Friday21
BOWED PIANO ENSEMBLE Colorado-based composer Stephen Scott takes a strikingly original approach to piano music, elaborating on extended techniques developed by John Cage, Henry Cowell, and Conlon Nancarrow. In 1977 he founded his Bowed Piano Ensemble, a ten-member group that huddles over the innards of a single grand piano and uses a host of tools–including nylon fishing line, horsehair-covered tongue depressors, guitar picks, fingernails, percussion mallets, and custom-made mutes–to sculpt dazzling orchestral sounds that are rich with rippling counterpoint, subtle rhythms, and harmonic splendor. Scott’s long-form compositions are often inspired by specific locales: 1996’s Vikings of the Sunrise is about the exploration of the South Pacific, and his latest recording, 2004’s Paisajes Audibles/Sounding Landscapes (Albany), combines original music and texts by Plato, Federico Garcia Lorca, and others to pay tribute to Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands. Soprano Victoria Hansen’s singing blunts the power of the group, but the music and text are well integrated; she’ll join the group for this rare Chicago show, which features a performance of The Deep Spaces, a song cycle about Italy’s Lake Como. It should be fun to watch the group navigate the piano–they rehearse their movements nearly as much as they do their playing. a 1 PM, Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, 312-744-6630. Free. All ages. –Peter Margasak
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Sunday 23
KATHLEEN EDWARDS I fell in love with this Ottawa-born songwriter the moment I heard her Neil Young-ish voice on Failer, her 2003 debut. I’m not a huge fan of alt-country singers, but I was struck by Edwards’s complex ambivalence–she sings with a sweet, quivering hoarseness that’s simultaneously vulnerable and defiant, grabbing hold of you but not giving up everything about the song (or herself) too quickly. That helps turn “One More Song the Radio Won’t Like” into a poignant meditation instead of another spoiled-entertainer gripe a la Ryan Adams (and this despite the fact that she claims Whiskeytown as an influence). On the title track of her latest, last year’s Back to Me (Zoe), she presents a litany of ominous enticements to a wayward lover, and when she gets to the refrain–“I’ve got ways to make you come / Back to me”–the breath between the two lines is just subtle enough to transform the hackneyed setup into a sexy, longing ache. Kate York opens. 8 PM, Martyrs’, 3855 N. Lincoln, 773-404-9494 or 800-594-8499, $15. –J. Niimi
POWERHOUSE SOUND With the Crown Royals, Spaceways Incorporated, and the Sound in Action Trio all missing in action, it’s been a while since Ken Vandermark has had a band devoted to the more rhythmic side of his playing. Powerhouse Sound not only allows him to express that proclivity, it’s also less history minded than those other combos, giving him a relatively contemporary-sounding forum to do it in. The group has played only one show, at the Oslo Jazz Festival last summer, but it already has a studio album in the can. Vandermark, sticking to tenor sax, adroitly darts in and out of the lumbering yet poised grooves created by drummer Paal Nilssen-Love and bassists Nate McBride and Ingebrigt Haaker Flaten, who both play fuzz-toned electrics; electronicist Lasse Marhaug blitzes the rhythms with pixelated vocal and shortwave radio samples. None of the Norwegians will make this gig; instead John Herndon (percussion, electronics) and Jeff Parker (guitar, electronics) will join McBride and Vandermark. 9 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, 773-525-2508, $12. –Bill Meyer
