Glenn Kotche at Bing Concert Hall, January 26, 2013

Glenn Kotche
Bing Concert Hall
Stanford University
327 Lasuen St, Palo Alto, CA
8 PM, Saturday, January 26, 2013

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[8:01 PM lights down, introduction by Jenny Bilfield]

[8:10 PM ends, short talk by Glenn]

A solo percussion piece telling the epic Ramayana tale, performed and composed by Glenn Kotche, with accompanying shadow-puppet film by (?) [8:29 PM ends, pause]

Work for percussion quartet, performed by Andrew Meyerson, Doug Chin, McKenzie Camp and Erika Johnson [8:30 PM, set ends]

[8:59 PM, lights down]

[show ends 9:49 PM]

• McKenzie Camp: percussion;
• Doug Chin: percussion;
• Erika Johnson: percussion;
• Glenn Kotche: percussion;
• Andrew Meyerson: percussion;
  with assitance by
• Jody Elff: sound designer.

To my ears, the sound is much improved tonight over my first two visits. Could be the spare instrumentation, I dunno. Anyways, I'm a very happy listener! While I found Individual Trains to be a rather uninspiring film, I liked the soundtrack, especially the sections with spatial echos; it seemed to me that delay loops were being used to send bits of sound swirling here and there around the hall. Very cool!

By contrast, Monkey Chant was a bit more engaging, mainly because it presented a story rather than abstract visual collage effects. And it probably also helped that I had a vague idea what the story was about, although I'm sure that compressing the epic poem into a film less than 20 minutes long required a considerable amount of narrative editing!

Drums of Winter was OK, but didn't really stand out to me as anything special … maybe I need to hear it again for a reevaluation. In her introduction, Jenny Bielfeld tried to make a case for the piece being special because it was being performed by Stanford alums or students, but I think the aural experience ought to be paramount, and I just didn't really register anything special in that respect.

The second set première of John Luther Adams Illimaq was a real treat. To me, the work did a great job of conjuring up an aural impression of wild Alaska, building up to a dramatic storm section while Glenn whaled away on his trap set, then tapering off to the quiet wind sounds of the cymbal set for the last section of the piece.

Bravo!

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