by Mike Engle
Galapagos Art Space is not simply a beautiful room with a curious name. It's also an environmental landmark, having recently obtained a prestigious LEED certification for its energy-saving features, such as the signature lake, located directly below the main-level seating section, that serves to regulate the internal temperature. There were about a hundred audience members when I arrived there on Friday, evenly distributed among island seating pods, the mezzanine, and the bar. As a whole, the double-decker space is just small enough to feel intimate, with excellent views of the well-lit stage.
The opening act was Anti-Social Music, a non-profit composer's collective that debuts new music every six months. It is, essentially, a chamber music group, as there is no conductor. At the same time, it features some of the most unique instrumentation I have ever seen, including vibraphone, drumset, French horn, and a wide range of reed instruments. The music included a curious hodge-podge of classical, jazz, and rock, along with a narrator who seemed so focused on reading his scripted "story" between each selection that he failed to effectively introduce the songs by name. In short, my experience in listening to Anti-Social Music was identical to my attempts at decoding the group's name: I didn't get it.
The featured performers were Darcy James Argue's Secret Society. Following Darcy's "steady hand and square jaw," his "co-conspirators" (which included, in typical big-band format, five trumpeters, four trombonists, five saxophonists, a pianist, a bassist, a guitarist, and a drummer) navigated through some of Argue's older compositions from Infernal Machines, a new suite from Brooklyn Babylon, about a fictional carousel fixed to the top of the fictional "tallest building in Brooklyn" ("No political overtones, I swear, cross my heart, hope to die," Argue affirmed), and a pair of new compositions from David T. Little and Vijay Iyer, written especially for the Secret Society. With equal respect to the swinging jazz band tradition, driving rhythms of modern rock, and unorthodox melodies and meters from contemporary composition, the Secret Society left me and the rest of the audience overwhelmed by their fantastic showcase.