What a beautiful evening in Amsterdam. In a slightly more than
half-full, yet pretty excited hall, Marc Ribot made his solo appearence,
playing Zorn pieces. According to the original program he was going to
execute the "Book of Heads"; however, and to our great delight, he
announced that he would throw in some songs from the Masada songbook.
"I could probably pull through the complete "Book of Heads", but it
would take me months of preparing" he commented later.
"If a piece is slightly tonal, then you know its a masada tune" he
clarified, hoping to avoid confusing the unprepared among us. He started
off with etude#26 from BOH on electric guitar (the masada tunes that
followed were mostly on acoustic) and immediately his mastering of the
required skills was obvious. With use of few objects that included the
anticipated baloons, (used to either play the guitar, scratch or step
upon and break), he displayed his vision of how to handle these guitar
pieces and improvised his way through Zorn's graphic notation. The
highlights included one the execution of an etude for 3 guitars as well,
as his use of two bows. It is actually very hard to describe what he did
or what it sounded like; Not very different from the recordings as far
as I recollect, yet sitting there in front of him made it sound much
more sparkling and coherent. Later he laughed, "I am happy Zorn was not
here", as he apparently had been stealing on the rules whenever he felt
like.
The program was quite divided between the BOH and masada pieces, which
alternated making it sound less stiff and it really worked out! The
familiar "sansanah", "moshav" and "tzalim" (introduced at the encore as
"another piece from the "Book Of Heads") were included, as well as a few
that I failed to recognize; some titles that I read on his songlist
(which he wouldn't part) were "galgalim", "azekal", "shasal" (could be
slightly wrong here...). Having not heard the Tzadik release of the
Masada guitars, I cannot compare the live interpretations to the studio
ones; To my feeling, the pieces were stripped down to their very
essentials and the melodies often deconstructed. Overall, in the absence
of accompanying instruments, it sounded very melancholic, often going
into very quiet passages and rather unlike the somewhat groovy sound of
the Masada sextet. Utterly beautiful.
Tonight, "Rituals" and "Chimeras" by the Asko ensemble.
And, less than a week to Naked City!
manolis
