Saxophone ensemble takes over the Events Barn

by Taylor Coe '13
ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR

With Director of the Jazz Archive Monk Rowe at the helm, it was hardly surprising to find out that the purported “All-Arts Mash-Up” was more saxophone-centric than had been advertised around campus.

Besides Rowe’s saxophone ensemble, the night also featured performances by Tumbling After, Andrea Frederick ’11 on piano, Leonard C. Ferguson Professor of Music Samuel Pellman with video, the newly formed Hamilton Stick Society and dancers Emma Leeds ’12, Marla Marquez ’14, Tiffany Andrade ’13 and Taylor Friedman ’14. The trick of the night was that the saxophones were always present.

Rowe described the event as “a bit of an experiment” that he had been discussing over the past four years with the seniors in the saxophone ensemble Geoff Ayers, Andrew Portuguese and Keith Willner.

“We should do something with interpretive dance,” said Rowe, relating a comment of Willner’s. The event on Tuesday night grappled with such an aspiration—incorporating dance into several pieces over the course of the night, with original choreography by Emma Leeds ’12.

The Mash-Up began with a saxophone arrangement of Coldplay’s “Fix You”—the ensemble scattered throughout the Events Barn, and all lights turned down, save the stand lights of the players. Without a particular concentration of sound, the details of the arrangement were lost, but the ensemble saved the song by neatly turning off their stand lights one by one as they fell silent.

Despite its seeming avant-garde ambitions, the Mash-Up was rather straightforward: saxophones plus piano, saxophones plus a capella, saxophones plus dancers. The only element left out to dry was Pellman’s video performance. Training a camera on the different groups of performers, Pellman channeled the feed through a program on his computer, with which he distorted the image and then projected it onto a screen.

Filtering the image into deep purple hues and cuing the contrast such that the image turned into a field of grains (two examples of Pellman’s tricks), Pellman managed to create a live-feed version of the iTunes Visualizer. It was a nice enough accompaniment to the music, though I imagine that it must have been blinding for the dancers up in front of the projector. The irony of projecting the projection, however, was doubtless lost on the audience.

Overlooking the oddity of Pellman’s presence, the All-Arts Mash-Up was a largely successful experiment—even if a little heavy on the saxophones. The highlight of the show came at the end, as Tumbling After and the saxophone ensemble led the audience through a sing-along of the Beatles’ “Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da.” Given a more focused program, I think that saxophone nights could become a welcome addition to the semesterly arts schedule.