Asphalt Orchestra pounds... the asphalt
Asphalt Orchestra
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The intrepid musical adventurers in Bang On A Can have assembled into a new form as the Asphalt Orchestra, and they'll be putting that form to intriguing use this week at a free outdoor series at Lincoln Center. The Bang On A Can enterprise involves reconstituting all kinds of experimental music, and the 12-piece Asphalt Orchestra follows in line. For five days starting Wednesday, they'll perform works of "processional music"—by Bjork, Frank Zappa, Charles Mingus, Tyondai Braxton of Battles, Colon Nancarrow, Messhugah, Goran Bregovic, and Stew and Heidi Rodewald from Passing Strange.
How they'll be performing it all is rich: as a sort of free-form street band with marching orders around the grounds of Lincoln Center.
The shows—each day for a half-hour starting at 7 p.m.—will start at a given point outside and then wander... well, who knows? It stands to be interesting, to say the least. As one Asphalt Orchestra member, Jessica Schmitz, communicated in an email: "Back when I started playing flute, I never anticipated that one day I’d be playing death metal on a plastic piccolo while climbing the walls of Lincoln Center wearing combat boots."
The schedule, with starting points, goes like this:
Wednesday Aug. 5, 7 p.m.
Starts at Broadway Plaza (Alice Tully Hall)
Program: Stew and Heidi Rodewald, Meshuggah, Charles Mingus, Tyondai Braxton, Goran Bregovic
Thursday Aug. 6, 7 p.m.
Starts at North Plaza/Hearst Plaza (Library for the Performing Arts)
Program: Frank Zappa, Colon Nancarrow, Bjork, Braxton, Bregovic
Friday Aug. 7, 7 p.m.
Starts at Josie Robertson Plaza (Fountain in front of Avery Fisher Hall)
Program: Braxton, Zappa, Nancarrow, Bjork, Bregovic
Saturday Aug. 8, 7 p.m.
Starts at South Plaza (Damrosch Park)
Program: Bregovic, Braxton, Zappa, Nancarrow, Meshuggah
Sunday Aug.9, 7 p.m.
Starts at Broadway Plaza (Alice Tully Hall)
Program: Stew and Heidi Rodewald, Meshuggah, Mingus, Zappa, Bregovic
For those with a travel bug, they'll also be boarding a train at Penn Station on Friday morning to play a quick in-between show at 11:45 a.m. at the 30th Street Station in Philadelphia.
