Archives For May 31, 2013
Patti Smith began her latest tour of Europe last week in London, with two dates at the O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, followed by a performance in the Purcell Room of the Southbank Centre as part of this year’s Meltdown festival, curated by Yoko Ono.
I first saw Patti Smith live in 2005, when she served as the curator of Meltdown. In the Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, prefaced by Cat Power, Smith performed for the first time a musical setting of The Coral Sea – her extended prose-poem impelled by and dedicated to the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, with whom Smith lived and shared an impassioned relationship in the late 60s and early 70s in New York; and which was published in book form in 1998. Smith sung her poem in front of a shifting seascape background, accompanied by Kevin Shields, of My Bloody Valentine, on guitar.
Smith is to play two shows in Amsterdam, tonight and tomorrow at Paradiso. The current iteration of her band includes original members Lenny Kaye on guitar and Jay Dee Daugherty on drums; the longstanding Tony Shanahan on bass and keyboards; and Jack Petruzzelli on guitar and bass. The tour proceeds from last year’s Banga, Smith’s eleventh album, released to significant acclaim; and after Amsterdam, it moves on to Germany, Finland, Sweden, France and Italy, before returning to the UK.
Patti Smith & Her Band will play at Paradiso from 8.30 pm on both evenings. Tonight’s performance is sold out; but there are tickets for tomorrow, with more information at: http://www.paradiso.nl/web/Agenda-Item/Patti-Smith-her-band-1.htm
SSION – the musical project of Cody Critcheloe, formed in 1996 out of Kansas City – are playing in Amsterdam tonight at the MC Theater. SSION are well known for their extravagant and elaborate live show, with their distinctive visual style also defining their music videos. Their latest album, Bent, was self-released in 2011; then re-released last year by New York’s Dovecote Records.
SSION will be joined at the MC Theater by Wampire, a group from Portland centred upon the duo of Rocky Tinder and Eric Phipps. Wampire’s combination of aspects of garage rock and psychedelia, utilising guitars and synthesizers with a lo-fi sound, has won the band comparisons with Ariel Pink and Unknown Mortal Orchestra. In fact, Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s bassist, Jacob Portrait, produced the group’s debut album, Curiosity, released earlier this month on Polyvinyl.
SSION and Wampire will play at the MC Theater from 10 pm, courtesy of Subbacultcha!: tickets are €15, or free for Subbacultcha! members.
SSION are good to follow on Twitter and Instagram. Here’s the video for ‘Clown’, the excellent opening track from 2008’s Fools Gold:
Christian Marclay, the Swiss-American collagist and composer, is in Amsterdam to perform his latest work, Everyday. With Marclay utilising the turntables and electronics with which he made his name – Marclay has a claim to being the first musician to improvise with records and turntables – Everyday features him performing alongside his jazz ensemble, comprising Steve Beresford on piano, John Butcher on saxophone, Alan Tomlinson on trombone, and Mark Sanders on percussion. With a montage of hundreds of found film clips projected, conjoined, and narrowed onto a big screen, these images serve as a score for the musicians, who read and interpret them for their performance through a series of movements and audio-visual sequences. Everyday will be performed tomorrow evening at the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, as part of the Holland Festival.
Marclay’s previous work, The Clock, won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale 2011. Tonight, as a sort of preface to Everyday, EYE (the Dutch Film Institute) and the Holland Festival show three of Marclay’s earlier projects, all of which also draw upon found footage, film and improvised music.
The Bell and the Glass (2003) brings together the Liberty Bell, the symbol of American independence located in Philadelphia, and Marcel Duchamp’s The Large Glass (also called The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even), the artwork which he completed in 1923, and which is in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. With video relating to these two pieces projected onto two screens, musicians improvise regarding the videos as a score. In Screen Play (2005), black-and-white footage provides the background for coloured, musically-inspired computer-animation. Shuffle (2007) is a sort of musical card game which suggests the musicality of everyday life, using photographs which imply the elements of musical notation to spur improvisation. For the performance at EYE, the MAZE ensemble will play to Marclay’s visuals.
Everyday will feature at the Muziekgebouw tomorrow at 8.30 pm. The three works by Marclay at EYE will be shown and performed from 8.30 pm this evening; with Marclay being interviewed in the foyer from 7.30 pm. More information is here and here.
Once a year, across the third weekend of June, Amsterdam holds its ‘Open Garden Days’ (‘Open Tuinen Dagen’). This year, thirty canal houses opened their gardens to the public from 14-16 June; some for free, with a €15 ticket valid for all three days and covering all those gardens for which there was a charge. Now, some of these gardens are in fact accessible at any time of the year, and can be experienced as part of ordinary museum visits; but others open only for this annual occasion, and it is a weekend upon which gardens en masse become the focus of attention, at a time of year when they are in bloom, looking their very best – or otherwise, depending upon your taste in seasons and in gardens.
My partner and I visited Foam photography museum on Sunday, which is currently showing an excellent retrospective of Stephen Gill, entitled ‘Best Before End’, and an engaging project by Monica Nouwens, ‘Look At Me And Tell Me If You Have Known Me Before’. Both exhibitions run until 14 July. Foam had its garden open for the weekend; and I took the following photographs.
amsterdamarm 