Neuburg, Reynolds, Bleckmann and Kline at Joe's Pub

[mosc]

Amy X Neuburg at Joe's Pub

I was lucky enough to catch Amy X Neuburg's show at Joe's Pub in NYC on March 7th. This show was to kick off Amy's new CD, Residue, on the OtherMinds label. I plan to write a separate review of the CD in a few days.

Amy was stunning, as usual. This performance was the best of her's that I have yet seen. She was in fine voice and the sound system at Joe's Pub is quite good. She performed many of the songs on the new CD, most of which I've seen her do before. Everything went without a hitch.

There were time pressures because there was another band scheduled to perform after Amy, so her performance was relatively brief. That was unfortunate because she wasn't able to do any improvisations. Nevertheless, she was terrific. (for an earlier and more in-depth review of Amy's music, see: http://electro-music.com/forum/topic-90.html

The opening act was Todd Reynolds who plays a violin with a looper. He was joined on a couple of tunes by a vocalist Theo Bleckmann. They both played music that was ambient in nature; that is to say uneventful for the most part. It was pleasant and well received by the audience.

Todd Reynolds and Theo Bleckmann

Todd performed a piece by composer Phil Kline called Grande Etude Symphonique. This was very interesting. About 20 small boom-box cassette players were passed out to the audience, who was told not to adjust the volume - just push the play button on queue. I don't know if each box played a different track or if the were the same, but from what I could tell, they were all similar - gentle looped bell-like sounds. The form was a gradual crescendo and decrescendo. While these boom-boxes were chiming away together as if a distributed chorus, Todd played a violin solo, again with the looper. At the end, after all of the music had faded out, the boxes shut themselves off as their tapes ended. The sounds of these unsynchronized cassette shut-offs around the room was one of the most interesting and eventful parts of the piece. The total effect was very pleasant and enjoyable.

I took some pictures which can be seen here: http://electro-music.com/images/AmyAtJoes/