[Dixielandjazz] Updating the N. O. Brass Bands????

[Stephen G Barbone]

January 9, 2010 - NY Times - by Allan Kozinn

Going to Lincoln Center to Find a Parade Ground


Lincoln Center is determined to make the most of its newest space, the  
David Rubenstein Atrium — the former Harmony Atrium, on Broadway  
between 62nd and 63rd Streets — so it has packed it with attractions  
of all kinds, including free wireless Internet, a discount ticket  
booth, an information desk and a cafe.

It is also presenting Target Free Thursdays, a series of weekly free  
concerts, sponsored by Target. Most are pop, jazz and world music,  
with occasional glimpses of the experimental.

The Asphalt Orchestra, an idiosyncratic brass, woodwind and percussion  
ensemble that performed at the atrium on Thursday evening, embraces  
all those styles and more. Among the pieces in its set were  
arrangements (mostly its own) of songs by Bjork and the Swedish art- 
metal band Meshuggah; jazz by Charles Mingus; Afropop by Thomas  
Mapfumo; and a burst of avant-garde classicism by Conlon Nancarrow.

Asphalt is a new-music group disguised as a ragtag marching band. Its  
three percussionists play on elements of a miniature trap set, divided  
among them and slung around their necks, and the rest of the group —  
three saxophonists, pairs of trumpeters and trombonists, a  
sousaphonist and a piccolo player — play from miniature scores mounted  
as Rube Goldberg-like extensions of their clothing and instruments.  
Some wear hints of what might once have been band uniforms, and most  
carry megaphones across their backs, for song announcements.

The band rarely stands still, and the atrium, which stretches from  
Broadway to Amsterdam Avenue, is a perfect place for it. As the  
players filed in, playing Tyondai Braxton’s rhythmically sharp-edged  
“Pulse March,” they snaked through the audience, surrounded tables and  
moved toward the center of the atrium, sometimes in a line, sometimes  
in an amusingly chaotic wave.

By the end of the concert, they had hit nearly every corner of the  
space, with audience members following, scattering and regrouping as  
necessary: when you see a big guy with a sousaphone coming at you, you  
move pretty quickly.

The music sometimes seemed almost secondary to the party atmosphere,  
but people who came to listen found nuggets to admire. Frank Zappa’s  
quirkily harmonized “Zombie Woof” benefited from a hot, hard-driven  
performance, and the odd meters of Meshuggah’s “Electric Red” kept toe- 
tappers guessing. Nancarrow’s Study No. 20, in this group’s brassy  
timbres, could hardly have sounded more distant from the original, for  
player piano, but its point is rhythmic complexity, not coloration,  
and rhythm is this band’s strong suit.

But Asphalt was at its best in its finale, Goran Bregovic’s  
“Champagne,” a freewheeling, high-energy band score in which  
virtuosity, playfulness, compositional ingenuity and sheer visceral  
power mingle. It had both musicians and listeners dancing through the  
atrium.