Bon Iver who will be featured in Walker’s sold out Rock the Garden 2008 recently stopped by The Current Studio for a Minnesota Public Radio/ KCMP live session.
You can download from Live Indie Sessions here.
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Electronic one-man band Martin Dosh steps out of the background and into the spotlight
In a booth at a neighborhood pub in south Minneapolis, a slumped and bearded Martin Dosh is staring into his beer, tapping his fingers on the table, and talking about a coming performance at the Walker Art Center. It’s an evening devoted entirely to his music. The May 3 event has a title, “The World of Dosh,” and he’s effectively been asked by the museum to curate a tribute to himself, with special appearances by past and current collaborators like whistling indie-rock song-master Andrew Bird and underground hip-hop phenomenon Jel.
“He’s been this enigmatic, brilliant figure in the background,” says Philip Bither, curator for performing arts at the Walker. “He’s somewhere between the worlds of experimental music and pop.” Bither lists the genres Dosh’s music and collaborations have inhabited: contemporary classical, electronic, improvisational jazz, hip hop, and rock. “He’s somebody who can find links between all of those styles and do something fresh and intelligent,” says Bither, “and that’s rare.” Read more here.
- Jeff Severns Guntzel.
The World of Dosh at Walker Art Center
Saturday, May 3 at 8pm & 11pm
click here for tickets or Have a listen!
Pitchfork Media, the groundbreaking, national on-line bible for all things indie-rock gives a shout out to the Rock the Garden line up, the Sculpture Garden, and Walker’s upcoming Dosh engagement to boot.
“The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden– adjacent to the Twin Cities’ Walker Art Center– is one of the more beautiful spots in the Midwest (that picture doesn’t really do it justice). Featuring ornate landscaping and gargantuan sculptures from the likes of Alexander Calder, Claes Oldenburg, and others, it’s a surreal, almost magisterial spot, and sounds just about perfect for a concert.
What luck, then, that in celebration of its 20th birthday, the Sculpture Garden is hosting a pretty great one. On June 21, the New Pornographers, Andrew Bird, Bon Iver, and hometown heroes Cloud Cult will, rain or shine, hit the outdoor stage for the Rock the Garden celebration. Happy birthday, place with the big cherry spoon!
Oh, and if you happen to call the Twin Cities home or happen to be in town for a Twins game or something, you’ll have a chance to see local boy Dosh– along with Andrew Bird, Jel, Fog, and others– at the Garden’s World of Dosh concert May 3.”
Posted by Paul Thompson See the complete article here.
Click here for tickets to Rock the Garden and World of Dosh.
Andrew Bird, the headliner of this years Rock the Garden, blogs on the New York Times music opinion page.
How to write a song and other mysteries: Words Will Tell
“In about a week I will load up my car with amplifiers and guitars and drive to Nashville to begin recording my next record. I don't drive much anymore and I'm glad for that except that I used to write a lot while on the road. Solitude, boredom, and the desperate need to entertain oneself are ideal stimuli for songwriting.
I'll spend days at my farm creating loops with my violin where I record a phrase and layer on top of it, often starting with pizzicato followed by multiple string lines. This is a handy compositional tool I also use in performance. I can follow any whim and instantly hear how it works in counterpoint with other ideas. It's perfect for someone who plays by ear and improvises as I do and who is too impatient for notation. This helps keep ideas fluid and ephemeral but with an instant gratification playback option. I've found that I can be completely satisfied for weeks by the simplest four-bar phrase repeating over and over again. It's a fragile thing where your perception of it can change it completely. You can reconstruct all the elements the following day, note for note and go by physical memory but the feel can be elusive.” - Andrew Bird Click here to read more.
Have a Listen on his website’s A/V page or myspace.
Rock the Garden!
Featuring : Andrew Bird, The New Pornographers, Cloud Cult, and Bon Iver
Walker Art Center/Minneapolis Sculpture Garden
Saturday, June 21, 2008 | 4:00 pm to 11:00 pm
For more information / tickets click here
Andrew Bird, playing in Austin 2007 | Photo by Gary Miller
David Torn performing his new album at Joe’s Pub.
A night of chaos and coalescence
(At the Regattabar jazz club in Cambridge) On Thursday night, all hell broke loose. David Torn, a ridiculously adventurous electric guitarist who sculpts his sound with electronics, brought his quartet Prezens to the club, and a heavy metal concert nearly happened. It was loud and crazy. To compare these musicians to a rock band, however, is to do them a disservice. They play a brand of free jazz that’s primal and sophisticated.
Torn, alto saxophonist Tim Berne, keyboard player Craig Taborn, and drummer Tom Rainey engaged in extended improvisations that developed without predetermined structures or song titles. Their atonal, polyrhythmic jams reeked of chaos, and yet there was, in fact, structure beneath all the madness. Rainey bashed out irregular rock beats. Taborn stabbed the keys of his Fender Rhodes, eliciting blurts and beeps. Berne blew furiously, sometimes in circular patterns, sometimes randomly. Torn - wearing a Russian fur hat - did everything to his guitar short of ripping off the strings. When he ran out of phrases, he dragged the pick up and down the neck, manipulating the noise by twiddling the knobs on the bank of equipment that separated him from the audience.
It was the kind of music that could make a laid-back jazz aficionado go out and break stuff.
- The Boston Globe
read the complete article here or have a listen.
Performance Information
Prezens Quartet (David Torn/Tim Berne/Craig Taborn/Tom Rainey)
and Drew Gress’ 7 Black Butterflies featuring Ralph Alessi
Date: Friday, March 28
Time: 8:00 pm
Place: McGuire Theater
Click here for tickets and more show information.
While local Bluegrass band The Moss Piglets will be opening for Deerhoof on October 2nd here at the Walker, brethren Moss Piglets (or more scientifically, Tardigrades) will be recovering from their ride in space. Probably one of toughest little guys on the planet, the animals can hang out at -200 degrees C for days. We may bring the band into the Walker admin offices to see if they can live up to their name in our air conditioning.
(Thanks Max!)
Every year, top music critics compile a massive poll on the best music from the previous year. This year’s Village Voice Pazz and Jop Poll tallies votes from 494 music writers to come up with a list of the best albums and singles of 2006. From the involvement of local writers Chris Riemenschneider and Jon Bream (both from the Star Tribune) to Minnesota-born Bob Dylan taking top album honors for Modern Times, our fair state gets its due.
Bands with Minnesota connections getting top album votes include: The Hold Steady at number four (featuring members of the former TC band Lifter Puller) for Boys and Girls in America; at 137, Tapes ‘n Tapes for their breakthrough album The Loon; and, fresh off his Super Bowl rockfest, Minneapolis’ finest, Prince at #142 for 3121.
Other locally affiliated vote-getters for best album:
154. Golden Smog, featuring members of Soul Asylum and The Jayhawks, for Another Fine Day
161. P.O.S., a Rhymesayers up-and-comer, for Audition
399. (TIE) Soul Asylum, The Silver Lining
530. (TIE) Paul Westerberg, Music for Open Season; and Alan Sparhawk of Low for Solo Guitar
720. (TIE) Zebulon Pike, Zebulon Pike II: The Deafening Twilight
756. (TIE) Jessy Greene, A Demon and Her Lovers; and STNNNG, who played at the Walker’s Summer Music & Movies in ‘06, for Fake Fake
Plenty of others making the Pazz and Jop list have been to the Walker recently or--in the case of Matmos, at #107, who play the McGuire stage with So Percussion and Kitundu May 19--will be here soon:
12. Sonic Youth (who played Rock the Garden 200o and dropped by for a gallery visit last summer) for Rather Ripped
21. Ornette Coleman (who played his 75th-birthday concert here in 2005) for Sound Grammar
59. Tom Zé (who collaborated with Tortoise back in ‘99) for Estudando o Pagode
76. Boris, Pink (see #373)
107. Matmos, The Rose has Teeth in the Mouth of the Beast
111. Melvins (who scored Cameron Jamie’s three films, shown here in fall 2006) for A Senile Animal
135. Juana Molina (she sang here in fall 2005), Son
373. (TIE) Sunn0)) and Boris, who played a concert at the Walker in fall 2006, Altar
391. Carla Bozulich (she performed here in March ‘06) for Evangelista
530. (TIE) Stereolab (Rock the Garden 2000) for Fab Four Suture
The Walker mourns the passing of a longtime friend and collaborator, Northrop Auditorium director Dale Schatzlein, who died while biking in Colorado August 31. The 58-year old served as director of the University of Minnesota performance venue since 1985. Over the years, he partnered with the Walker in bringing boundary-pushing jazz and dance artists to the Twin Cities, including Bill T. Jones, Merce Cunningham, Bill Frisell, the Ornette Coleman Quartet, a November butoh performance by Sankai Juku and a March 2007 concert by the World Saxophone Quartet, to name just a few. We at the Walker extend our sympathies to Schatzlein's family, his life partner Emily Maltz, and our friends at Northrop.
Walker performing arts curator Philip Bither recalls his friend's humanity, humor, aesthetic edge, and astute management of the 4800-seat venue:
“Dale was interested in so many parts of our world. At our regular lunches, our discussions on, jazz and contemporary dance–art forms we both loved–would soon morph into talk of politics, travel, Minneapolis history, biking, film, architecture and the people who made up our shared world of live art. He was a partner who the Walker could always count on, and a friend who will be greatly missed.”
A Minneapolis native, Schatzlein will be remembered at a memorial service in the Walker's Skyline Room on Friday, September 8. The event is open to the public.
It’s time again (August 16-24) for Sound Unseen, the really remarkable festival of music, film and musicfilm/filmmusic. Typically features lots of smart work by local filmmakers and/or local musicians, and special national projects, too. Walker’s copresented a number of events in the past (sadly, not this year), such as Sound Art Cinema with Christian Marclay, the found sound noise of People Like Us, the peerless inimitability of Captain Beefheart with Fast ‘n’ Bulbous, and films like Combinations (about boxing, with music by Matthew Shipp, tracking his and the sport’s relationship to jazz) and The Harder They Come (starring Jimmy Cliff).
I’ve included an image above from the Danielson Familie doc, which should be interesting. The first record of theirs I ever heard was Fetch the Compass Kids, which was like an old quilt come to life. It boggled the mind and I often fell asleep to it that year, inducing some vivid, disturbing dreams. But, like many things you embrace with complete naive exuberance and often come to question, I later heard some off-putting remarks attributed to “Brother Danielson” that were a little Falwell-esque. Don’t know if they were true, though. Maybe seeing this doc will help clear it up. And, if you didn’t enjoy the creative output of artists with questionable states of mind (Bob Dylan, Paul Gaugin, DMX), there probably wouldn’t be much left to ponder. Mel Gibson notwithstanding.
Jimmy Carter was running for president; we all wore red, white, and blue; and something called punk rock had just made its first stain. In July 1976, the good folks at the Walker programmed two evenings of film with music at the Lake Harriet band shell — nice. Fast forward 30 years and leap over to Loring Park: our Summer Music & Movies (SM&M) series, launching tonight, has become the grandpappy of all the local outdoor film and band events. This summer we celebrate the 30th anniversary of this amazingly convivial experience, where hipsters, picnickers, kids, and canines converge to share six sultry Monday evenings and collectively forget that January is even a possibility.
Let me take you on a brief ramble about curating music for a series that has helped define summer in Minneapolis. No doubt programmers over the decades have found selecting bands an easy pleasure. Heydays are frequent and ‘next big things’ bloom perennially in this town. SM&M has grown up with the music scene, and the array of bands (Jayhawks, Babes in Toyland, Lifter Puller, Low, Wallets, Moe Tucker, Har Mar Superstar, Christian Marclay, NNB, Trashmen, 2i, Deerhoof, Suburbs, Slug, Le Tigre . . . you get the idea) that have played the park may conjure warm memories of pivotal rock moments. OK, maybe not so much for a few of the Mondays, but SM&M has consistently offered the most interesting free music around. The satisfying equation of informed audiences, a beautiful setting, and a boundless wealth of local talent - punctuated over the years with national and international luminaries - has resulted in a series that has proved to be both petri dish and platform for some of the Twin Cities’ most memorable musicians.
Throughout the life of SM&M the encompassing forms of jazz, rock, pop, and hip-hop were well represented. But today (and over the past 10 years, really), things are decidedly different. Our silent companions 0 and 1, the pliant particulates of the cybersphere, have altered listening as we know it. The Internet has allowed musicians’ “influenced by” lists to grow exponentially. Styles and sounds, past and present, are all there for the clicking (and sampling). Want to know what Silver Apples sounded like in 1968? Great, it’s here. Need a traditional sub-Saharan beat that’ll work with Balkan-tinged flute solo? Cool, this dude has a link. The stylistic walls have turned to glass and the creative process for musicians is evolving as quickly as the entire music industry itself. As programmers, our charge is to decipher the meaningful and interesting mutations - what’s the next logical step? And, well, does it have to be logical?
As part of our continuing mutation research, I traveled to Austin, Texas, for the 20th anniversary of the SXSW (South by Southwest) music festival in March. Now the largest music conference in the world, it’s an exhilarating, stamina-testing crush of keypad kids, industry idolaters, and true believers. Five days at maximum volume equals 1,500 bands, 50 stages, perpetual lines, free Shiner, and transcendent moments. I did catch excellent sets by Mogwai, Animal Collective, Detachment Kit, Why?, and dozens of others. A decided highlight was a set by a band billed as Special Guests (aka Flaming Lips). These merry pranksters of alt-rock came out with dayglow gear, hundreds of six-foot balloons, confetti canons, and strobes, and did a full-on, faithful cover of “Bohemian Rhapsody” - I thought there might be a riot. While I reveled in the chance to envelop myself in live music each day, it did seem that the festival staggered under its own weight and too easily lurched in a green-greedy, heady rush toward the band buzzing loudest. But back to Minneapolis. Film curator Dean Otto, my performing arts colleague Diana Kim, and I feel the flush of finding that magical mix of sound and vision. We’ve always felt with SM&M that “free” shouldn’t equal “dull,” so we hope to present film and music that are unexpected, excellent, and will perhaps scare the wildlife a bit. A special thanks from the SM&M folks at the Walker to the countless bands, DJs, and crowds that have made the previous 170 (or so) Mondays feel so right.
Doug Benidt
Assistant Curator, Performing Arts
So we’ve gotten through three weeks of Summer Music & Movies in Loring Park. Folks probably heard by now the craziness surrounding the first week, Mali’s Issa Bagayogo. That wasn’t my show, and for this I am grateful. Issa was delayed for hours by customs, making it touch and go for hours on this end as well. Audience members showed incredible patience with the interminable delays, and we were definitely feeling the heat. What to do in a situation like this? Cancel? Disappoint all the hundreds of people waiting to hear this legend that traveled from half a world a way? Or keep everyone waiting until the last possible minute and throw him up on stage the second he arrives? We chose the latter, and clearly the audience felt it was the right decision, judging from the crowd reaction as he played (though incredibly exhausted and likely cranky as hell).
The split-second decision making around this one was a political minefield. Of course we want to respect city noise ordinances. Of course we want to respect the people that live around the park. Of course we want to deliver the show we’ve been promising for weeks. Of course we want to give this artist the chance to play after months of planning and what seemed like a never-ending series of flight and customs nightmares. What to do? But since we were told by the powers that be (or who we thought were the being powers) to go ahead despite the lateness of the hour, we went for it. And those thousand people that were there, and the hundreds of thousands more that count Minneapolis as home and as an important cultural outpost, I hope got what they came for and were grateful to see all of us welcoming an international artist with the respect and dignity he deserves. And to those few people who were outraged by the “noise”….sorry. I really mean that.
Minnesota’s weighing heavy--sort of--at the Gothamist this week. Among this week’s picks is the TC’s own Andrew Bird--who made one of the best albums of the year, according to the NYC site, and is playing the Bowery Ballroom with Keren Ann Wednesday night. And Mali’s Tinariwen--playing a Walker-sponsored show at the Cedar in April--is touted as being “a real salmagundi of influences: the music of Bob Marley and Bob Dylan, Led Zepplin and John Lennon, the sounds of Morocco and London and America reverberate in their songs.” Of the Toureg band, which formed in the refugee camps of northeast Mali, Tofuhut writes:
Beyonce and Lil’ Wayne talk about being soldiers, but Tinariwen have lived it; many of the members of the group fought in Touareg rebellions. The legend has it that one of the performers survived multiple bullet wounds in a firefight during which he carried a guitar on his back. Tinariwen are, perhaps understandably, treated as royalty in their home country; they are liberators of a sound that might not otherwise ever have been heard.
Tonight I’m going to check out a show at Big V’s which comes highly recommended from a trusted source. Who is this mysterious Devillock? We shall see. Plus a dude from Double Leopards is gonna get up in it, so all in all it’ll probably be a good night for some tunes. Noise, what have you.