I spent most of the day at the Registry Theatre today, chillin’ with Jeff Donkersgoed, the technical director of Open Ears, and setting up chairs and spiking mics, holding ladders, and feelings a *tiny* bit like a sore thumb. I was supposed to be pretending to be Jeff when he had to run off to do things; in this case it meant talking to the piano tuner (to whom I gave *two* right answers!) and yelling at the musicians when they had to get onstage (not mean yelling, more like, “HEY GUYS! Five minutes!” type yelling).

David Lang showed up shortly after the musicians, and I was all like, “whoooa, David Lang.” He gave a bit of a talk before the concert, which was interesting.  The performance consisted of 4 pieces of music which Lang composed and sent to 4 film makers, asking them to create a film to go with the music–backwards from the usual, of course, but it made for some very interesting work.

The first was a piece called “Wed” which was backed by this film:

It made me a little sad, and then very nervous. I don’t think the dog cut himself, though.

The second piece was for piano, electric guitar, bass, violin, and percussion. It had this sort of insistent syncopation kind of feel. The film had something to do with icebergs and the ocean, and the footage was (or looked) old, with scratches and blotches and snow that flickered across the screen constantly, and made shapes that looked a bit like fractals, and a bit like static sounds.

The third piece was called “Heroin,” for solo voice and ‘cello. The ‘cello had these arpeggiated lines, and the soloist (I feel like her name was Nadine) sang with a delicate, wistful timbre. The film was sleeping people, fingers twitching, mouths open, in all different places and attitudes, who eventually wake up. It was my favourite, I think.

The fourth piece (after intermission) was 45 minutes of long tones for chamber orchestra. I’m not kidding! I mean, really beautiful chords, obviously, but without the film it would’ve been reeeeally depressing music, and with the film (which was black and white old footage) it seemed to reflect more on memory than on despair. But I very much enjoyed it, too.

So I helped pack up all the chairs and mics and stands and cables from the Registry Theatre.
We then went to E.T.C. at The Wax, which is a totally awesome venue except that it smells strongly like Frito-Lay (where I worked last summer): grease and fryers and rotten potatoes. I’m not sure why this was the case. But the art was neat, there was a fantastic chandelier, and a *balcony*.
I did not enjoy this concert as much as Elevated. It was modern jazz, and jazz to begin with is not really My Bag. And there was screamy sax, which is also not My Bag. I hate to be mean, but he sounded exactly like every other noise-jazz saxophone player ever, and I am disinclined to like the saxophone anyway. Also, he and I have the same hair, and it is weird to see what my hair would look like were it grey and on a middle-aged man.
The bass player was awesome, though. He had a really neat looking bass, and was feeding it through his MacBook. There were some crazy awesome electronicz and effectz, so he must’ve been ProToolsin’ it up. He was my favourite.

Next post: following Francisco López tomorrow night, hopefully, although maybe the night after that.  Tomorrow is moving day, after all!

TRANSMISSION OVER.

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