp consisting of a simple arpeggiating melody as the harmony
shifted nebulously between B major and G major; and an unusual and
sudden break with a Nine Inch Nails-like drum machine beat under a
Eurythmics-like dance ostinato and what sounded like Tibetan lyrics.
All of these were wonderful and
original but lost their mood with the entrance of Anderson's voice.
Her lyrics brought back self-consciousness, an obstacle to the
appreciation of the music qua music. It was as if she was not content
to let her music speak for itself. Her poems didn't add anything that
was lacking from the music. The words just came out more like
gratuitous dalliances with synthesizer technology instead of a
positive contribution to the mood of the piece.
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