(Cross-posted from my Gala­pa­gos Critic-in-Residence page)

Some­times what mat­ters most about a musi­cal per­for­mance is not the tunes and the play­ing, but how things have come about, and how they could have. This must seem vague, so bear with me a bit.

The two per­for­mances I saw at Gala­pa­gos in May, per­cus­sion­ist Kuniko Kato play­ing her arrange­ments of pieces by Steve Reich, and the piano duo Ander­son & Roe play­ing their arrange­ments of music rang­ing from “Bil­lie Jean” to Car­men, and Stravinsky’s own reduc­tion of the score for the Rite of Spring to piano, four-hands. These were both debuts in a way, not first appear­ances in pub­lic by these musi­cians but events meant to cel­e­brate and pro­mote new recordings.

One evening in between the two, I stood on the obser­va­tion deck of the Aus­trian Cul­tural Forum, look­ing over West 52nd Street with the com­poser Bern­hard Lang who, like me, has a for­ma­tive back­ground in jazz. If you found your­self on that street sev­enty years ago, or Bleeker street twenty years later, you not only had your choice of what to hear within walk­ing dis­tance but lit­er­ally within earshot, but also your choice of what was new, of musi­cians and styles that you had never heard before, maybe never heard of, or even dreamed of, before. It seems excit­ing, and unimag­in­able now.

Because it is unimag­in­able now. Where is there any­place like that any more? Small pock­ets of Williams­burg and Bush­wick, per­haps, but a row of night­clubs and music venues fea­tur­ing young phe­noms and estab­lished stars, not only in pop­u­lar music but the most cut­ting edge styles — remem­ber that Be-Bop was once the avant-garde — that kind of thing has been priced out of Man­hat­tan. Dumbo as a neigh­bor­hood is such a plu­per­fect exam­ple of cutting-edge hip­ness in con­sumerism that I half expect to bump into David Brooks any day, gaz­ing in awe and won­der at the lengths to which the cul­tured bour­geoisie seek to enshrine their own nar­cis­sism in real estate. Not that Brooks could offer any­thing more than his knee-jerk, con­de­scend­ing tut-tutting. To know Dumbo, read J.G. Ballard.

Gala­pa­gos, perched on a windy cor­ner, often seems a lonely out­post at night, sur­rounded by indif­fer­ent apart­ment build­ings, with indif­fer­ent, silent denizens. Who goes there, who steps out of their build­ing and strolls over to see what’s hap­pen­ing? The Float­ing Kabarette is a draw, but I mean music shows, out of the ordi­nary things, the kind of thing where, in a densely pop­u­lated urban neigh­bor­hood, peo­ple pass­ing to and fro stop to explore? This is a strange thing about the area. I live in a decid­edly non-hip res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hood in Brook­lyn, and peo­ple are out on the streets all the time, into the evening, but Dumbo in the evening and at night could be a ghost town. But in this emi­nently walk­a­ble city, there is lit­tle time and space to wan­der and be curi­ous, peo­ple just can’t afford it, lest the engine of the econ­omy roll them over. Per­haps, too, peo­ple are shut in against the inces­sant, crush­ing noise of the D train rolling over the Man­hat­tan Bridge, but if so, why are they liv­ing there?

It seems the Art Space strug­gles against this obsta­cle. Reich is titan of con­tem­po­rary music and, in a coun­try where com­posers don’t reg­is­ter on the pub­lic con­scious­ness, he is gen­er­ally pop­u­lar with sophis­ti­cated fans of all sorts of music. Yet Kuniko’s con­cert was lightly attended, and much of the audi­ence seemed con­nected to the music through the Con­sulate Gen­eral of Japan. This was an excel­lent con­cert. The music, “Elec­tric Coun­ter­point,” “Six Marim­bas,” Ver­mont Coun­ter­point” and “New York Coun­ter­point,” with mod­est and lovely arrange­ments of Bach and Komi­tas, speaks for itself, and Kuniko’s craft is supe­rior. Reich’s work lends itself eas­ily to tran­scrip­tion to other instru­ments, and the pit­fall is that it is so easy that the results can be lazy and dull. She has a sub­tle and imag­i­na­tive ear for color, and mov­ing the lead voice of the open­ing move­ment of “Elec­tric” to steel drums was a gor­geous touch, adding a shim­mer­ing, sus­tained rich­ness as well as a delayed attack that made for a new, ambi­ent quality.

Per­cus­sion instru­ments call for a great appar­ent phys­i­cal­ity in play­ing than gui­tars or vio­lins or flutes, and that was visu­ally impor­tant in the con­cert, not only the effort of Kuniko in strik­ing metal and wood with beat­ers, but her danc­ing move­ments. She was filled up with the phys­i­cal­ity of Reich’s beat, even as the sonic edge of the musi­cal was gen­tler, as in the trans­fer of “New York” from pip­ing clar­inets to mel­low marim­bas. The music is very well known by now, but she made it refresh­ing. With her own ear and taste she responded to pieces that she clearly feels are beau­ti­ful and gave us music-making that took for granted the intel­lec­tual suc­cess of the composer’s process and craft and gave us the sheer beauty of it, and that’s a con­sid­er­able thing.

Ander­son & Roe do the same thing, respond­ing to music that appeals to them and shar­ing it with the audi­ence. What makes them spe­cial is the expres­sive verve and per­sonal appeal in their play­ing. They play clas­si­cal music, the real stuff, noth­ing is dumbed down for the audi­ence. Arrange­ments of “Para­noid Android” are com­mon­place these days, and that’s because the orig­ina mate­r­ial is so strong. Christo­pher O’Riley has revealed a lot of the sophis­ti­cated har­monic and struc­tural qual­i­ties in Radio­head in his solo tran­scrip­tions, and using two pianos brings out even more depth in the motion of the har­monies and sec­tion to sec­tion jux­ta­po­si­tions. And in case you missed it amidst all the gos­sip and soap opera, Michael Jack­son also made a lot of good music, and if you think there’s some­thing wrong with ‘sophisto’ musi­cians play­ing “Bil­lie Jean,” then you’re going to have to take it up with me, because when I was in a work­ing band we played it as well. And it’s a good song.

Talk­ing to the audi­ence is good thing too, and if the duo are a lit­tle too gar­ru­lous at times, it doesn’t detract from their great play­ing and think­ing. They play Stravin­sky with fan­tas­tic power, and if the com­posers’ reduc­tion takes away the mes­mer­iz­ing instru­men­tal col­ors of his orches­tra­tion, it clar­i­fies tex­ture and rhythm, and puts a pre­mium on the pianists’ abil­ity to carve expres­sion and aes­thetic focus through dynam­ics, and the two did so much with that. They have the chops to hit all the notes and to say some­thing about them.

Their unabashed emo­tional and phys­i­cal vital­ity adds a great deal: not only are they mas­ter­ful play­ers of Astor Piaz­zolla, which is expected, but they bring out the mus­cle in music that is, per­son­ally, far too sen­ti­men­tal for me, par­tic­u­larly the Rach­mani­noff “Vocalese” and the Villa-Lobos “Bachi­anas Brasilieras No. 5.” The Rach­mani­noff was spe­cial, not swoon­ing but with a dry strength, and the exquis­ite cadenza brought them deserved “bravos.” Behind their flair, they are at their best in qui­eter music, pieces that reveal the fine qual­ity of their musi­cian­ship. The arrange­ment of Car­men is the crowd-pleasing closer, it is well made and will please you as much as the opera does, but the high­lights of the evening where the song­ful, soul­ful play­ing of “The Glitt’ring Sun” by Thomas Arne, and an enthralling per­for­mance of Schumann’s “Mond­nacht,” which I wished would never end, and wished more that it would lay silence over the rat­tle out­side, so that peo­ple in win­dows across the street might, curi­ous, open them to hear some­thing new, some­thing that might draw them out into the night, and by chance wan­der and dis­cover some­thing new.