Bryce Dessner, the Cincinnati-raised, Yale-trained guitarist for alternative-rock band the National, is expecting some important guests this weekend when he curates his annual
MusicNOW festival here.
They are the programmers for the Barbicon arts center in London, the Sydney Opera House, and Knoxville's AC Productions, presenters of the Bonnaroo, Big Ears and Moogfest festivals. All are worldwide leaders in the booking of avant-garde, cutting-edge, cross-generational music events (an international growth area in the arts), and the fact they're coming here is a sign of the cachet MusicNOW is building in that field. It also shows the influence Cincinnati has in this important arts area, where New Music - a term often used to describe contemporary classical - is expanding to include rock, folk, jazz and more.
"MusicNOW is a small event in Cincinnati but its reputation looms large nationally and internationally," Dessner says, by phone from his Brooklyn home. "This is like the heads of Chase Bank, Goldman Sachs, and Bloomberg flying in to check out Fifth Third."
It's all the more impressive because otherwise Cincinnati lags behind in the championing of multi-genre music progressivism and experimentation, despite some notable events. Unlike other contemporary visual arts centers, such as Columbus' Wexner Center or Minneapolis' Walker Arts Center, the CAC - home of the first MusicNOW in 2006 - does not have a high-profile music series, although it's planning to hire a performance curator. And University of Cincinnati's College Conservatory of Music cut funding for the annual MusicX festival of new classical music. (The last year of MusicX in Cincinnati, 2008, saw minimalist-music pioneer Steve Reich appear with the ensemble eighth blackbird for a performance of "Double Sextet," which was partly commissioned by the festival and went on to win a Pulitzer Prize.)
MusicNOW is a relatively small affair to catch the eyes of those outside Cincinnati. For this, the sixth year, the budget is just $50,000 for the two nights (Friday and Saturday) at the intimate 610-seat Memorial Hall. (The National's Sunday night rock show with Sharon Van Etten at Music Hall is budgeted separately.) Friday night features Shara Worden with yMusic, and Megafaun with Justin Vernon and Fight the Big Bull; Saturday brings Owen Pallett, Tim Hecker and Little Scream.
While these acts more or less come out of the world of alt/indie rock and folk, their variety speaks to the degree of risk-taking and eclecticism going on in that world. Worden, a university-trained vocalist who records/tours with My Brightest Diamond, while be performing new songs with chamber group yMusic. Canadian composer Pallett plays violin, viola and keyboards and has a pronounced experimentalist bent. Fight the Big Bull, Vernon and Megafaun are performing selections from a project, Songs of the South, that was commissioned by Duke University's Performance Series to reinterpret old Southern folk songs collected by ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax in 1959-1961.
"Even with all the edgy contemporary festivals in the world, there's something more homespun about this," Dessner explains. "It's organic, low-key, not a heavy media festival. It's a festival where we can commission new work, mix genres and not pigeonhole artists. Artists really thrive on that. What happens at MusicNOW is that it sometimes feels like it's leading to a new path for artists."
"An example of what we do is Sufjan Stevens, who came a couple years ago," Dessner continues. "He's a folksinger, but writes formally and instrumentally ambitious music that often challenges. I said, 'Why don't you write some string-quartet music - this was at the height of his Illinois album. So I put him together with an arranger and we worked on instrumental music he had already written, Enjoy Your Rabbit, which is an electronic album. It premiered at MusicNOW. He loved the (new) music so much it became a record, and now it's being choreographed as a ballet by New York City Ballet. That will happen next year."
Dessner's analysis of MusicNOW's ripple-like impact is supported by Ashley Capps, head of Knoxville's AEC Productions, who is coming in to see this year's festival. Dessner co-curated Capps' 2010 Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, a mash-up of progressive music acts that included alt-rock bands like the National and Dirty Projectors as well as New Music pioneer Terry Riley and contemporary composer Nico Muhly.
"One reason I'm coming is as a music fan," Capps says. "I'm also coming with the hopes of stealing an act or two or three for our other events. I love music festivals, and I have a particular affinity for this one's genre smashing, the bringing together of different visions. It's always a fertile ground for new ideas. And I'm also really interested in this concept of boutique festivals that offer limitless range of creative possibilities."
Dessner has become a central figure in the growing world of boutique festivals and programming that emphasize experimentalism, both as a musician and curator. As a performer/composer with the Clogs, a mostly instrumental group, he has appeared at events like New York's Ecstatic Music Festival and - just last weekend - Reverberations: The Influence of Steve Reich festival at London's Barbicon. At that same festival, the Kronos Quartet debuted a new composition he had written. And in April, he played with Bang on the Can All-Stars (like Kronos, an ensemble of New Music interpreters) in another Reich tribute at Carnegie Hall. (Both Bang on a Can and Kronos have played previous MusicNOWs.)
And he also recently co-curated February's Cross-Linx Festival of avant-garde pop and rock in Holland, which the National headlined and also featured Pallett, Van Etten, and Buke and Gass, a duo discovered by Dessner and his brother Aaron that plays its own "Frankenstein" instruments, like a guitar built from scrap and waste.
"That was the first time I did a festival like that - there were so many different kinds of bands, and it was from folk music to classical music to experimental," says Van Etten, an alt-rock singer-songwriter who lives in Brooklyn and whose upcoming album, her third, is being produced by Aaron Dessner. "People are really open."
Although it sometimes seems like it, Bryce Dessner is not the only professional musician to have a sideline as curator of smaller, edgy music festivals around the world. Meltdown, a well-established annual event at London's Southbank Centre, is being curated this year by Ray Davies of the Kinks. In the past, that's been a role played by everyone from jazz master Ornette Coleman to Dutch composer Louis Andriessen to Elvis Costello.
On the June 24th weekend, the American rock band Wilco - which has moved over the years from a rustic alternative-rock to more adventurous sounds - will hold its second Solid Sound festival on the grounds of Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams. This year's line-up, chosen with the care of a really hip mix-tape, includes Americana progenitor Levon Helm, jazz modernist Dave Douglas, soul/blues veteran Syl Johnson (who started his recording career at Cincinnati's King Records), and the challenging rock guitarist/sound manipulator Thurston Moore. For
MASSMoca, which presents other performance events in addition to its visual-arts shows, this has been an important way to broaden its appeal.
"For us, it raises our profile," says Katherine Myers, marketing director. "We had 5,000 people here last year and many of them had never been to MASSMoca or North Adams. So that's great for us."
Even as this year's MusicNOW approaches, Dessner is already thinking about 2012's edition. It will follow closely a stint by Philip Glass, another minimalist composer and New Music giant, as one of three creative directors for Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra's 2011/2012 season. He's put together the Boundless Series for CSO, five concerts that will culminate March 30-31 with the world premiere of his "Cello Concerto No. 2."
"The symphony has been interested in collaborating," Dessner says. "It's still in the development phase. We'd feature him in our festival as well - he's someone you can look at from different angles. A lot of his greatest stuff is chamber music."
So there appears to be a MusicNOW in Cincinnati's future. Dessner identifies local arts patrons Robin and Murray Sinclaire as major supporters;
Chamber Music Cincinnati is its sponsoring agency. "I wanted it to become something people get excited about, and you need to hang around a while for that," Dessner says.
Photography by Scott Beseler.
Crowd outside Memorial Hall for Music Now 2010
Music Now view behind the sound board
A packed Memorial Hall view from above
Joanna Newsom
Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes
Robin Pecknold, obstructed view