Performance Anxiety: Maltman & Matmos

Looking back on earlier posts, I remembered that I never followed up with details of the Maltman/Matmos experience. To recap, attentive readers may recall that electronic music geniuses Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt, together known as Matmos, and English baritone Christopher Maltman had performances scheduled on the same evening.

I wasn't joking when I said this was a hard choice. Some years back M. Y- introduced me to Maltman through his Dichterliebe recording, which I thought was insightful, intelligent, and beautifully sung. Through a number of subtle, wonderfully crafted gestures, he brought out aspects of the poetry that I had never noticed, in all these years of singing and listening to these songs. I later heard his recording of The Wound-Dresser and his intense performance in The Death of Klinghoffer, and I was hooked.

As for Matmos, all it took was the first track of Quasi-Objects, Stupid Fambaloo—created from balloons, a whoopee cushion and a synthesizer (mp3, 1MB)—for me to take notice. (The fish photo came later.) These guys manipulate sounds in unimaginable and revelatory ways, and somehow stretch it all around a framework of excellent beats. As far as I'm concerned, anyone who can put the phrase "bass sound sampled from the amplified synapse of crayfish neural tissue" in their CD credits with a straight face is worth checking out. Plus I adore this quote from Drew:

I heart musique concrète. This genre gets a bad rap—calling to mind a bunch of white guys in suits who use clunky gear to spew out supposedly revolutionary and certainly unlistenable bloops and fnnrts that actually amount to so much dreary audio-lint. Well, fuck you. I could bend over backwards trying to make musique concrète sound sexy and relevant by arguing that Timbaland's use of a baby crying as a riff in Aaliyah's "Are You That Somebody?" was musique concrète, or that Missy's backwards chorus is musique concrète; that basically any kind of music that uses sound as raw material to be manipulated and reshaped is already musique concrète. But I won't bother, because I happen to LOVE those white guys in their suits and ties.

So you see the dilemma. Maltman started at 8 at Herbst; Matmos, at 8:30 at the Exploratorium, but audiences were asked to show up before 7:30 because tickets were scarce. I waffled all day, and around 6:45 I made the decision: Matmos it is!

I hurried up to the Exploratorium, found a spot in the parking lot right out front, ran up to the lobby... and was confronted with the largest gathering of hipsters I've ever seen in a fully lit room. Terrifying! There were furry orange tiger stripe hats with ears. Ironic t-shirts galore. People with Rainbow Grocery bags eating wasabi peas and peeling pomelos. And of course several uncomfortably skinny boys with stringy hair. But then, over the sea of rectangular glasses I spotted the magical sign: "10PM SHOW ADDED". And thus was my problem solved.

I immediately called Mlle B-, who had been planning to meet me at the Exploratorium; we changed our rendezvous to Herbst at 9:45. I got my cash and keys ready, and the moment the cashier handed me my tickets at 7:42 I was out the door and en croute to Civic Center. And here's where you better damn well be impressed: I found street parking one block away from Herbst at 8pm on a night where both the Symphony and the Ballet had performances. BOOYAH! Or, as the kids say, how would you like those apples?

OK, so I missed the first song and the second encore. But I displaced no one and was discreetly seated long before he launched into Vaughan Williams's Songs of Travel. Truth be told, I've never been a fan of this cycle; Robert Louis Stevenson's poetry doesn't resonate with me, and the music's not wonderful enough to overcome that. In any case, Maltman sang them well: a big, dramatic sound when called for, without getting all blustery like Bryn Terfel; delicate and appropriate interpretive gestures; clear, communicative diction; full, round tone at both the top and bottom.

But the high point of the concert turned out to be completely unexpected: a set of four songs by Carl Loewe, each of which requires the singer to portray more than one character to tell a narrative. I didn't know any of these pieces—Erlkönig (setting the same Goethe poem that Schubert used), Die wandelnde Glocke, Edward, and Herr Oluf—and was blown away by Maltman's delivery. He moved so easily between these characters (a total of 15 by my count, including the narrators), and each was made distinct by color, or physical gesture, or diction... It was marvelous. He made me care about these characters. He made me want to get to know these pieces. He made me want to hear more Loewe. He also made me stop paying attention to the fact that he looks an awful lot like Rob Corddry from the Daily Show.

And then off to Matmos! Mlle. B- was waiting outside Herbst at the appointed time, I found a parking space again in the small lot right in front of the Exploratorium, and we walked in just as the applause was starting. First, can I just say: how cool is it that the Exploratorium has a concert series, and that they would present Matmos? Look at this schedule! Totally wacky, and bumps the Exploratorium (which I think of as a dated family place, slightly better than a petting zoo) up a few notches on the hip-o-meter in my book.

I do love these guys, even if MC Schmidt's head was blocked from view by a speaker for most of the show. Last time I saw them was at the Scala in London, and I was too far away to fully appreciate it. The McBean Theater, on the other hand, was just 150 seats (and completely full), so everyone could really see how they were creating the sounds, whether it was banging on segments of a steel pipe, or dripping water on a sheet of metal, or playing with an aluminum can, or blowing into a straw. There was a screen behind them that was supposed to play some videos that they kept forgetting to trigger, but that was OK because I was plenty engaged watching them get off by making and playing with sound. (And sometimes their videos get a little too biological and pink and squishy for my tastes anyway.)

So, in the end it was a terrific night of concert-hopping. I would have never planned it this way, but am delighted it worked out as it did. Stay tuned for the next episode of Performance Anxiety, where your hero has to choose between the Pacifica Quartet playing all five Elliott Carter quartets in one sitting and the Abayudaya Jews of Uganda!

Comments

[sfmike]

That was a very funny and very interesting double review. Thanks also for the Christopher Maltman link to "Death of Klinghoffer," the movie, which is an absolutely great piece, the horrible Joshua Kosman to the contrary.

As for your next set of dueling events, I think it's a no-brainer: The Abayudaya Jews of Uganda! at the Venetian Room at the Fairmont for only $10. What a deal.

[M. C-]

I agree: I thought the Klinghoffer film was well done, beautifully acted, creatively directed. I appreciated Penny Woolcock's conceiving it fully as a film, rather than a stage production adapted for film. Now I'll have to go look up Mr. Kosman's reactions! (Hi, Josh.)

[sfmike]

It was Mark Swed from the L.A. Times whose review of the movie of "Klinghoffer" that caused such a stir because he raved so highly. Kosman waited until it was playing months later at the Mill Valley Festival, where he did everything but call the opera and the movie "anathema" in a little-read Saturday Chronicle review. To say it was a narrowly Zionist interpretation is a kind way of putting it. Speaking of which, I'm awfully tired of Kosman reminding us that he's NOT a Christian everytime he reviews something like "Saint Francois d'Assisi" or "The Dream of Gerontius." We get it, Mister Kosman, and after a while it gets offensive.

By the way, I was a supernumerary in the "Klinghoffer" production back in the early 1990s and I'd say that the movie version was actually superior, though they did edit out a few of my favorite choruses. When I asked John Adams about this at the Castro Theater when they showed this film for the SF Film Festival, he looked immensely pleased and replied, "I'm so glad somebody noticed, but Penny decided there were certain abstractions that she just couldn't illustrate on film."