THE GIG

Wrapping it Up

Final round of a year-end email conversation with Peter Hum, Jim Macnie, Giovanni Russonello and Greg Thomas (Jump to: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 ) 

From: Nate Chinen

Greetings, gents! 

I write to you from the suburbs of Houston, where wintry climes are but a faraway rumor, at least for now. Seems like we’re nearing the end of this here roundtable, and I wanted to reiterate my thanks to you for taking part. The other night I ran into our own Jim Macnie at the Jazz Standard — he was on his way out, and I was on my way in — and we agreed that this has been fun. I hereby resolve to keep the conversation going, on some level, in the new year. Preferably in person, and with less cause for solemn reflection. I believe I owe each of you a beer, at the least. (A couple of years ago, Bitches Brew, a commemorative release from Dogfish Head, played a supporting role in this exercise; you may be interested to know that the brewery recently reissued said elixir, so to speak.)

Thought I’d just lob a few closing thoughts here, mainly as an Amen chorus. For starters, I’m grateful that Greg brought up the issue of female instrumentalists, since the evidence of their critical mass shouldn’t be taken for granted. Frankly, this was a vexing year, in the culture at large, for conversations about women — see “war on...” and “binders full of...” and “...can’t have it all” for starters — but a heartening year for women making advances in jazz. It bothered me a little that my Top 10 didn’t reflect that, despite strong work by the aforementioned Fuller and Spalding, along with violinist Jenny Scheinman, guitarist Mary Halvorson, clarinetist Anat Cohen, trumpeter Nadje Noordhuis, saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and pianist Kris Davis. And Luciana Souza! Greg, I spent so many hours in thrall to the first Brazilian Duos album that I probably haven’t given the sequels their proper due.

Speaking of proper dues: Initial Here, the self-possessed sophomore release by bassist Linda Oh, was in the best-of running for me — as was Be Still, the Dave Douglas album on which she appears. (More on that in a sec.) My mind flickers back to this year’s Monk Competition, and the Kennedy Center concert in which Oh fearlessly grounded a confab featuring Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock. No big deal. And it’s not that I was impressed by how easily she handled herself in that context as a young woman; I was just impressed, straight up, no stipulations for age or gender required. (I’m now recalling that the concert had a “Women in Jazz” subtext, and featured some others fitting that description, including Monk adjudicator Terri Lyne Carrington. No female competitors, tho.) 

Gio, you brought up Branford Marsalis as an exemplar of against-the-grain traditionalism this year. His was another album that just missed the cutoff for me, and who knows — were I compiling my Top 10 today, it might come in under the wire. I got an early vinyl copy of Four MFs Playing Tunes in the spring, and was so taken with it that I had to sound the alarm right away.

But as for Branford’s whole spiel about this music not coming with a concept — well, I’m calling BS, to borrow his own lexicographical shorthand. If you’ve heard much of the Branford Marsalis Quartet over the years, in its original incarnation as well as this one, you’ll recognize Four MFs as gloriously true to form. He’s working within a post-bop tradition (call it post-Coltrane, if you prefer) but the tradition he really upholds here is that of his own proprietary small-group syntax: his concept, basically. Which is not so different from what Vijay Iyer does in his trio. As with a few touted albums in the non-jazz realm this year — your Dylans, your Springsteens, even Nas — Marsalis built on a structure he’d already established. But calling Four MFs an album without a concept is like calling Seinfeld a show about nothing. And we all know how cleverly that one can be debunked.

Greg, I appreciate the “gut-heart-head” check that you mentioned as an implicit litmus for listening. I’d wager that each of us (and the better of our colleagues) has a similarly intuitive process for evaluating music. But what stirs my soul or stimulates my cerebral cortex could leave somebody else entirely unmoved. (Obvious, but it bears repeating every now and again.) I don’t really know where I stand, anymore, on the subject of a left-leaning critical bias in jazz — I still see a lot of love for the standard-bearers, and often not enough for those expanding the frame — but I agree that we run up against a baby-with-the-bathwater quandary if we’re no longer interested in the fundamentals. I think about that often, in fact.

Karsten Moran/New York Times

Last week I had a terrific experience with the Christian McBride Trio, which reminded me at times of the forthright splendor of Peterson, Brown and Thigpen in 1964. And one of the albums that did make it on my list, at a pretty high berth, was the latest from guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, which happens to feature Branford’s rhythm team. I loved Reflections, Kurt’s standards album, too — but I was glad to hear him bring that ease and mastery to bear on his own smart compositions.

By the way, I have it on good authority that when I pick up the Houston Chronicle tomorrow morning, I’ll see a feature on drummer Reggie Quinerly, whose recent debut is as straight-ahead as they come, but also a meditation on the history of his native H-town, and specifically the African-American enclave that once thrived in its Fourth Ward, where he grew up. I saw Quinerly play this music at Smoke a few weeks ago, and it was tight. 

I’d like to close now on an album that uncannily weaves together so many of the strands of our conversation: traditionalism and innovation, mourning and succor, that “renewed sense of wonder,” Linda Oh. I’m speaking of course about Be Still, the exquisite album that Dave Douglas made out of some old songs and a new band, along with a deeply personal motivation.

I love this album — for its outright beauty, for its reverence in the face of the divine, and for the way in which Aoife O’Donovan inhabits a modern jazz setting so easefully, without losing sight of her own aesthetic coordinates. And in light of recent events, I thought its message incredibly pertinent. A moment ago I glanced at the Greenleaf Music website and saw that Douglas had posted some thoughts along these lines. “We are all united as we begin to take those difficult next steps,” he writes.

After what happened in Newtown, a handful of people I know dusted off a famous quote by Leonard Bernstein; unless I’m misremembering, Douglas did so too, on Twitter. The statement: “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”

There are countless different ways to make music intensely; likewise, beautifully and devotedly. I’m sure I am not the only one among us who takes some comfort in that. And I know I’m not the only one who looks forward, with every kind of hope, to whatever lies ahead.

End transmission, and happy holidays to all, 

Nate

Commotion Predictions

Eric Ryan Anderson

Playlist, April 27

Branford Marsalis Quartet, Feistodon, Steve Kuhn Trio, Tomas Fujiwara & the Hook Up, Congs for Brums

Occupy Jazz?

Part Five of a year-end email conversation with Angelika Beener, Aaron Cohen, Joe Tangari and K. Leander Williams. (Jump to: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 )

From: K. Leander Williams

Hey cats. Happy Holidays and all that...

 Cheers to Nate on yet another smashing roundtable. Here’s me trying like hell to maintain the high level of discourse thus far.

 As Nate said up front, I actually asked for the end slot because these days I’m not as engaged with the community as I was when weekly assessments were my gig. What I’ve found surprising is that I’m not quite as out of the loop as I’d initially surmised, and to be absolutely honest, that frustrates me somewhat. The controversies don’t seem to have changed much since I started doing this for a living in the early ‘90s, and even at that time they were tired. I mean, Miles Davis went electric in 1969 or so, right? What his bands did brilliantly was followed by a whole lot of electrified music the punk fan in me doesn’t have much use for, but that’s not really the issue here.

 The bigger point may be that jazz’s popularity has been in decline since maybe the late ‘40s; well before I got here it felt a lot like an economy in freefall — and yet we still haven’t hit bottom. (Think Sonny Rollins at the Kennedy Center, with Jason Moran waiting in the wings.) The difference, thanks to music schools, is that there are tons more jazz-identified folk sharing that pie. Is Esperanza Spalding this generation’s Grover Washington, Jr. or George Benson, jazz-educated but poised to reach folks well beyond the community? Is Robert Glasper? When Glasp hit the Blue Note in February, Kanye and Lupe Fiasco sat in. 

 So, to me, as much as the discourse aboveground turns on the moves of NARAS, Spalding and now Nicholas Payton, those years I spent regularly scouring the scene remind me that somewhere below the radar there’s always music in which sheer creativity and invention trump the symbolism and optics of a Grammy nomination, a superstar guest cameo or the latest “jazz-is-dead” screed. Who’s making that music? Where can it be found? Actually, the better question these days might be, where can a general-interest audience read/hear about it? For all the activity in cyberspace, my sense is that the realities of “search-engine optimization” (SEO) are particularly merciless in regard to any newness that lacks outsized marquee status. Once Spalding starts trending, we end up with 50 articles, blog posts, whatever, that say the equivalent of, ‘Yay, our girl’s a maaaaddd fly bassist and she bested the Bieb, but, um, isn’t that record kinda so-so?’ Meanwhile, there’s next to nothing on the conceptually-gifted unknowns toiling in the trenches, unless, of course, they’ve written it themselves? Hmmm... self-promotion as a way into (or in Payton’s case, out of?) the canon. Let’s see how that shakes out.

 At the risk of turning into the bummer patrol, there’s another jazz survival mechanism that crystalized for me near the end of the year. It came by virtue of a weird juxtaposition: The announcement that Jazz at Lincoln Center was building bridges to luxury hotels in Qatar (y’know, over there near the Arab Spring), while scores of the people we’ve come to call “the 99%” are out in the streets worldwide attempting to “occupy” everything. I’ve wondered about the symbolism of it ever since. I happened to be downtown at the Occupy Wall Street protests just weeks before the J@LC announcement, on the day that hundreds of local musicians, many union-sponsored I think, marched in solidarity with the happenings in Zuccotti Park. (Yes, my heart swelled when at one point some random brass band spontaneously broke into Thelonious Monk’s “Well You Needn’t.”) I’m not mad at J@LC’s initiative (like them, I’m fanatic enough to want jazz to be heard everywhere), but it certainly made me wonder if jazz’s premier option was to become the music of the 1%. That kinda puts me in mind of the days of swing at restrictive country clubs and the like, but from a musician’s standpoint it’s probably better than waiting on the .001% who actually purchase jazz product.

 All this said, there were a few things I caught live this year that blew me away, though I can’t say they represent trends of any kind.

 Marc Ribot’s Sun Ship Ensemble with Mary Halvorson, Chad Taylor and Henry Grimes. In theory it was a twin-guitar Coltrane tribute, but that was merely the jumping off point. Sonically, the music was raucous, more other-planes-of-there than sheets-of-sound. It’s also where I finally understood the growing Halvorson cult. She was on fire that night. I don’t know how to say it delicately, but I generally tend to feel that jazzers of her generation need to spend more time improvising on melodies they didn’t write. I’m well aware that might be the geezer in me talking. (Holy shit, am I the oldest cat in this roundtable?!? Geez, that never used to happen.)

 Matt Shipp and Darius Jones. Still haven’t heard their duo disc Cosmic Lieder, but no matter (hint, hint to Aum Fidelity’s resident new papa Steven Joerg... actually, I’m kidding; I never asked for a copy). When I caught Jones earlier in the year with the trio on his other 2011 disc, Big Gurl, it was kinda lukewarm, but at the Jazz Standard he had a soothing effect on Shipp’s key shifts, which in turn brought out the warmth in Jones’ alto.

 Double bill: Robert Glasper Trio + Vijay Iyer Trio. Wrote about it.

 Bill McHenry Quartet with Orrin Evans, Eric Revis and Andrew Cyrille. The set was fantastic, but like Aaron said, it was bittersweet for me as well. I knew Paul Motian was in the hospital, but didn’t know details. That was the night Lorraine Gordon of the Village Vanguard used the word “dying” to describe his condition. Paul and I had had a several funny conversations since I first interviewed him for Down Beat in the early ‘90s, so I was doubly sad that I’d missed his last gig in town with pianist Anat Fort in September — basically, because I didn’t wanna brave the rain, I think. Yeah... hindsight...

Closer Than They Appear

New Music, Nov. 29

Taylor Ho Bynum Sextet, "Apparent Distance"

Year-End Year-Ender

As promised, and/or threatened: a couple of weeks ago, Ben Ratliff and I sat down to talk about the year in jazz for the NY Times Popcast. Ben Sisario moderated our conversation; Jon Pareles chimed in a few times. Listen here, or subscribe via iTunes or whatever. Ciao!

A Locavore Aesthetic

Part Four of a year-end email conversation with David Adler, Chris Barton, Shaun Brady and Jennifer Odell (Jump to: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 )

From: Jennifer Odell

Hi guys,

Wow, it’s pretty cool when writers agree on something, whether it’s that this was the year of the pianist or that naming a beer after a Miles Davis record is the jazz version of Katy Perry selling music to tweens by wearing nothing but candy. But since we seem to have a consensus on Ten and Dirty Baby, I’d like to swing the conversation in a somewhat different direction.

I actually do see a narrative thread in the story of jazz in 2010. In the Mtume-Crouch video, Mtume says that fusion was Miles’ way of battling “technical exhaustion.” In some ways, 2010 was a year when the jazz industry acknowledged its own technical exhaustion and tried new things: from Orrin Evans’ jam sessions in Philly to broader booking habits by George Wein, to New Orleans music finding a platform for promotion on TV. In each case, the common denominator was a locavore aesthetic.

2010 began with Wein boasting online about how he was hanging out late at night in Williamsburg, trying to get a handle on Brooklyn’s music scene so that his reincarnated CareFusion festivals would be more accessible to a younger demographic.

Sure, Wein was “discovering” acts like Brooklyn’s Mostly Other People Do the Killing, which topped critics’ best new artists lists back in 2008. And yes, MOPDTK got an early New York CareFusion slot that coincided with the NBA playoffs, while Herbie and Wayne headlined at Carnegie. But I’d argue that Wein’s overall interest in representing local music, offering it for lower ticket prices and collaborating with Brice Rosenbloom, the Jazz Gallery and Revive Da Live still signaled a change from the norm. 

On the label side, this year’s buzz was focused more around Clean Feed than Blue Note and Verve. You even got the sense that Brad Mehldau’s output smacked too much of  the establishment for some critics. The author of a post exemplifying the Mehldau backlash Chris referenced felt that Bill McHenry and Trombone Shorty, both of whose followings used to be pretty localized to New York and New Orleans, respectively, delivered better albums than Highway Rider this year.  Just like what’s happening in restaurants (has anyone visited Portland, OR lately?) we’re seeing a shift to the more nationalized celebration of what’s happening on local levels. 

Shaun, I’m willing to bet this can be traced in part to the explosion of Facebook and Twitter, which has made geography less of an issue than ever before. (For the record, I haven’t logged into my Twitter account in a year or two, but probably will re-up the account now because this conversation’s made me curious.) If there was an ethical quandary two years ago about having artists you might review as Facebook friends, that issue was diluted in 2010 by sheer numbers. George Porter and I are online buddies but the “likes” I send his way gets lost in the massive fold of his ever-rising number of “friends.” (I’m skipping over a response to the Bad Plus dialogue because Ethan Iverson and Reid Anderson are, unlike Porter, real-life friends.)

Another artist whose local following grew a little more national this year was Mary Halvorson, whose graceful nods to pop and rock earned Saturn Sings top billing on Shaun’s Top 10. I’d also put some of the year’s most head-turning sax players in that category: John Ellis, JD Allen, Andrew D’Angelo and Tony Malaby. 

There was also Chris Lightcap’s addictively gorgeous Clean Feed release, Deluxe, which year-end critical praise hopefully brought another wave of attention to the New York scene staples in its lineup. Finally, it can’t be a coincidence that all of these artists gave top-notch performances at the new Undead Jazzfest, produced by boomBOOM Presents and Search and Restore. 

Robert Wright for The New York Times

Which brings us to December, when the big underdog story was Adam Schatz’s successful push to raise $75,000 for Search and Restore to expand the jazz audience and, specifically, to get younger listeners involved. The fact that Schatz on one end of the spectrum and Wein on the other, share the goal of bringing jazz to a younger, more localized crowd tells me this is a mobilized effort. 

2010 was also a huge year for the New Orleans music scene. John Ellis’ Puppet Mischief was a creepy, groove-infused yet cerebral experiment in sonic joy, which I’d rank high in my picks of the year. By the spring, a former child prodigy from the Crescent City named Troy Andrews debuted his Backatown release at the top of Billboard’s Contemporary Jazz charts, where it stayed for nine weeks (it’s been in the Top 10 for 27).

Troy probably had some help in the sales department from his recurring role as himself on HBO’s Treme, which also debuted in 2010 and turned out to be like “American Bandstand” for the New Orleans music scene.

 National audiences never sang the lyrics to John Boutte’s songs the way they did this year when Big Easy bands regularly broke into renditions of the HBO show’s theme song at shows across the country. Donald Harrison, Davis Rogan, Kermit Ruffins and his drummer Derek Freedman (also a bandleader in his own right), Terence Blanchard and John Cleary also made appearances on the show. Depending on when season two wrapped shooting, I’d be willing to bet there will be scenes involving jazz funerals for a great jazz photographer and a legendary member of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

As for where a modern day Miles cameo might turn up, let’s not rule out the silver or small screens -- the guy was in Scrooged, after all. I like to think that in a year when even the industry bigwigs were trying to get down with the underground, Miles would have rejected a major label offer from Kanye so he could sit in with Trombone Shorty’s band on Treme. And with that weird visual... I hand the baton to David.

Nonlinear Realities

Part Three of a year-end email conversation with David Adler, Chris Barton, Shaun Brady and Jennifer Odell (Jump to: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 )

From: Shaun Brady

Dear Nate, Chris, Jen, and David:

A happy holiday of choice or lack thereof to each of you. Can’t think of better company to be huddling around a virtual Yule log with.

 Nate, you led with the seeming lack of narrative to this year’s jazz developments, but perhaps it’s the absence of story that is the story. My year-end blizzard of list-making and poll-taking also involves film, and many of this year’s slots are taken by works that are at least ambiguous if not downright opaque in their storytelling. So why shouldn’t our music of choice reflect this non-linear reality? You and Chris both raise the specter of those perennial arguments about what we’re allowed to call jazz or whether the genre still has a pulse, but it seems that even within the more expansive definition that I think we all subscribe to, the boundaries -- between jazz and rock, inside and outside - are being blurred in increasingly thrilling ways.

 

Take those guitarists who made such an impact this year, for instance. Nels Cline’s output was nothing if not sprawling, from the epic landscapes of Dirty Baby to the deliciously skronky excesses of Inititate, which deserves its spot on my Top 10 jazz CDs list but may equally deserve the top perch on a 2010 rock wrap-up. Once upon a time there was such a thing as an instrumental hit -- classic rock radio can still be counted on for regular spins of “Frankenstein” or “Hocus Pocus” -- and if we still lived in that world, Wilco may well be opening for the Singers these days.

  Mary Halvorson snagged the first slot on my list this year with Saturn Sings, a prime example of a new generation of jazz that has the lessons of rock burned into its brains, revealing itself through an emergent pop sensibility in compositions, band interaction, a certain aggressiveness, without having to strive consciously for so-called “fusion.”

None of this, of course, would please the Crouch-Marsalis faction, the latter represented this year by Jason’s “Jazz Nerds” screed, a somewhat more nuanced argument than that usually associated with his rearview-fixated older brother. If the Marsalis name is too tainted by the tired old “Jazz Police” arguments, a similar line in the sand between “emotional” and “intellectual” approaches in other camps. As its members will eagerly point out, the provocatively-named Tarbaby is meant to provoke just such a discussion, one involving tradition, swing and race that pianist Orrin Evans delights in provoking.

 You can add Evans (pictured at top) to that list of pianists who dominated the year, by the way. Besides the fine sophomore Tarbaby disc, he released Faith In Action, a tribute to mentor Bobby Watson, and assembled his Captain Black Big Band with the bandleader’s equivalent of spit and chewing gum. A recording is on the horizon, but here in Philly we got to watch the band evolve in real time through a months-long residency last winter at Chris’ Jazz Café, from a raucously skin-of-their-teeth ensemble to a still-raw but cohesive ensemble. Evans is also a dedicated exponent of the dying art of the jam session, having hosted several in the city in a willful attempt to recreate the conditions in which he came up (under, I should add, the guiding presence of pianist Sid Simmons, a sad addition to the year’s obituary list).

But an equal part of Evans’ output this year comes through his intentional provocations on Facebook, in which he has, among other no-punches-pulled rants, called out musicians playing what he refers to as “metrosexual jazz” (roughly equivalent to Jason Marsalis’ “Nerds”). Though his voice doesn’t have quite the reach, if you’re looking for the outspokenness of a Miles or Kanye in today’s jazz, Evans is as good a place as any to start. 

Nate, it’s been about two years since your JazzTimes column regarding Facebook, and how friending musicians offers an ethical quandary for a critic. I’m wondering how you weigh in on that debate now, and how everyone here handles it, as the site has become an increasingly interesting locus for conversation, debate, and sharing of thoughts, videos, et cetera. I haven’t built the wall around my Facebook that you wrote about, Nate, though I see your point and think it might be ideal to maintain separate professional and personal identities (advice I haven’t taken, as the thought of checking two separate Facebook profiles horrifies my antisocial soul).

As I glance over at your Twitter feed, I notice that mine is the sole name amongst our round-tablers who lacks an “@” symbol next to his name, and it’s true -- I’m a curmudgeonly holdout on the Twitter front. So for those of you who dwell within the jazz Twitterverse, how that has impacted the real-time conversation for you, and are you dealing with similar moral minefields there?

I mentioned some of the advantages of being in Philly with regards to Orrin Evans, and I’ll also take up your suggestion to celebrate the decade of Ars Nova Workshop. David and Nate especially, you know how much bleaker the jazz landscape would be here without Mark Christman’s efforts, and as other programmers have come and gone it’s especially impressive that he’s stuck to it for so long. Beyond simply bringing the avant-gardist du jour, ANW’s programming has gotten increasingly inventive, especially via its Composer’s Portraits series, which early this year saw Ken Vandermark, Trevor Dunn and Karl Berger all presenting unique Don Cherry-inspired programs.

Sorry, Chris, didn’t manage to sample a bottle of Bitches’ Brew, despite Dogfish Head’s brewpub being as close as I get to beach in Rehoboth, Delaware these days. Maybe I’ll go hunt down a bottle as I pass the baton.

-Shaun

Full Spectrum Jazz

Photo courtesy of Peter Gannushkin

Playlist, Oct. 31

Mary Halvorson, Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra,

Mike Reed’s Loose Assembly, Dan Tepfer Trio, Russell Malone

Consensus Bureau

Yesterday’s Jazz Matters panel on the Best of 2010 was a blast -- it could only have been improved by a stronger turnout and pitchers of draft beer. (Jazz Journalists Association president Howard Mandel, our moderator, voiced his awareness that those two things are probably related.) I could hardly put together a more astute or collegial crew than the one David Adler assembled, with WBGO’s Josh Jackson and Down Beat’s Jim Macnie (and of course, Adler himself). There was plentiful agreement; I’m amused to report that the only real dissent formed around one of my picks. Read on for more about that.

But first, a side note on the comments below my last related post. Mahalo to everyone who contributed picks (and keep it coming)! I’m intrigued by the apparent consensus around Mary Halvorson’s new album, and can’t help but muse about selection bias: beyond this here blog-ville, and the teeming urban centers, how are people feeling about it? Or perhaps the salient question is: who hasn’t heard it that should? On the panel I wondered aloud whether it would even show up in the jazz-mag reader’s polls. It’s certainly in the running for my Top 10, as is the other comment-field-consensus pick, Jason Moran’s Ten. (Speaking of Halvorson and Moran, you saw this, right? Amen.) 

Marclay, Screen Play

Today I traded emails with Roberta Smith, an esteemed art critic for the Times, on the subject of Christian Marclay: Festival, currently at the Whitney. This is an exhibit I’d encourage a lot of people to see, even without the involvement of improvisers like guitarist Mary Halvorson (who will perform in a version of “Screen Play” on July 21 and 24, and attempt to coax music out of “Wind Up Guitar” on July 22, 24 and 28. Look here for a full schedule; there’s so much more.)

In one of these ArtsBeat posts I mention “Band,” Marclay’s contribution to the 2002 Whitney Biennial -- the very same Biennial that prompted this righteous takedown by Smith. I wasn’t impressed by the Biennial that year, either, and penned a review of my own for the Philadelphia City Paper. (If you’re interested in that bit of invective, skip to the end of this post; I don’t want to put the link anywhere near Smith’s, for fear of suggesting some kind of critical equivalency.) 

 Anyway, “Band” consisted of musical instruments modified so as to be unplayable. In my review, I called it a “half-wit one-liner,” which strikes me now as unhelpful and wrongheaded, given that I still vividly remember the piece. Among its component parts were “Virtuoso,” an accordion whose bellows stretched out in a coil, and “Drumkit,” featuring drum and cymbal stands telescoped almost to the ceiling. (I wonder whether John Stanier of Battles ever saw “Drumkit,” by the way. Seems he might have.)

Here’s a mini-doc about Marclay’s musical innovation -- the physical aspect of his work that Festival sort of shunts to the background: 

Here he is working the decks on the short-lived, fondly remembered NBC show Night Music (the intro is by its host, David Sanborn):

 

And here, for your amusement only, is my review of the 2002 Whitney Biennial. As promised and/or threatened.