Tuesday (2/28) on Pitchfork.com, Jayson Greene writes, “In January, I saw an unforgettably strange concert at the small NYC theater Le Poisson Rouge. Andrew W.K.—party-rock force of nature and living animated .gif of a David Lee Roth jump-kick—shared the stage, or jostled maniacally for it, with the Calder Quartet. The quartet opened with the glacial, half-hour-long piece ‘Cadenza on the Night Plain’ by minimalist composer Terry Riley. So it was like cold water to the face, then, when Andrew W.K. lunged out afterwards, even if we all knew he was coming. … The unlikely partnership represented something fascinatingly close to ‘business as usual’ for the small, but steadily growing, indie-classical scene.” Greene goes on to review some recent CD releases of music by genre-crossing composers and performers, including David Lang, Jefferson Friedman, the Chiara Quartet, Lawrence Bell, pianist Lisa Moore, and a recording by Edwin Outwater and the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony of music by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Perry, and Nico Muhly. “In earlier times, a record featuring the contributions of rock stars was more likely to be a lamentable but necessary cash-in; the genre divides were just too wide,” Greene writes. “That this record is so formidably dark, unsettling, and substantive, then, is indicative of the shifting culture.”
Posted February 28, 2012
