There will be snacks!

Whitney, my super awesome lady-companion in crime treated us to the Andrew Bird show last night at Southpaw. In short the show was amazing and wonderful. I realize this says little about the music, so here is the longer take:

Bird’s songs are richly layered compositions of violin plucking, bowing, xylophone, whistling, percussion, guitar and vocal. But on stage he was accompanied by a percussionist. Bird plays the rest of the music himself by creating loops of live music. Often he’ll start by plucking out a simple rhythm on violin, then as the measure loop back, he’ll add texture, counterpoint, harmony, until the constructed loop is rich and complex. Then he sings, whistles and plays guitar over the loop, and stopping the loop to change the tempo, only to resume with more energy. It has some of Philip Glass’ repetition, but

Add to this a strong, confident stage presence, beautiful and engaging voice, making his show the kind of show I hope I find when I’m 50 or 60. It is intelligent, well constructed, surprising music that I think exhibits how much rock music has/can evolve.

I often think of the challenge for contemporary classical music, and especially new composition. Increasingly I think it’s becoming a chamber discipline with few practitioners and few patrons, trapped in sea of atonal compositions hard to distinguish from one another. Meanwhile popular music continues to fragment and change in exciting ways. Movies are frequently scored by popular musicians, who deftly capture the moods of a%2