Review: ‘Happy Birthday Mr. Cage' concert
Austin American-Statesman
By Luke Quinton
Sunday, September 19, 2010
John Cage’s music can be hard to love, but the master of art-music experimentation has devout followers in Austin.
Thursday night at First Unitarian Church, Line Upon Line percussion ensemble and the Austin Chamber Music Center interpreted some of Cage’s most challenging work for “Happy Birthday Mr. Cage,” ACMC’s annual celebration of the composer.
Percussionist Matt Teodori gave a brief, and helpful, outline of what we could expect: circular breathing into conch shells, burning pine cones, crumpling (and uncrumpling) paper and replacing phonograph needles with unusual materials.
Then the three percussionists centered on stage for “Three2.” They tapped metallic and wooden objects between long silences, adding the sound and light of a lit match struck on beat and extinguished in a water cup from Chipotle.
It was a spare, but intriguing, place to start; the pacing recalled the chiming of bells in meditation.
In the interlude Michelle Schumann played “Suite For Toy Piano,” numbers one through five, accompanied by a reading of Cage’s text piece “Art Is Either A Complaint Or Do Something Else.”
Unfortunately the live reading and toy piano did not make a friendly pair, as they each fought to be heard, and the monotone spoken word became just an annoyance. Not that this was completely undesirable, in context, of course.
“Inlets” called for conch shells of different sizes, to be filled with water and jostled into microphones. The stunning result is a babbling brook, like water lapping to shore.
The natural theme continued when an assistant stepped outside to light the metal box of pine cones on fire. The sound of burning pine cones and leaves, a few pops with a dim hiss, came in, along with a shifting orange glow that rose and fell behind the trio in the glassed courtyard.
This work did expose a problem with sight lines: it was impossible to see the trio as they moved in front of the courtyard, and again, as they sat on the stairs for the “4’33”.” A secondary concern, of course, but still, they deserve to be seen.
The night’s most fulfilling piece was the last, “Credo In Us,” a modern classic. Schumann played a wonderful hand-deadened piano (whose sound uncannily echoes modern syntheisized sounds), as two players galloped perfectly in time across metal cans.
Cullen Faulk, playing the radio, happened upon a gloriously out-of-place country ballad whose singer cried “I won’t let my guard down … I’m not lovin’ anymore.” The audience chuckled, as if to say, this is what Cage is all about.
Just as much fun as the show was the after-show invitation to swarm the stage and pick through the instruments and tools.
Adam Bedell’s scrapyard finds included a shiny steel oil reservoir and what looked like the plate off a brake rotor. We tapped the steel tin and rotor, and two clangs of metal, both very different, reverberated. This, too, is what Cage is all about. Looking forward to your next birthday, Mr. Cage.
