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Genre-Bending Jazz
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26 APRIL 29, 2004
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DJ Spooky brings music beyond category to WOW Hall.
W
hen we see the letters DJ before
a performer’s name, most of us
get a pretty narrow idea of what
kind of music we’re going to hear. But we
should discard all stereotypes in the case
of DJ Spooky , who plays the WOW Hall
on Thursday April 29, and whose musical
canvas is as broad as his other interests.
Those interests include conceptual art,
writing, including a novel, articles for the
Village Voice, Artforum and footnote-
laden academic journals, and more.
One of the most thoughtful and histori-
cally informed observers of contemporary
music and culture, he’s worked with musi-
cians from contemporary classical com-
posers Xenakis and Pauline Oliveros to new
jazz pianist Matthew Shipp to Sonic Youth’s
Thurston Moore to Su Ra to Yoko Ono; the
great, mad reggae producer Lee “Scratch”
Perry collaborated on Spooky’s new album,
Dubtometry, a remix of his phenomenal
2002 release, Optometry, which he calls
“jazz for the genre splice generation.”
Incorporating turntables, violin, piano,
Apple Powerbook-generated samples,
bass, kalimba, and a galaxy of other
sound sources, Optometry embodies
Spooky’s philosophy as a “partisan for
the impure,” a product of an age in which
art happily crosses all artificial bound-
aries of genre. He’s happy mixing John
Cage and Thelonious Monk, Duchamp
and dub. His danceable soundscapes can
appeal to fans of jazz, hip hop, contem-
porary classical, or whatever category
you name — but the point is, categories
only limit creativity.
DJ Spooky offers a beautifully expansive
vision of 21st century art and music. He’ll
also be speaking at the UO — see Calendar.
Another paragon of 21st century music
who ignores genre boundaries like an ambu-
lance zooming through a red light is the great
jazz-oriented trumpeter composer
Dave Douglas , appearing in
Eugene with his fourth band in
three years. One of the most cre-
ative figures in American music,
Douglas has worked with
Horace Silver, John Zorn, Bill
Frisell and plenty of avant garde
musicians in Europe and
America in dozens of
different band config-
urations, yet his
trademark melodi-
ousness informs all
his varied projects,
including
the
quintet
he’ll
bring to The
Shedd on
May 5.
Every
one
of
Douglas’
shows here has
been memorable,
and his most recent
music, which employs
Fender Rhodes along with sax
and rhythm section, is as bright and
inventive as anything in jazz today,
invoking contemporary sounds
without falling into fusoid excess.
The Shedd hosts yet another jazz pio-
neer on May 9, when sax legend Dave
Liebman brings his quintet to town.
Liebman, who played in Miles Davis’s
1970s bands, can stretch pretty far into
the stratosphere with screechy pyrotech-
nics, yet his most recent disk shows
Liebman fully capable of warm, accessi-
ble sounds as well. Probably not for the
most conservative listeners, but a recom-
mended to improvised music fans with
adventurous ears.
One of Eugene’s most cherished chan-
nelers of new sounds, the great percus-
sionist Charles Dowd , plays a recital at
the UO’s Beall Hall on Sunday, May 2.
Faculty piano masters Gregory Mason and
Victor Seinhardt will accompany Dowd,
who’ll play timpani, xylophone, drums,
triangle, cymbal and more in this brilliant,
brooding masterpiece of 20th century
chamber music. The show also features
music by Elliott Carter, Anthony Cirone,
David Maves and others.
That same afternoon, the Oregon
Wind Ensemble plays Symphony No. 1
(“Lord of the Rings”) by Dutch composer
Johan DeMeij, based on Tolkein’s works
and composed well before the recent
movies appeared. And on Thursday, April
29, the Oregon String Quartet performs
the quartet movement in C minor that
Franz Schubert left unfinished at his early
death (featuring the world premiere of a
completion by Livingston Gearhart),
Brahms’s piano quintet, and Prokofiev’s
gorgeous first quartet.
Beethoven is inescapable in Eugene
these days. Even as the Eugene Symphony
completes its Beethoven cycle, the Oregon
Mozart Players perform his third sym-
phony on May 1 and 2 at the Hult Center’s
Soreng Theatre. This exhilarating, revolu-
tionary work — variously credited as the
culmination of the Classical style or the
inauguration of Romantic expressive-
ness — was actually written for a
chamber orchestra of the OMP’s
size, and hearing it for those forces
really illuminates the details and
interplay among the instru-
ments. The concert also
features Tchaikovsky’s
tribute to Mozart (his
fourth
orchestral
suite) and music by
Rossini.
Rossini’s death
sparked the cre-
ation of the other
big classical work
on the horizon:
the
Eugene
Concert Choir’s
performance of
Verdi’s massive
Requiem on May 8
at Silva Concert
Hall. Operatic, dra-
matic, it’s one of
the monuments of
choral orchestral
music.
ew
DJ Spooky, WOW Hall,
Thursday, April 29.