MASS
at the Neo-Futurarium, through March 30
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The CSO could learn a thing or two about visual presentation from MASS (Movement and Sonic Sculpture), a scrappy four-person ensemble whose annual budget probably wouldn’t get all the shoes on the Orchestra Hall stage shined. In the Blue Rider’s homey space, which sports a fresh coat of forest green paint, two mammoth Close long bows (named after MASS member Bill Close, who designed and built them) command the stage, their 25-foot aluminum frames lurking in the shadows like skeletal Viking ships on a peaceful night sea. Against one wall stands a “conjure drum” held aloft in a graceful metal frame designed by ensemble member Jacqueline Westhead. Next to it is a “harp of hurdy-gurdies,” a poetic collision of wood, wires, and hand cranks; it could be mistaken for the inner workings of a martian player piano. Hanging on the opposite wall is the breathtakingly beautiful chrysalis drum, with a fan of iridescent strings rising from the floor and attaching to its towering drumhead. Under lighting designer Kevin Rechner’s mottles and pin spots, MASS offers a visual feast before playing a single note.
Of course, MASS isn’t interested in working in a classical tradition. They compose improvisationally rather than scoring their works. Their music belongs to the moody, ambient school, more orchestrated atmosphere than finished composition. Whether they’re stroking the long bow’s 18 strings, tapping ordinary drinking glasses, or bowing a cello, the MASS musicians tend to produce spare and mournful music with simple, predictable progressions and heavy doses of minor and suspended chords. The three pieces that make up the evening–Conjure, Tricycle, and Hawk’s Gaze–are painted in similar (at times nearly identical) musical colors. While other contemporary performance musicians, most notably Meredith Monk, find fullness in simple, haunting phrases, MASS’s simplicity tends to devolve into uniformity. And while their manipulation of timbre counterpoints is at times quite sophisticated, particularly in the lengthy conversations between cello and long bow, more often than not their music is a rather featureless tonal wash.
At the same time he continually struggles to bridge that gap, and his desperate attempts to commune with his audience give his performance a palpable edge. Built like a chopping block with severely cropped black hair, gesticulating with the furious precision of Toscanini’s irate truck-driver cousin, Alcott locks eyes with his audience, nearly pleading for empathy. When he succeeds the results are stunning, as in his opening piece, “The Jaws of Love.” He begins by defining his (and our) humanity in an unabashedly cynical way: “I’m human, I’m an idiot, it follows.” Then he shows just how joyously idiotic we can be. “Have you ever looked into someone’s eyes and been reduced to the size of a pin?” he asks. “You ever see someone toss their hair back and it made you fall silent?”
