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Concert Review: Jesse Stewart and Michael Snow
Saturday, 9 February 2008 01:55 pmWe last saw Jesse Stewart play in November and much of what I said then still holds: he's creative, playful, and extremely talented. This concert was originally slated to be part of a jazz festival in Guelph last year; I'm glad it was shifted, because we don't tend to go to see jazz music. (Many artists I like do jazz some of the time; I like the artists; but once it's called jazz, I'm predisposed to dislike it. I'm working on this prejudice. Slowly.)
The concert was improv between Jesse Stewart and Michael Snow, with a 40-minute piece and a 20-minute "encore." It felt to me like it gradually got better over the hour; it took me a while to get into the swing of it, and I think they were intentionally starting off with less exciting collaboration- Michael playing the piano and Jesse making percussion with drums, bowls, and a Waterphone. ...Then, Michael brought out the mallets and started striking and plucking the inside of the piano. I've heard John Cage's "prepared piano", but I have never seen the inside of a piano worked the way Michael did. My favourite bit: he dropped tin cans inside and we saw them bounce around when they were "played" (I've, um, heard that before; but it was my own family's grand piano and my Lego pieces; last night's audience was considerably more appreciative than mine had been.)
At one point, Jesse used a short length of hollow pipe to rub on the bottom of a wet mixing bowl, then he used it for percussion when the bowl was sitting in water, then he rubbed the pipe on the edge of the bowl, and then he used the pipe as a pan-flute.
During a quieter portion of the second piece, he walked over to his drum set making quiet rhythms, and the floor creaked, and you could see the same "aha" on his face as he was working his instruments; for the next 15 seconds he played drums and the floor by rocking back and forth.
If that wasn't my favourite part, it was the very last two notes, when they hadn't quite decided who would finish, and Michael hit one more note and giggled.
I was surprised to discover that Michael Snow is, um, a national icon- a sculptor and movie maker as well as musician- and because I don't spend much time in the Eaton Centre in Toronto, I didn't remember he's the sculptor who made the suspended Canada Geese there.
The concert was improv between Jesse Stewart and Michael Snow, with a 40-minute piece and a 20-minute "encore." It felt to me like it gradually got better over the hour; it took me a while to get into the swing of it, and I think they were intentionally starting off with less exciting collaboration- Michael playing the piano and Jesse making percussion with drums, bowls, and a Waterphone. ...Then, Michael brought out the mallets and started striking and plucking the inside of the piano. I've heard John Cage's "prepared piano", but I have never seen the inside of a piano worked the way Michael did. My favourite bit: he dropped tin cans inside and we saw them bounce around when they were "played" (I've, um, heard that before; but it was my own family's grand piano and my Lego pieces; last night's audience was considerably more appreciative than mine had been.)
At one point, Jesse used a short length of hollow pipe to rub on the bottom of a wet mixing bowl, then he used it for percussion when the bowl was sitting in water, then he rubbed the pipe on the edge of the bowl, and then he used the pipe as a pan-flute.
During a quieter portion of the second piece, he walked over to his drum set making quiet rhythms, and the floor creaked, and you could see the same "aha" on his face as he was working his instruments; for the next 15 seconds he played drums and the floor by rocking back and forth.
If that wasn't my favourite part, it was the very last two notes, when they hadn't quite decided who would finish, and Michael hit one more note and giggled.
I was surprised to discover that Michael Snow is, um, a national icon- a sculptor and movie maker as well as musician- and because I don't spend much time in the Eaton Centre in Toronto, I didn't remember he's the sculptor who made the suspended Canada Geese there.
