The Arts in New York City
I really didn’t know what to expect from Spellbeamed or the Roullete. It was our first Macaulay seminar event, and as someone who is appreciative of all types of music, I was looking forward to it. What transpired in the Roulette, however, was a complete paradigm shift of my thoughts and ideas of music.
The opening act was strange. Two women, one being Spellbeamed’s composer, walked up to a harp situated on top of a table and that’s when things got weird. The two musicians, wearing white lab coats and surgical gloves, began playing the harp with different objects and tools. I don’t know if the intention was to make it seem like they were operating on the harp, but that’s what I got from it. While this was all happening, a narrator spoke some cryptic dialogue with some distortion. I was pretty confused with the whole starting act, and this feeling of confusion basically persisted throughout the whole entire performance.
One part I did enjoy was the video accompaniment. It showed a collection of random things like paper clips and seemed to bare little connection, if any at all, to the music being played, but I may have not been looking at it from a deeper point of view. Though I didn’t understand the point of the video, the concept of having visual art in conjunction with the music just appealed to me.
Spellbeamed was a real change of pace from all of my preconceived notions of music. During a time when we were early into the semester and discovering the various meanings and interpretations of what art is, Spellbeamed really set the tone for the class. I constantly found myself asking, “What the hell am I listening to?” throughout the performance. And this just wasn’t because Spellbeamed was unpleasing to the ears. I’ve heard unpleasant music before and during those times; I was able to endure it. Had this not been a mandatory class assignment, I would have probably left after the first act, but after watching the whole performance, I was able to concede that Spellbeamed was in fact music. Zeena Parkins told a story through her score, though I’m not too sure what the story was about. It was organized and each musician was a master of his or her own craft. I may not have particularly enjoyed my first experience with avant-garde music, but it has certainly opened up my eyes and ears to a new realm.
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I felt the exact same way about the video. While both the music and the video were extremely weird and often creepy, the video had more of a hypnotizing aspect as opposed to the strange music. I really wish the presenters had explained what the video was about. For all we know, it may have actually been just a collection of strange and random objects!
I totally agree Pat. I didn’t know what to expect especially because it was in such a small venue. If it were in a large renown venue you would know it was well known and most likely a good performance, but I think that was the most enjoyable part of this performance. In other words, not knowing what to expect was thrilling and suspenseful because it was our first performance of the year.
I love your take on the harp at the beginning. I thought it was interesting, but I think your perspective is much more interesting. I think the number of different types of sounds that they made with the one instrument was amazing. I think that the concept of the visual pictures behind the instruments was to be random like you said. This may be the only thing to harmonize with the erratic music.
Lastly, your idea that this was a good introduction to the year to broaden our scopes of what art is really sunk in when I read your review. I completely agree with this because in taking this course and throughout the year I have really done exactly that. I have learned to appreciate everything for its beauty as art, no matter how coherent or mainstream it is.
Now that you mention it, it does seem that the two women that were using random objects on the harp seemed to be operating on it. This sheds a little more light of the purpose of this part of the play. I had previously taken away from this performance that everything even mundane objects have their unique story. From your guess that they seemed to operating, I feel that these women were trying to discover each individual objects personal story. Also I feel that the idea of playing a video at the same time as performing, was appealing to you because this combination has become engrained in our society. Every movie uses this combination to amplify the emotions being delivered at that moment!