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Carnegie Perspectives Series: One Note By Steve Smith Introducing the last concert of his Carnegie Perspectives series on Sunday night at Zankel Hall, David Byrne said that the evening’s program, “One Note,” had been the hardest to explain to his friends. Music that consisted of just one note? Not quite. What Mr. Byrne intended to illustrate was something musical seekers of the transcendental have understood since time immemorial: Less is more. Underlying the songs of Haale, an American singer of Iranian descent, was the trance-inducing drone of Sufi devotional music, here assigned to a violinist, a cellist and occasionally an electric guitarist. Three percussionists provided driving rhythms on hand drums, shakers and clacking karkaba, over which Haale’s warm, supple voice unfurled like a curlicue of smoke. Her band’s amplified rumble served as a reminder of the extent to which rock bands like the Doors and the Velvet Underground turned to the East for their most hypnotic efforts; here their borrowings were reclaimed with interest. Members of the contemporary classical ensemble Alarm Will Sound sprawled on the floor even before the soporific effect of “Cliffs,” an arrangement by the violist Caleb Burhans of a piece by the electronic composer Aphex Twin, could take hold. Melancholy choreography by Nigel Maister had the singers Alexandra Sweeton and Michael Harley wandering among musicians who performed while lying on their backs: no small feat for the string players. The group assumed a more conventional posture in “Pranam II” by Giacinto Scelsi, the eccentric Italian composer who created a number of pieces based on a single note. This work, an evocation of breath rhythms and rippling waves, included considerably more than one note but pulsed and throbbed around a central tone all the same. While playing an anonymous Renaissance saltarello arranged by the percussionist Payton MacDonald, the musicians marched and danced evocatively. A white cord stretched across the stage during an irresistible closing set by the French singer Camille represented the sustained note that runs throughout her innovative second album, “Le Fil” (“The Thread”). Using a digital sampler to loop her rapidly sung rhythms and the occasional rude noise into beats and harmonies, she offered breathy vocals, brassy growls and irreverent asides in French and English. Matthew Ker, who produced the album, provided jazzy daubs on piano, while Martin Garney played bass and drums simultaneously. Between verses Camille danced with reckless abandon; the only disappointment was that the audience couldn’t easily join her. |
