This month is full of wild and wacky happenings in the Seattle classical music scene. World-famous violinist Hilary Hahn skips over Benaroya Hall and plays a show at the Neptune. Seattle Opera broadcasts a live stream of one of their productions to a crowd of 8,000 (screaming?) fans at KeyArena. An instrument called the “fire organ” anchors an opera at On the Boards. You’ve got to hear it to believe it!
Trimpin (Photo: Toni Gauthier)
May 5 — Seattle Opera hosts its first ever simulcast at KeyArena. Watch Puccini’s Madama Butterfly on the big screen while the action unfolds at McCaw Hall. Tickets to this event are free.
May 15 & 17 — Head to Benaroya Hall for Seattle Symphony‘s production of Bartok’s deliciously dark opera, Bluebeard’s Castle. With lavish sets designed by Dale Chihuly, this staging is one you won’t want to miss.
May 18 – 20 — Notorious sound artist, sculptor, and composer Trimpin presents The Gurs Zyklus at On the Boards. Half opera, half performance art, this production features vocalists and a kinetic sound sculpture called the “fire organ”.
May 18-19 — Celebrated violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg joins the Seattle Symphony for a performance of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. Also on the program is Mozart’s Requiem, the composer’s haunting final work.
May 19 — Seattle Modern Orchestra‘s final concert of the 2011-12 season, “Music on Paintings”, features pieces inspired by works of visual art. Experience their performance of Morton Feldman’s “Rothko Chapel” in the atmospheric Chapel Performance Space at the Good Shepherd Center.
Hilary Hahn & Hauschka (Photo: Mareike Foecking)
May 29 — What happens when one of the world’s best classical violinists collaborates with one of the world’s greatest champions of the prepared piano? Catch violinist Hilary Hahn — famous for her interpretations of Bach — at the Neptune Theater with German experimental tunesmith Hauschka. The pair is on tour promoting their genre-bending album SILFRA.
May 30 — Wash down your opera with a cold pint of tasty local brew. The singers of Opera on Tap take over Ballard’s Conor Byrne Pub for an evening of sudsy, operatic fun. Cheers!
From left to right: John Sherba, Jeffrey Zeigler, David Harrington, Hank Dutt. (Photo: Jay Blakesberg).
Back in 1973 when the quartet was formed, violinist David Harrington explained to the audience at the Neptune last Friday night, he and his wife lived at La Paz Apartments in the University District, and so this neck of the woods was very familiar–he’d gone for a walk around the old neighborhood before Kronos Quartet took the stage that evening. There were a few empty seats at the back of the balcony, but otherwise the Neptune was full of fans who applauded even more upon learning that the show was being recorded for a “Live from the Neptune!” release, as Harrington joked.
“[I]t’s never clear if you’re listening to a byte or a human,” wrote Andrew Matson in the Seattle Times recently, about THEESatisfaction’s sound, but it’s also true of Kronos Quartet. The official close of the concert, Steve Reich’s WTC 9/11, called for a “total of three string quartets, one live and two pre-recorded.” (A lengthy encore included an arrangement of Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright,” Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze,” and “Sim Shalom,” based on a recording by the Jewish cantor Yechiel Karniol, to name a few.)
For many, the chance to hear Reich’s new work was probably enough, despite the $55 ticket price. It’s a harrowing piece, uniting the terror and humanity of 9/11, opening with the violin mimicking an open phone line, and with the anxious voices of air traffic controllers laid, via a “stop-motion sound” technique over the instruments, so that they, too, are instruments. Later come the voices of women who kept vigil over the dead, with the musicians under a red light in front of a red velvet curtain, which shadowed into black at the bottom.
Reich’s piece was preceded by Missy Mazzoli‘s Harp and Altar, a “love song to the Brooklyn Bridge” that draws upon Hart Crane’s famous poem. Fragments of “The Bridge” (pre-recorded and electronically distressed) sung by Gabriel Kahane have a ghostly quality, while the violins trade lyrical shimmer for dense jitters. It’s not a long piece, but it’s transporting, which also happens to be true of Laurie Anderson’s Flow.
We also heard Clint Mansell’s Requiem for a Dream Suite, arranged by David Lang, familiar to both fans of Aronofsky and people who watch movie trailers in general, as the sawing zig-zag on violin captures something both portentous and exhilarating that seems to work for exploding cars as well as tense personal dramas, and never get earwormily old. (Beethoven’s Ode to Joy used to be a similar bait-and-switch go-to, thundering in the trailer but not appearing in the movie itself.) Clint Mansell, I was reminded by the program notes, is a founding member of Pop Will Eat Itself.
It’s a commonplace that a Kronos Quartet program is eclectic–this one included Bryce Dessner’s Aheym (“homeward” in Yiddish), Ramallah Underground’s Tashweesh, Midhat Assem’s Ya Habibi Ta’ala (arranged by Golijov), Omar Souleyman’s La Sidounak Sayyada (arranged by Jacob Garchik), Michael Gordon’s Clouded Yellow, and Nicole Lizée’s Death to Kosmiche.
Different pieces stand out for different listeners: one patron told me he was all about the blurry harmonies in Clouded Yellow, while I was still replaying Kosmiche‘s “musical hauntology” (Lizée likes to introduce actual Atari sounds, as well as instrumental imitations) in my mind.
Another weekend, another tassle of great live shows. And you don’t need to miss those fleeting glimpses of sunshine to catch ’em. Win, win, we say.
Tonight (Friday, March 23):
Kronos Quartet @ The Neptune. $50 (plus fees) day of show. Doors at 7pm, show at 8pm.
Avant-everything foursome Kronos Quartet was formed in 1973, and for nearly forty years they’ve pushed the outer boundaries of classical stringed instrumentation, recording everything from Shostakovich to Jimi Hendrix and working with artists as disparate as poet Alan Ginsberg and David Bowie. They’re stunning musicians who continue to indulge their muse : Try summoning up the list of classical musicians covering Sigur Ros (and covering them well).
Kaiser Chiefs@ Showbox at the Market. $18 at the door. Show at 7pm.
In the mid 2000’s, an explosion of British pop bands inundated the scene. Most of ’em borrowed from one post-punk rulebook. But amidst the lock-step grooves of Franz Ferdinand and the Futureheads, The Kaiser Chiefs pounded out a dizzying array of great tunes. They could be as jumpy as Franz (“I Predict a Riot“), but also excelled at Smiths-style balladry (“Love’s Not a Competition (But I’m Winning)”) and jangly sixties pop (“I Can Do it Without You“). And while they’re not as image-stylish as some of their contemporaries, the Kaisers possess a terrific frontman in bounding rapscallion Ricky Wilson. Tonight’s show is a reschedule from their October 2 date, and all tickets for the original show will be honored.
Loch Lomond, Lemolo, Dinosaur Feathers @ The Tractor Tavern. $12 at the door. Show at 9:30pm.
Ritchie Young’s unearthly tenor voice lends a dreamlike cast to this Portland ensemble’s pop. If you love The Zombies and/or wish The Decemberists possessed a singer whose voice soars more than it drones, you need to hear these guys. Super-special bonus: Local dream-pop thrushes Lemolo open.
En Vogue @ Jazz Alley. $45 advance. Doors at 7pm, show at 8pm.
See Sunday, March 25 for the deets.
Saturday, March 24:
Nada Surf, An Horse @ Showbox at the Market. $25 advance, $30 day of show. Show at 8pm.
We’ll make no bones about our love for indie stalwarts Nada Surf (SunBreak staffer Chelsea Nesvig fills in all the blanks here, in case you missed it the first time). Matthew Caws writes some of the best classicist pop you’ll hear, and the band’s new full-length, The Stars are Indifferent to Astronomy, continues their decade-long winning streak of releases. They’re bound to break out some tracks from their daisy-fresh new EP, too.
White Rabbits, Gull @ The Crocodile. $13 advance. Show at 8pm.
“Percussion Gun” is so powerful, it almost dwarfed the rest of this Brooklyn six-piece’s output (cue fawning over said track here). But White Rabbits’ great new full-length, Milk Famous, proves they’re not one-hit wonders. It’s packed with the requisite variety of galloping Spoon-style piano pop and dance-rock tracks. The first single, “Heavy Metal,” definitely leans towards the latter, with a sleek slacker groove that’s unsettling and sexy at equal turns.
mr. Gnome, The Redwood Plan, Clutch Douglass @ The Sunset Tavern. $8 advance, $10 at the door. Show at 9pm.
No, that’s not a typo–you spell mr. Gnome with a lowercase m, thanks. You don’t often get batshit-crazy and ethereal beauty in equal doses, but this Cleveland, Ohio duo manages to straddle that tightrope gracefully. With their trippy lyrics, odd tempo changes, and Nicole Barille’s creamy raincloud of a voice, they sound like the spirit of Syd Barrett taking Cat Power down one twisty scary-beautiful multihued path. Seattle quartet The Redwood Plan, by contrast, throw down pogo-worthy new-wave-tinged pop–sorta like The Gossip gone spiky-haired–with an absolute fireball of a frontwoman (former Ms. Led founder Lesli Wood) at the epicenter.
En Vogue @ Jazz Alley. $45 advance. Doors at 7pm, show at 8pm.
See Sunday, March 25 for the deets.
Sunday, March 25:
En Vogue @ Jazz Alley. $45 advance. Doors at 7pm, show at 8pm.
One of the biggest superstar acts of the 1990’s finishes out an intimate four-day stint at that class joint, Jazz Alley. Yeah, it’ll be a total wallow in nostalgia, but most of the original line-up remains intact, those brassy harmonies are still in place, and they’ve got some of the era’s most addictive soul-pop tunes in their arsenal. Try not to sing, “No, you’re never gonna get it,” over and over again now, for the duration of your work day.
Sharon van Etten, The War on Drugs @ The Neptune. $15 advance. Doors at 7pm, show at 8pm.
Singer/songwriter Sharon van Etten’s connected with the world in a big way. Maybe it’s that dusky alto voice, or maybe it’s the wistful quality of her songs, which possess the relatability and warmth of a shoebox full of faded family photographs. Her set at Bumbershoot last year was one of the Fest’s surprise hits, so the Neptune will likely pack up.
After weeks of fevered anticipation, rumors, and speculation, the final line-up for the 2012 Sasquatch Festival was revealed in an appropriately festive Launch Party at the Neptune Theatre last night. Tickets go on sale next Saturday, February 11, at 10 a.m., with a two-day Live Nation pre-sale taking place the previous Wednesday, February 8. Go to sasquatchfestival.com/tickets for more info, and you best be quick on the draw: It’s sure to sell out.
The final line-up for the epic Memorial Day Festival’s tenth go-round in as many years upholds Sasquatch’s usual heady mix of indie rock, hip hop, folk, electronica, and soul. There’s pretty much something for everyone among the army of acts overrunning the Gorge for Sasquatch, and the crowd packing the Neptune burst into spontaneous applause as the final roster unspooled.
The Launch Party, hosted by Too Beautiful to Live’s Luke Burbank, preceded the grand unveiling with a pretty stellar evening of live music. Matthew Caws of Nada Surf opened up the party with a solo acoustic set heavily weighed by selections from his band’s newest full-length, The Stars are Indifferent to Astronomy. The solo turn was his second of three live shows yesterday: Nada Surf played a gig at the Triple Door that afternoon, and the band zipped over to Ballard to play a sold-out Tractor Tavern show immediately after Caws left the Neptune stage. The Launch Party crowd was gifted a stripped-down, emotional set that framed Astonomy’s pop jewels in a sparsely-gorgeous backdrop, and Caws frequently brought to mind a less-caustic, more winsomely romantic Alex Chilton at several points (that’s a big compliment, incidentally).
Seattle hip hop crew The Physics followed up with the evening’s most party-centric stretch. The band’s crowd-stoking energy belied an almost mellow melodic and lyrical flow, aided immeasurably by swaths of funky guitar, lush backing vocals, and an assemblage of beats that favored subtly-flowing grooves over throw-down rhythms. Their sound should make for great hip-shaking and head-bobbing at Sasquatch (The Physics, as it turns out, will be playing the festival this year).
Closing act Junip come off as the shyest bunch of guys ever to step onto a rock stage, but the Swedish quintet sounded superlative in a live setting. Divorced from the detached sheen of their studio recordings, their blend of dreamy vocalizing, chiming guitars, warm analog synths, and insistent (real) drums and percussion wove a seriously hypnotic and oddly sensuous spell. It was so immersive, even the drunken blonde who bum-rushed the stage mid-set didn’t harsh the collective mellow.
So, yeah, the Launch Party live show sorta ruled, but the big pay-off remained the final announcement of the Sasquatch 2012 line-up. Below, please find the complete(-ish) roster of acts gracing the 2012 Sasquatch stage.
Music Acts:
Jack White
Beck
Bon Iver
Pretty Lights
The Shins
Tenacious D
Beirut
Girl Talk
The Roots
The Head and the Heart
Portlandia
Feist
Silversun Pickups
Metric
Explosions in the Sky
The Joy Formidable
Mogwai
Nero (DJ)
M. Ward
John Reilly and Friends
Childish Gambino
St. Vincent
The Civil Wars
Jamey Johnson
Little Dragon
Tune-Yards
Wild Flag
Blind Pilot
Wolfgang Gartner
Beats Antique
Apparat
Imelda May
The Sheepdogs
The Walkmen
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Mark Lanegan Band
Spiritualized
Blitzen Trapper
The Cave Singers
Shabazz Palaces
Fun.
Grouplove
Tycho
SBTRKT
STRFKR
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
Deer Tick
Alabama Shakes
Imelda May
Dum Dum Girls
The Helio Sequence
Kurt Vile
Cloud Cult
Ben Howard
Here We Go Magic
Zola Jesus
The War on Drugs
Shearwater
Cass McCombs
Active Child
Trampled by Turtles
Charles Bradley and his Extraordinaires
Araabmuzik
Starslinger
L.A. Riots
Com Truise
We are Augustines
Unknown Mortal Orchestra
I Break Horses
Walk the Moon
Dry the River
Allen Stone
Pickwick
Hey Marseilles
Gary Clark Jr.
Purity Ring
Yellow Ostrich
Nobody Beats the Drum
Electric Guest
Coeur de Pirate
Lord Huron
Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside
Beat Connection
The Sheepdogs
Hey Rosetta!
Said the Whale
Howlin Rain
Gardens and Villa
Felix Cartal
Awesome Tapes from Africa
Craft Spells
Vintage Trouble
Poor Moon
Black Whales
Gold Leaves
Greylag
THEESatisfaction
Dyme Def
Fresh Espresso
The Physics
Sol
Metal Chocolates
Grynch
Spac3man
Don’t Talk to the Cops
Scribes
Fatal Lucciauno
Fly Moon Royalty
Katie Kate
Comedy Acts:
Nick Kroll
John Mullaney
Todd Barry
Beardyman
Rob Delaney
Pete Holmes
Howard Kremer
and the proverbial more, more, more…
Nothin’ but nothin’ can take the wicked sting out of the current cold snap like a night packed into a local music venue. So get out there already.
Tonight (Friday, January 13):
Dick Dale, Dead Man @ The Tractor Tavern. $20 at the door. Show at 9pm.
Well before Quentin Tarantino goosed “Miserlou” into the mass pop-culture consciousness in Pulp Fiction, Dick Dale was already one of the undisputed legends of surf guitar, a virtuoso of the style who pulled dirty rock sounds into the stuttering beach party mix with volcanic ferocity; and he’s a staggering force of nature in a live setting. Get ready to frug, and to get your ears blown out.
Post Adolescence, Mothership, We Wrote the Book on Connectors, The Dignitaries@ The High Dive. $7 at the door. Show at 9pm.
Post Adolescence play winning post-punk with emotions and fun writ large in equal doses. The band’s fat and full guitar sound recalls Suede, and Johnny Straube’s tremulous tenor voice is an idiosyncratic pop taste well worth acquiring. The ballad “Don’t Walk Away” manages to make the girls swoon while the boys air-guitar, and the band’s rockers jump out of the speakers with playful energy. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, get to the High Dive early, for Pete’s Sake: Tacoma’s Dignitaries pound out garage rock with blunt-force trauma, and We Wrote the Book on Connectors bolster their ample chops with the funniest great pop songs this side of Flight of the Conchords.
The Bad Things, Bakelite 78, Bat Country, Gunstreet Glory @ The Comet Tavern. $8 at the door. Doors at 8pm, show at 9pm.
I loves me some drunken cabaret pop, and the Comet’ll have it in doses this evening. Headliners The Bad Things remain that gloriously-sodden sub-genre’s local masters, but don’t miss Bakelite 78‘s clattering Tin Pan Alley pop: Crooner/principal singer Robert Rial suggests the love child born of a bathtub-gin-fueled make-out session between Rudy Vallee and Tom Waits.
Saturday, January 14:
Allen Stone, Kris Orlowski @ The Neptune Theater. Sold Out. Doors at 8pm, show at 9pm.
Allen Stone’s honey-sweetened soul voice has arrived with so much hype it’ll almost kick in your gag reflex, but there’s a reason for the mountain of press and the Conan O’ Brien slot: The kid’s got the goods. Tomorrow’s Neptune gig is sold out, which means if you ain’t got a ticket you’ll miss Stone and what’s sure to be a solid set by Kris Orlowski, a folk singer whose sandpaper pipes rough up his rootsy compositions with bracing grittiness. Stone also plays Sunday night at the Neptune with Noah Gunderson of The Courage warming things up, and yeah, that one looks to be sold out, too. Sorry to tease you like that.
Lonesome Shack, Sugar Sugar Sugar, The Curious Mystery @ The Sunset Tavern. $7 advance, $8 at the door. Doors at 9pm, show at 10pm.
Blah, blah, another two-guy band rifling through the blues, blah, blah. But Lonesome Shack pick out a more back-porch sound than the Black Keys or My Goodness–think Leadbelly, possessing the souls of a couple of indie-rock kids. Great stuff. The Curious Mystery, meantime, sound a little like Mazzy Star’s atmospheric attempt to compose music for a Sergio Leone western after dropping acid. Oh, and I won’t prattle on any more about middle-slotters Sugar Sugar Sugar than I have already, except to say that they kick ass.
Sunday, January 15:
Orchestra Zarabanda @ Columbia City Theater. $10 at the door. Show at 8:30pm.
Seattle ensemble Orchestra Zarabanda parlay Cuban salsa music that’s utterly free of pretense or irony: It’s just there to make you dance, and it’s played to perfection. They periodically headline classy and high-priced joints like Teatro Zinzanni, so take advantage of the chance to hear this tight and danceable rhythm collective in a classy and reasonably-priced joint like Columbia City Theater.
While a recent article in the Seattle Times found some in the local music scene contemplating the Neptune’s quick success as a concert venue–and some remarking that its shows could all be booked elsewhere–The National rolled into town from Brooklyn to play two sold-out nights, and it was hard to believe that this show would have worked anywhere else.
The Neptune’s restored grandeur perfectly matched The National’s moody sonic opulence, and they made the most of their first opportunity at the new player in Seattle’s concert scene.
With a large screen behind them, the show began before anyone set foot onstage, as a camera following the band backstage fed live green room images to the eager masses. Finally ready to perform, well-dressed lead singer Matt Berninger, the only band member without a brother or instrument onstage with him, anchored himself and his seductive baritone at stage center, between guitar players Aaron and Bryce Dessner. In standard hands-gripping-the-microphone-and-closed-eyes pose, he kicked off their latest LP High Violet– heavy set with “Runaway.”
(photo: Chelsea Nesvig)
Throughout the evening, the band kept with the rainbow theme of the High Violet cover, as the lights and cameras doused the stage with a new color and background image for every song. During “England” and its talk of “famous angels” and “a Los Angeles cathedral,” graphics of bright blue and red stained glass windows appeared. Between songs, Berninger alternated between talk of a new drink name he’d just come up with (vodka and Coke should be called a Cold War!) and his self-reported screw-ups being noted by the Dessner brothers.
The band’s 2007 album Boxer had the next heaviest mention in the setlist with “Racing Like a Pro,” “Squalor Victoria,” and crowd favorite “Fake Empire” coming toward the end. Alligator’s epic closer (and probable Berninger throat-destroyer) “Mr. November” showed up during the encore, right after a gorgeous version of Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers deep cut “Lucky You.”
The end of the four-song encore found the whole band in a semi-circle at the front of the stage, with even Berninger away from his microphone. After some shouting at the crowd to quiet down so they could “do something artsy,” the band launched into an acoustic version of “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks.” As the band’s unamplified voices melded into the singing crowd, the song’s repeated line made perfect sense: “All the very best of us string ourselves up for love.”
