(P)reviews
Simone Leigh’s bronze Sentinel, with its ice cream scooper-like head, watched over as singer/synthesist Arushi Jain and cellist MIZU drenched MoMA’s sculpture garden with sound — a psychedelic mix of Indian classical music and EDM meant to compliment the garden’s “Figures and Forms” exhibition.
Whereas in this first set, the cello had felt almost superfluous — it was their “first time playing together,” Jain said — experimental cellist Mabe Fratti’s set was built from the bottom up. Accompanying herself with pizzicato chords, Fratti’s bell-like voice was joined by electric guitar and drums — sounding, at times, like shoegaze, at others, smooth jazz.
This was back at the end of August, the finale to the museum’s “Summer Sounds” series. It was also my first concert in a while. Whenever I return to reviewing after a “vacation,” I’m struck by the liveness, the noisiness, the thinginess of it all. With just a touch of agoraphobia.
Keep that in mind with these monthly miniatures, both reviews and previews.
When I visited Naama Tsabar in her Brooklyn studio last June, I was greeted by a constellation of cello bows that had been re-haired and re-arranged into geometric patterns. Pinned to the wall like taxidermized butterflies.
“These are great,” I told Tsabar, who swiftly responded, “What do you like about them?”
I thought for a moment. Well, first there’s the horsehair. Which feels to me so bodily. Feminine, even. I think of Man Ray’s Emak Bakia. Or of the folk song The Wind and Rain: “He made a fiddle bow of her long yellow hair.”
Then there’s the wood. Affixed to the studio walls. Like an alphabet being laid out. If I really focused, I might be able to decode it. Like cuneiform. Or those brain teasers with toothpicks.
I’d been introduced to Tsabar’s work by my friend Cassie Packard, who’d written a profile of her for Art Review in April.
“I’ve been looking for bows where the horsehair is synthetic or sourced humanely, rather than being a byproduct of butchering,” Packard quotes Tsabar, who’s vegan. “The violence inherent to the tools that we use to make music really makes you think about classical music in a different way.”
Indeed, Tsabar’s influences include Fluxus, Destructivism, and Dada, though always from a queer feminist perspective. An unbreakable guitar that subverts a rockstar’s moment of climax. Two conjoined guitars, like a “double phallus.” Sound holes like glory holes, the wall turned vaginal.
Originally a guitarist, Tsabar plays “seldomly” these days. But it’s still a part of her, a reference point to which she returns. (Much like the cello is for me).
This week, “Friction” — a show which includes Tsabar’s bows, among other works — opens in Los Angeles. Though I won’t be able to attend in person, I’ll be thinking of Tsabar whenever my hair snags on a zipper.
What is and what isn’t an instrument? This question was also raised by Seth Cluett and TAK Ensemble on Sunday, Sept. 22 at Roulette.
First on the program was the premiere of Cluett’s short film the reformation of assemblages. With three different scores — for musicians, cinematographer and choreographer — the film evoked, for me, childhood memories of the Outer Cape’s woods.
As the musicians foraged for sound-makers — rustling leaves, scraping rocks, whittling wood — I was reminded that to play an instrument and to play make-believe share the same verb.
This sense of play was also present in irreversible histories of disturbance. The hour-long piece used — in addition to the TAK’s usual flute, clarinet, violin, percussion, and voice — a variety of home-made instruments.
A monochord made from a pipe. A violin-ukulele hybrid. Slide whistles powered by tiny turbines. As a call-back to the reformation of assemblages, a dried bough. Becoming like a Turkish crescent.
At once sad and hopeful, the piece reminded me, at times, of Morton Feldman and Henryk Górecki. But maybe that’s because I had no better points of reference.
Then, I did something uncharacteristic. I closed my eyes.
Liberated from visual constraints — no longer feeling the pressure to assign sounds to sources — I heard irreversible histories of disturbance anew. Whistling. Birdsong. Sighs. The wind blows. Rummaging. Like someone unwrapping a lozenge. Electronic feedback. Distant chimes. Silence.
Tonight in Virginia is the premiere of What Belongs to You — a new opera by David T. Little, based on the novel by Garth Greenwell.
I was lucky to get a Brooklyn preview of What Belongs to You back in June (the same day, coincidentally, that I met with Tsabar). At director Mark Morris’s studio, tenor Karim Sulayman sang excerpts with piano reduction. (Tonight’s performance, staged and fully orchestrated, is performed by Alarm Will Sound.)
But even in this sketchy form, I was struck by how Little’s score captured the protagonist’s obsession, tenderness, rage. With quotations from Schubert and Dowland alluded in the novel. (Greenwell was trained as a singer, and it shows.)
The libretto is especially poetic. And explicitly gay (emphasis on explicit). “I sink to my knees,” sings Sulayman. “I take you in my mouth.” Stand aside, Thomas Adès. I’m sorry I can’t teleport to Virginia.
Coming down the PP2S pike:
Paola Prestini’s Silent Light shows at National Sawdust from Thursday, Sept. 26 through Sunday, Sept. 29
Alkemie reprises “Verdant Medicine” on Friday, Sept. 27
“A Meal” finishes its course at HERE Arts Center on Sunday, Sept. 29
Beverly Glenn-Copeland performs at Pioneer Works on Monday, Sept. 30
Meredith Monk presents “Indra’s Net” at the Park Avenue Armory now through Sunday, Oct. 6
Jeanine Tesori’s new opera Grounded storms the Met now through Saturday, Oct. 19
Beautiful. You've really captured the experience of hearing Seth Cluett's 'irreversible histories of disturbance,' with its melding of meditation and play.