CRASH (again)

Just can't help it: even though I've written about the Crash Ensemble a few hundred times already, I saw them again the other night and it was at least as good. A greatest hits concert, I suppose, with all commissions written specifically for the ensemble--three for roughly the full ensemble (no vocals, though), one string quartet, and one string quintet with two pianos. The second one, "Forced March," was by David Lang, one of the founding members of the Bang on a Can ensemble and the Pulitzer Prize winner for composition in 2008. I shook his hand.

Anyway, the other items on the docket were Terry Riley's Loops for Ancient Giant Nude Hairy Warriors Racing Down the Slopes of Battle, Gerald Barry's First Sorrow ("If someone could figure out how to make a poignancy grid, to attain the greatest level of poignancy..."), Kevin Volans's Connecting the Dots, and Donnacha Dennehy's Gra agus Bas ("Well, folks, looks like poignancy is the name of the game tonight.") I had only heard First Sorrow, the string quartet, before, but I had heard recordings of many of the others from their premieres last year. The string quartet is still my favorite, although Loops for Ancient Giant Nude... is probably the most fun, with a full-distortion electric guitar solo.

In other news: Beckett's "Not I" as a contemporary of bebop jazz, and as a precursor of slam poetry. Discuss.

That's a 151 MB .avi version, but you can find it at YouTube as well. It's free and public domain (I guess? The www.ubu.com site is legal, I think) so I'd recommend just downloading it and watching it when you have 10 minutes of time to block out. It's too good to chop up into bits, and, although it gets exhausting, you must go on.