Grand Band Strikes LPR Again (A Review)

Grand Band soundchecking before the concert (Photo courtesy of Vicky Chow)

Grand Band @ LPR
Featuring Lisa Moore, Isabelle O’Connell, Vicky Chow, Blair McMillen, David Friend, and Paul Kerekes, pianos
Le Poisson Rouge, NYC
Tuesday, January 15th, 2013

Written by Tristan McKay

Grand Band, New York City’s new music keyboard sextet, returned to Le Poisson Rouge this week to perform Simeon ten Holt’s magnum opus, Canto Ostinato. This evening marked their third appearance as a group—the first being at the Bang on a Can Marathon at the Winter Garden last June, followed by a concert at LPR of works by Julia Wolfe, Philip Glass, Kate Moore and Steve Reich in August. The sizzling, feisty and dazzling energy of Grand Band’s first two performances was this time substituted with a different brand of virtuosity: Canto Ostinato is a mystical, enchanting, and meditative epic, brilliantly and vividly animated by six of the most active and celebrated contemporary pianists around: Lisa Moore, Isabelle “Izzy” O’Connell, Vicky Chow, Blair McMillen, David Friend, and Paul Kerekes.

Canto Ostinato, composed in 1976 and first performed in 1979, is the most famous and frequently performed piece by Dutch composer Simeon ten Holt, who passed away last November. Despite this claim, I have never seen any of his music programmed in the city, and neither had anyone that I told about the concert. Grand Band dually honored the composer’s passing and did a service to the audience in bringing this work back to our collective attention.

Grand Band at LPR (A Review)

Clockwise from left: Izzy O’Connell, David Friend, Paul Kerekes, Blair McMillen, Vicky Chow and Lisa Moore (Grand Band) performing at Le Poisson Rouge, August 7th, 2012 (Photo courtesy of Karen Chester)

Grand Band
Featuring Lisa Moore, Isabelle O’Connell, Vicky Chow, Blair McMillen, David Friend, and Paul Kerekes, pianos
Le Poisson Rouge, NYC
August 7th, 2012

Whatever your thoughts are about all-piano duos or ensembles (MY first thoughts are of acts like Ferrante & Teicher or The 5 Browns, though I also enjoyed Anderson & Roe), this first-ever full concert set at Le Poisson Rouge by the NY-based new music ensemble Grand Band, the group that was co-founded by Isabelle “Izzy” O’Connell and Lisa Moore, and was done so for the Bang On a Can Marathon, has been an electrifying blast of teamed-up keyboard prowess that for me had much more the effect of Fats Domino, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis when they played a hot rock and roll riff together on an old TV special.

When the group made their debut as Grand Band at the BOAC Marathon at WFC’s Winter Garden in June, they had 6 Steinway & Sons grands rented out at their whim, but for this affair, they had to settle for the next best thing–digital Yamaha pianos (and one Roland). But I can say this for sure–the sound of these keyboards still came across like 6 grand pianos in that room, perhaps a bit drier than at the Winter Garden, but they definitely made the right adjustments for volume calibration.

Isabelle O’Connell

Photo courtesy of Jennifer Warren

Irish-born pianist Isabelle O’Connell (aka “Izzy”) is another great piano soloist I’ve come to learn about in the new music world. Along with an impressive solo career, she’s the brain-child of the fabulous project for 6 pianos called the Grand Band, a super ensemble that grew out of the initial performance of Julia Wolfe’s “my lips from speaking” from several years previously, and eventually became a massive blend of multiple pianos that was one of the major highlights of the Bang On a Can marathon this past June.
The Grand Band are in fact going to be performing a full-concert at Le Poisson Rouge in New York on Tuesday, August 7th at 6:30 PM, and they will be playing both the Julia Wolfe piece and the Steve Reich “Six Pianos” piece they performed at BOAC along with a whole list of other works.

Izzy had time to chat via Skype.

TwoSense Rocks The Rubin

Lisa Moore (left) and Ashley Bathgate are TwoSense; Photo courtesy of Stephen Taylor

TwoSense
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Rubin Museum of Art, NY

The Rubin Museum of Art, a wonderful collection of Himalayan artifacts, culture and history was the backdrop for the chamber concert by TwoSense (Pianist Lisa Moore and cellist Ashley Bathgate, both of whom are also associated with the Bang On a Can All-Stars). The program titled “Resonating Light: The Remains” was intended by the duo to show that the pieces from the Himalayan exhibition (particularly a bullet-ravaged 12th century Bodhisattva) were an inspiration for the program, and some of the artifacts spoke to other artistic directions made for the programming of the concert. The artifacts and several other images were shown on a slide projection during the concert (A different one for each piece), and the 2nd half of the show started with a discussion about the museum pieces and their relation to the music.