PERFORMING ARTS

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Acoustic Africa

Showmanship is never lacking in Afropop, but the sort of elaborate staging seen at Lisner Auditorium on Sunday evening seemed unprecedented. Rather than play back-to-back sets, Mali's Habib Koite, South Africa's Vusi Mahlasela and Ivory Coast's Dobet Gnahore performed in a series of shifting lineups.

Despite this contrivance, the music never sounded forced, and the concert's highlights were rapturous. The "Acoustic Africa" showcase is not the first tour the Putumayo label has packaged to promote its line of easy-listening world music. It's just that this time the packaging was considerably more intricate. Members of Koite's Malian band and Gnahore's French one came and went along with the three featured singers, who alternately supported one another or sang in unison.

The frequent entrances and exits were a bit wearying, and the format prevented any individual singer from building much momentum. Yet the rapport of the musicians was clearly genuine, and the songs that featured all three performers sparked mass elation, with audience members singing along and dancing down the aisle and onto the stage.

Making her U.S. debut on this tour, the big-voiced Gnahore got the smallest share of the spotlight -- she was often reduced to a backup singer role, though she also demonstrated impressively gymnastic dancing. Koite, the most experienced of the three with American audiences, took a sort of avuncular role, allowing Mahlasela the grand emotional moments. The show climaxed with the South African's epic "When You Come Back," written for activists who would return after the end of apartheid. But then the first encore was one of Koite's biggest hits, "Cigarette Abana," a song whose actual and figurative electricity disregarded the "Acoustic Africa" concept.

-- Mark Jenkins

Maria Schneider Orchestra

Aperson wearing earplugs at a concert by the Maria Schneider Orchestra could easily follow the music simply by watching Schneider conduct. Sunday night in the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center's Kay Theatre, Schneider was jazz in motion: dancing to the rhythm section while leading with her arms, standing on tiptoe at climaxes, pulling a fist to punctuate a beat. Every gesture elicited some new facet of timbre, melody or rhythm, and the band's impeccable playing combined with Schneider's compositional vision made for truly transporting results.

Schneider's compositions break down traditional divisions between soloist and band, so that in "Aires de Lando," reedman Scott Robinson switched seamlessly between fluent, bewitching solos on his metal clarinet and purely orchestral playing. She also writes with an eye toward narrative; in "The Pretty Road," a depiction of Schneider's home town of Windom, Minn., Ingrid Jensen's fluegelhorn and trumpet solos created a giddy sense of anticipation before the glittering climax and denouement.

Novel, delightful tone colors constantly flickered across the orchestra, as in the "Choro Dancado" from the 2004 Grammy-winning album "Concert in the Garden," which on Sunday also benefited from a fetching Gary Versace accordion solo. And Schneider has the good sense to write with her band in mind, eliciting solos like Donny McCaslin's on "Buleria, Solea y Rumba," a burner that began in rhapsodic voice but wound itself up into a frenzy, driving a cathartic rhythmic modulation in the orchestra itself.

Yet Schneider's main goal is to move her listeners. Her simple melody (with a richly detailed chart) and an equally direct sax solo by Dave Pietro made the concert's final number, "Sky Blue," the most affecting of them all.

-- Andrew Lindemann Malone

Califone

Despite its smooth Americana-blues sound, Califone is a difficult group to pin down. Time and again during its show Sunday night at Iota, songs that began as straightforward, twangy numbers transformed into more fluid, instrumental jams. While those moments have always existed in the group's music, they have become more striking after leader Tim Rutili's recent move to Los Angeles to pursue soundtrack work.

Califone began its 80-minute set with such an instrumental soundscape while much of the crowd continued to chatter, unaware that the group was performing. But the noise died down as Rutili began to sing "Horoscopic Amputation Honey," an alt-country piece that morphed into a droning instrumental grounded by driving percussion.

Califone's three-piece core was joined onstage by additional musicians: Trumpet and trombone accents spiced up "Pink & Sour"; a second keyboard enhanced Rutili's on "Spider's House"; and local cellist Amy Domingues joined in on "Michigan Girls." Her contributions were particularly stunning on the plaintive "Fisherman's Wife," a highlight of the set with its somber, swooping melodies. Staticky feedback forced the group to stop toward the end of the song, but Califone barely missed a beat, calmly regrouping to play the entire gorgeous number again.

-- Catherine P. Lewis

Contemporary Music Forum

Few of the works in the Contemporary Music Forum's Sunday afternoon concert at the Corcoran Gallery will likely become immediate commercial successes, and mainstream audiences might find much of the program abstruse and, sometimes, downright confusing. But it was all beautiful to hear in the way that the diverse music bespoke bold creators, and today's opaque abstraction could well be tomorrow's classic.

First there was the committed account of "Chromatic Canon" by James Tenney, an American composer who died this year. Fusing the subtle repetitions of minimalism with a rigorous 12-tone language, this work for piano and recorded piano traces an entrancing sonic arc. Pianist Jenny Lin, playing with rhythmic precision, took a subtly transformed figure to variously intense and more fluid places, gradually coloring and darkening the music.

Tom Lopez's "Underground," which features electronic sounds and images, stirred the senses, but only scarcely called to mind the London subway that inspired it. Defined passages morphed into more hazy chords, while photos and videos were projected on a screen. Lawrence Moss's "Korea for Kwartludium" more directly evoked a location, using traditional colors to suggest Asia, albeit through an astringent modernist lens. The players -- violinist Lina Bahn, clarinetist Kathleen Mulcahy, pianist Lin and percussionist Svet Stoyanov -- put the extreme mood and texture changes in high relief.

Roger Reynolds's "Transfigured Wind IV" often seemed more indulgent than probing. Despite Carole Bean's taut solo flute and the skillful use of multi-channel sound to dart birdlike sounds across the hall, the work cried for editing, saying all it had to say and then saying it again. Stoyanov, showing himself to be a marimba virtuoso, reveled in Alejandro Vinao's ever-shifting "Khan Variations." The players capped off the concert with a gripping account of Alexandra Gardner's "Migrations," a pungently attractive ensemble piece. Cellist Ignacio Alcover made strong contributions, while conductor Robert Pound was there to keep its bracing effects and textures in balance.

-- Daniel Ginsberg