Strange Folk - Montclair, New Jersey
Saturday 8 May, 2010
Alexander Kasser Theater, Montclair, New Jersey, USA
Buy Tickets NOW!!! http://www.peakperfs.org/performances/crash_1
REVIEWS
http://www.peakperfs.org/insite/?p=2105
As a critic, I do my best to find the meaning in art, to deconstruct why something exists, and sometimes that’s tough to answer. Sure, some art is overtly political, and some art can be a triumph of storytelling. Crash Ensemble, the Irish musical group that closed out another stellar season at Peak Performances, may have been both of those things, but I couldn’t tell—to me, the group was simply an aesthetic delight.
Performing two separate concerts, Strange Folk on May 8 and Bright Visionon May 9, Crash Ensemble brought vitality and excitement to instrumental music that’s eluded my naive, pop-addled ears over my short lifetime. Perhaps I could make allusion to postminimalism or polystylism, but that would be doing a dishonor to the Wikipedia article I road in on. Instead, I’m content to share my delight over the sound that washed over the audience.
From the first song of the first performance, Crash made an impression with its offbeat, strong, counterintuitive sounds. It was pure bravado. The performance continued with music just as dramatic and bold as the first piece but often laced with melancholy. At times, I felt as though I was listening to a wonderful hybrid of the Kronos Quartet and Daft Punk. At other times, it felt closer to Philip Glass combined with Bernard Herrmann or Clint Mansell, Jonny Greenwood, and Björk. All of these talents have in common the theme of repetition. The composer often repeated a refrain over and over, building on it each time, until seconds later, I was no longer listening to the same song—bizarrely, I never knew what would come next. Yes, the music had a certain consistency that never translated into a lack of imagination.
The Sunday afternoon performance, while much more subdued, was in its own way just as bold as the Saturday performance. In one moment that evoked John Cage, a pianist, accompanied by an almost solar-bright light, stole the show with a performance that had the instrumentalist popping the keys while literally handling the strings inside the piano. At that moment, it was the purest music could be, removing the separation between the artist and the art. And yet, it wasn’t necessarily a statement being made but simply a necessity to achieve the desired sound.
I said earlier that Crash Ensemble has a consistent sound, and I don’t think I’m wrong. Yet it’s undeniable that they bend genre to their whim. There were times when I felt like I was listening to the soundtrack of a Kennedy-era spy film/romantic comedy, and then minutes later, they evoked a melodic pattern reminiscent of Stephen Sondheim, while never losing their own very specific musical identity. I think I even heard a bit of a metal influence somewhere.
So maybe everything about this description makes no sense; perhaps my
expertise in the field of contemporary classical (isn’t that an
oxymoron?) is limited to Béla Bartók, Eric Whitacre, and (ahem) John
Williams. I could say it doesn’t matter, but that’d be a lie, since
critics must understand the field they write about. I can only say this:
the great pleasure and greatest triumph of Crash Ensemble—and indeed
the best of Peak Performances—is not the one-sided artistic conversation
that scares so many away from live performance. No. It’s the
invigoration of knowing there’s an entire world of music and art to
discover, waiting to be heard, seen, and experienced. It was a hell of a
way to end the season—not with a bang, definitely not with a whimper,
but with a crash.