WHAT IS IT?
The Bang on a Can Music Marathon.
PARDON?
A 26-hour long, uninterrupted festival of new, experimental, or uniquely performed music that took place in downtown New York this summer as part of the excellent free summer concert series.
SO CAN YOU WRITE A REVIEW?
Sure!
I spent a lot of time in malls as a kid. Specifically, I spent a lot of time in South Coast Plaza, a very swanky mall that had no food-court, sterilizing it from that familiar olfactory combination of hot pretzels, orange drink, and Chinese food that so often marks our one-stop shopping establishments.
WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH MUSIC??
Jeez! You’ll see!
Walking into the Winter-garden in New York this summer, I was surprised to find that the marathon festival of new and experimental music which I was attending was being held in a space extremely similar to that of the swanky shopping mall I grew up in—complete with fake palm trees and shops scattered about the space. What? Weren’t they going to perform high-brow music? Doesn’t it deserve the respect of a “proper” concert hall? I soon realized, however, that the uninterrupted 26-hour-long Bang on a Can Music Marathon was not going to follow any logic at all, and that performing in a strange space was only the first of many odd things to come. Kids were blowing bubbles and talking on walkie-talkies, people dozed at all times of the day in sleeping bags, and still others strolled in to Wintergarden accidentally, only to interrupt the performance of pieces such as “Having Never Written a Note for Percussion.” It was a long festival, and there was a lot of music, most of which blurred together. However, there were some highlights…
TELL ME!
I will!
1) Watching a children’s choir nervously rehearse a Meredith Monk piece next to an elevator with a cheap casio keyboard.
2) Realizing that the nice man that was chatting with me was actually a performer.
3) When Yo La Tengo didn’t play a single Yo La Tengo song, instead opting to perform an extended collective improvisation with a guy who played harp through a guitar amp.
4) How beautiful Brian Eno’s “Music for Airports” sounded live.
5) Hearing Dalek spit some sick rhymes in the early afternoon.
ANY REGRETS?
I wish I had seen more! But it was, after all, 26 hours long and I had stayed out late the night before at the free Animal Collective show. (I think I literally ran into 320 people from Wesleyan that weekend.)
WAS THE SOUNDTRACK TO YOUR DREAM THAT NIGHT EXPERIMENTAL OR NEW MUSIC?
Niether—but the egg and cheese bagel I got from Dunkin’ Donuts afterwards tasted incredible—not really any more delicious, just incredibly interesting.
AS IF YOU HAD NEVER HAD A BAGEL BEFORE?
Possibly. Seriously, though, “Music for Airports” sounded incredible.
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