by Andreas Hager
Photo credit: Greg Kessler
This weekend, The Joshua Light Show appeared at NYU’s
Skirball Center, with each evening pairing a different set of musicians. Friday
evening featured two concerts, the first by minimalist composer Terry Riley and
his son, guitarist Gyan Riley. Known as one of the founding fathers of
minimalism, the elder Riley’s work in tonal exploration has led him in a multitude of
cultural directions. Riffing on themes that spanned from baroque to jazz and from
Eastern to alien, the duo improvised a mesmerizing journey through the abstract.
The light show tied the concert together, using a wide range
of techniques to create images that delineated and reacted to the music. The
colors were deeply saturated, far more visceral than any projections I’d seen before. The result was like a live remix of the opening sequence of Fantasia, and never felt like the digital mindlessness of the
iTunes visualizer.
The evening's second concert featured Lou Reed,
John Zorn, Bill Laswell, and Milford Graves. Their slow, casual entrance belied
the onslaught of sound they were about to unleash; after a melancholy saxophone
solo, the quartet sprang into action.
There were no old standards here–instead a series of wild
and atonal riffs piling upon each other, a rowdy jam session by musicians
that had earned their stripes. The light show provided clarity,
illustrating the various musical strands and making them comprehensible. There were a
few defectors, but most of the audience was spellbound.
The evening was an unusual mix of rock
concert and classical recital. While Lou Reed received a few catcalls, in
general the audience was coiffed and polite, listening with intent usually
reserved for a thorny Schoenberg composition.
For the last set, the Rileys joined the quartet onstage,
leading the group in a final improvisation. It was a New York moment to see
Riley and Reed paired for a vocal duet. The Joshua Light show was anything but
predictable, and most certainly unforgettable.