Doug's musings

Concerts

[2004-10-08] Y2K4 ::

Tonight V and I went to the opening concert for Y2K4, an “international live looping festival.” We missed most of the opening act, but got to hear Sunao Inami, Rick Walker, and Bernhard Wagner’s set. The three had never played together before, but improvised a seamless 45 minute piece, morphing between, and blending, Wagner’s often-lush layers of guitar, Walker’s heavily processed voice and percussion, and Inami’s beautifully subtle and intricate electronic textures. There’s a danger in contexts like this of settling into drones or diverging into cacophony, but this piece oscillated well between the unpleasant extremes—above all else the players were listening to each other, knowing when to lead and when to yield. As I left, I wondered what a world would be like where there was so much beautiful and spontaneous music that no one ever bothered to record anything. It seemed I’d just gotten a hint.

[2004-04-12] Many strings (Shoghaken Ensemble and League of Crafty Guitarists) ::

Saturday I saw the Shoghaken Ensemble, an Armenian folk ensemble, in Santa Cruz. In a pre-concert talk given by Harold Hagopian, the group’s producer and manager, he mentioned that he rarely interfered with his artists’ musical decisions, but he insisted that they play a piece featuring the kanon, a lap harp with 72 strings played by Karine Hovhannisyan. I saw why; I enjoyed the concert overall, but this piece stole the show for me—from the first notes, I was enthralled, my jaw on the floor, at such a display of virtuosity on such a beautiful-sounding instrument. ...

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[2004-03-09] Hassan Hakmoun ::

A friend is in S.F. for a conference, so this afternoon we made a quick plan to go out and hear some music tonight (Monday). SF Gate’s online music listings are pretty minimal, but I Googled the names of some of the acts performing in S.F. and got lucky. We ended up at the Great American Music Hall to see Hassan Hakmoun. He told the audience that what he was playing was “Gnawa [Moroccan] music, trance and healing.” It was all that and more. Stunning musicianship all around—even when they would repeat a simple phrase for minutes, the phrasing and accents were constantly evolving, sometimes accelerating, shifting gears on a dime in perfect unison.