Is this Heaven? No, it’s Wicker Park.
On Monday the 4th a new configuration of contemporary musicians surfaced at the rather obscure Heaven Gallery at 1550 N Milwaukee in Wicker Park.
But first, let me digress. On the way up to North & Damen, I got on the Blue Line at the Monroe platform. There was a older Chinese man there playing Greensleeves on boombox what I think was a Yehu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yehu. This might’ve been the one and only time I dropped a dollar in the hat of a subway performer.
The Heaven Gallery is upstairs at 1550 and has hosted at least one concert I’ve attended with bass clarinet and sax, the “Lowfirm” subdivision of ICE. This time the audience was mostly 20-plus-ers except for me, Pat Morehead, and two or three others who had some gray hair.
Performing that night were two new ensembles, probably put together by
dal niente cellist on hiatus studying in NYC, Isabel Castellvi. They’re “Stereo” and “The Bell Cycle”. Stereo is the clarinet duo Alejandro Acierto and Jake Wise, this time accompanied by a vocalist and laptop player Odeya Nini. The Bell Cycle is Isabel singing and playing guitar & cello with Shawn Barnett on violin and Mitch van Dusen on percussion.
Isabel was wearing a Cub Scout shirt she insisted she found on the street. But I think she really mugged a Cub Scout in Central Park to get it. Oh well.
The approximately 30 minute opening set by Stereo started with dual clarinets producing some awesome beat-frequencies from close harmony. Then Odeya kicked-in with taps on an old Smith-Corona student typewriter (as if composing a letter to a friend). About half-way through this piece, Jake started to look weird (like a baby alien might pop out of his belly), but instead he sat down on a stool and broke down his clarinet and proceeded to clean out the crevices in his boots with a protruding silver key from the middle section of his clarinet!
But this was nothing in comparison to the next phase. Jake seemed to be
transformed to some kind of “White Worm” crawling on his belly on the floor while breathing heavily through the bottom section of his clarinet. [Eat your heart out Christie Miller] (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lair_of_the_White_Worm
for my association with this theatricality.) On the way back from from the center aisle, Jake turned over on his butt and was stroking and pounding the keys of the clarinet. The piece finally ended up with moans from Odeyand clarinet tapping from Alejandro and Jake with Odeya pulling the letter out of the typewriter and wrinkling it up and throwing it away. Then there was a break with wine, which was welcome because of the intensity of the last half hour.
After the break, The Bell Cycle took over. Isabel, who I didn’t know was
proficient on the guitar or vocals, sang several “atmospheric” songs
reminiscent of Natalie Merchant & 10,000 Maniacs. Mitch, the percussionist surprised me with some innovative playing of a limp plastic bag with brushes, and later with a tin bucket and then even later with a plastic bag over a tabla.
After more wine there was a group improv. And this time and old decrepit Merrill (of Boston) upright piano was included. It had only 6 out of 12 hammers in the top octave. But as Isabel told me, “We don’t need all those dumb high notes”. Mitch played the good middle octaves for a while and then crouched down to hit piano strings directly with his mallets while the rest of the mixed group droned and sang to a conclusion that deserved an encore. After the applause, there was much meeting and greeting.
BTW, During the early warm-ups, Odeya was messing with a Honer squeezbox and a small paper-tape music box. Unfortunately because of the improv nature of the concert, she never got to play either of those instruments.
Bruce Oltman
