Crooked Fingers
Partway through Crooked Fingers' show on Thursday night at the Black Cat, frontman Eric Bachmann and the rest of the band grabbed instruments (two acoustic guitars, an upright bass, a flute, a trumpet, and a stripped-down drum set) and filed into the center of the club's main floor.
From there, the sextet performed four songs unamplified, with Bachmann's voice projecting clearly over the hushed crowd on songs like "Weary Arms." The audience wrapped itself tightly around the group, while fans on the perimeter attempted an impromptu line dance during the up-tempo "Valerie."
Crooked Fingers took the stage -- and the floor -- at the Black Cat.
(Bootsy Holler)
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Onstage, Bachmann was equally captivating. His rich, throaty voice exuded maturity and wisdom with a blend of Neil Diamond's casual talk-singing and Tom Waits's feverish rasp. Lara Meyerratken balanced out his gravelly sound: The blend of their voices lingered through the choruses of "Andalucia," in contrast to the urgency of Bachmann's solo verses.
Every song seemed to be performed with a different combination of instruments, as band members quietly stepped offstage when they weren't needed. These varying arrangements during the 90-minute set allowed certain sounds to be highlighted without seeming overused: the jubilant trumpet part in "Sweet Marie," the shimmering keyboard line in "Twilight Creeps," and the grinding guitar strumming in "Bad Man Coming." But whatever the arrangement, amplified or not, Bachmann's poignant songwriting shone all night.
-- Catherine P. Lewis
Pianist Enrico Lisi
Enrico Lisi's childhood bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Ray Charles: Born 30 years and four days after the famed musician, Lisi was blind by age 6 and began playing the piano soon after.
On Wednesday evening, the Italian pianist, now 44, made an impressive U.S. debut at the Library of Congress with a program of pyrotechnical works that showcased his talent for playing quickly and loudly.
Lisi's virtuosity is undeniable. He tackled Saint-Saens's "Etude en Forme de Valse" from Six Etudes, Op. 52 -- an acrobatic work requiring full keyboard sprints in thirds, sixths and octaves -- handling it confidently with few misplaced notes.
But the pianist's habit of playing in the forte range with lots of pedal meant that Schubert's "Drei Klavierstucke," D. 946, sounded similar to Granados's "Los Requiebros" from "Goyescas" and Lisi's own composition, "Improvviso-rapsodia" in A.
When Lisi explored other textures, such as the filigree arpeggios and delicate lyrical passages found in Liszt's "Tarantella" from "Venezia e Napoli," he offered welcome but all too fleeting respites from the barrage of bright sounds. His singular use of soft pedal in Chopin's Andante Spianato and Grand Polonaise in E flat, Op. 22, produced the evening's sole pianissimo -- if only he had done that more often!
The recital was sponsored by the Library of Congress's National Library Services for the Blind and Physically Handicapped; Friends of Libraries for Blind and Physically Handicapped Individuals in North America Inc.; National Federation of the Blind; and North America/Caribbean Region of the World Blind Union.
-- Grace Jean
Ko'mm Percussion
We don't get enough all-percussion concerts, despite the fact that today's wide-ranging percussion ensembles can provide hypnotic melodies in addition to hard grooves and explosive outbursts. So it was enterprising of Strathmore's Art After Hours series to host a concert by Ko'mm Percussion in the mansion on Wednesday night. The group, consisting of local percussionists Leon Khoja-Eynatyan, Richard McCandless, Rich O'Meara and Joseph Jay McIntyre, presented works by the latter three.
Three of the eight works Ko'mm played stood out. The mesmerizing minimalist-style marimba arpeggios of O'Meara's "Island Spinning" wobbled dangerously after some subtle metrical twists, but the piece righted itself like a top given an extra spin. O'Meara followed that with "301," a work commemorating the official conversion of Armenia to Christianity, in which Khoja-Eynatyan played breathtakingly quiet ruminations on the marimba as his daughter Tatevik rang an Armenian hymn on hand bells. The concert ended with a piece by McCandless called "Pile Driver," which he introduced with the half-boast "This piece is not subtle," but the poetry McCandless found in the cacophony made "Pile Driver" absorbing.
Yet even the less successful pieces were interesting; for example, the world premiere of McIntyre's "Negative" found the composer using real mallets to strike a nonexistent drum, cuing two bass drums behind him to stop rumbling and thus "playing" silence. The reverberations of the drums prevented the silence from cutting sharply through sound, but it was fun to see the idea tried. And as the members of Ko'mm worked hard to make the music sound good, they proved that the sheer athletic spectacle of a percussion concert can be a lot of fun to watch.
-- Andrew Lindemann Malone
Maria de Barros
Maria de Barros is a Los Angeles-based Cape Verdean singer who was born in Senegal and grew up in Mauritania and Rhode Island. At the Voice of America Auditorium on Thursday night, those geographic roots translated into an uneven but occasionally transcendent set full of airy coladeira songs from her African island cultural home, along with some bluesy morna, rhythmic samba, percussive funana and slick pop ballads.
Supported by a band featuring two guitars, the ukulele-like caraquinho, bass, keyboard and drums, de Barros, divalike in long, braided hair and bright-yellow, low-cut blouse, sang in the Portuguese/African hybrid language of Kriolu.
Between numbers, the smiling vocalist repeatedly urged the audience in English, French and several other languages to dance. Those efforts met with some success on such cuts as the keyboard- and cowbell-dominated "Sol Di Manha" from her new, second album, "Dance With Me." Still, the concert sometimes lacked sparks. The world traveler's voice wasn't strong enough to make crooned sidewalk-cafe traditionals into something more singular. Such continental Europe-influenced compositions were also hurt by the use of sampled accordion rather than the real thing. De Barros's mornas don't display the grit of her famous Cape Verdean godmother, singer Cesaria Evora, and her band sounded merely workmanlike on the overly polished, reggaeish "Amor Luz," also from her new album. But that fare was balanced by bouncy Brazilian and perky homeland-derived tunes that, by evening's end, filled the aisles.
-- Steve Kiviat
