Raw beams, old cement and downtown art hosted outsider music. What a natural combination, and what a contrast ensued.
The Smudges were quite precise. Cellist Maggie Parkins and violinist Jeff Gauthier attacked the music from their new album with heartful confidence, from the neoclassical barnburner "The Gigue Is Up" to the concluding "Music of Chants," whose somber Eastern European folk strains they performed without amplification in honor of Ukrainians who currently had no other choice. Gauthier played a recording of an original birdsong and then a slowed-down version before the Smudges merged their visions with various slowed calls on "Song and Call," which realized in composition the inspiration Eric Dolphy attributed to avian music 60 years ago . . . and we felt a fresh connection to nature. Both players drew unusual effects from their strings, and at one point Parkins even whistled just perfectly. This was music to subvert expectations yet draw us in.
The improvisational musical/comedy duo CuZns, on the other hand, intended to scrape our hides. Beloved 87-year-old cornetist Bobby Bradford sat down first, blowing a few lines loud and soft through open bell and a variety of mutes. Bradford's history of Texas blues, Ornette avantitude and '60s soul is hard to match, and hearing him was like auditing a cut-up of tapes from the vaults. As faint chirps kept emanating from offstage, Bradford acknowledged that CuZns had decided to take up the Smudges' theme; at last, big William Roper strolled onto the stage, blowing some bird-call device and wearing a pair of wings, and Bradford pulled out binoculars to observe this exotic phenomenon. Now, that was funny. For the rest of their performance, both men played abstractions or wink-wink clichés off each other on a variety of odd instruments (Roper mostly avoided his tuba), told jokes, or improvised stories, often racially underpinned. Bradford turned out to command a good Russian accent, but the purpose was not to entertain; CuZns wanted us to understand how it feels to be on the outside. So we were, y'know, twitted.
* * *
PHOTOS BY FUZZY BOURGEOIS.