Roll Over Sibelius
Karnick, S. T.
PROGRESSIVE MUSIC—Open Your Mind," reads the T-shirt of the chubby, thirtyish fellow standing beside me in a sweltering hallway outside the elegant (and comfortably air-conditioned) Patriot...
...Prog rock's resurgence since the early 1990s has been aided in part by the advent of high-performance personal computers—which radically reduced production costs for complex music—and also by the rise of the Internet, which makes it easier to reach widely dispersed audiences...
...As a result, only a few years after its first burst of popularity, progressive rock withered under the assault by cheaper-toproduce disco and punk rock...
...NEARfest's performances reflected those eclectic origins...
...Using an invented language that combines jazz-style scat singing with French and German phonetic elements, the songs were highly melodic, with a psychedelic '60s feel at times...
...The latter, reunited for its first concert in nine years, evoked a variety of twentieth-century classical music, including abrupt transitions between soft, romantic passages reminiscent of Sibelius, and heavy, harsh, aggressive sections suggesting a mad, electronically distorted version of Stravinsky or Bartok...
...They incorporated lyrical concepts derived from folk tales, mythology, religion, science fiction, psychological theories, novels, and other intellectual topics...
...skillful contrasts of loud, ultramodern sounds with pastoral, acoustic textures...
...As with most other bands at the festival, the playing was technically proficient as well as passionate and lyrical...
...Their recordings became increasingly ambitious, as exemplified by Jethro Tull's single-song album Thick as a Brick and Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon (one of the top-selling records of all time), and correspondingly expensive to make and to promote on concert tours...
...For half a century, upcoming composers had been migrating to more open-minded provinces—first, jazz and then when bebop began to sap the pleasure out of that, they went into rock...
...Chattanooga-based Glass Hammer performed several songs from Lex Rex, their dramatic album telling the story of a Roman centurion's search for glory, which he finds only after plunging his spear into the side of Jesus Christ as the Savior hangs dying on the cross: Here is glory Oh, that the King would give His life That mankind would grow That mankind could know Know Heaven The group made their religious outlook thoroughly explicit—and the performance even more stirring—by including a sixteen-person choir for its final three songs...
...The quintet employs strange, engaging rhythms...
...For this, the fifth in the series, some of the top prog rock bands in the world have assembled in downtown Trenton, ranging from contemporary acts such as the Flower Kings, Glass Hammer, and Anglagard to 1970s' veterans Magma and Camel...
...The quartet's songs combined many of the jazz, folk, and classical influences the prior performers had mined...
...PROGRESSIVE MUSIC—Open Your Mind," reads the T-shirt of the chubby, thirtyish fellow standing beside me in a sweltering hallway outside the elegant (and comfortably air-conditioned) Patriot Theater in Trenton, New Jersey, on a hot, humid day near the end of June...
...They began creating the kinds of works to which classical composers used to devote their energies: melodic, expressive, intelligent, respective of form but not constricted by it, and above all, pleasurable...
...Several bands showed strong jazz influences, particularly the appealingly spacey Tunnels, the engaging German group Kraan, and a highly original French band Magma...
...Magma presented a set of very long, complex songs featuring intricate interplay among and between the four vocalists and five instrumentalists...
...extravagant theatricality...
...When tickets for the latest running of NEARfest went on sale this February, nearly all were gone in less than an hour, and the sellout crowd gathered in Trenton was correspondingly enthusiastic...
...NEARfest—a.k.a...
...Sophisticated as it may be, the music falls short of having as intelligent an interplay between form and novelty as do the greatest classical compositions (then again, few things do reach that exalted level...
...Every performance at NEARfest received at least one such ovation, and some garnered many more...
...The vast majority, however, were solidly bourgeois—cheerful, casually but neatly dressed and groomed, talkative, and friendly...
...Just as a fondness for the Beatles led many of these musicians to seek out more-refined composers, perhaps progressive rock can stimulate a greater appreciation for classical music and inspire more composers to venture into that now-arid territory and restore its pursuit of beauty, form, and humanity...
...But people interested in intelligent, adventurous music are clearly drawn to this style, and that in itself is a very good thing...
...Two other groups similarly specialized in eccentric rhythms and contrasting textures: the German quartet High Wheel and the Swedish symphonic rock group Anglagdrd...
...But NEARfest's performers also evidenced prog rock's limitations...
...Most claim classical music as a major foundation, but they also acknowledge being affected by a very wide variety of music—jazz, progressive rock, church music, Swedish folk songs, Frank Sinatra, even the blues...
...and even humor, in the musical equivalent of a Roger Corman-Edgar Allan Poe film...
...Never, however, did the music project a sense of aimlessness or self-indulgence: it was always quite logical, even when passionate and intense...
...That seems to be the main theme of the weekend: opening one's mind to a wide variety of creative and unusual music...
...The Finnish quintet Alamaailman Vasarat ("The Hammers of the Underworld"), for example, veered radically but confidently between genial, Mitteleuropean, oompah cadences, pounding rhythmic segments, exotic Middle Eastern-sounding measures, and grand, exquisitely lyrical passages...
...Interestingly, the specific performer most often and fondly named was the Beatles—and several musicians noted that their youthful appreciation for the Fab Four had led them to explore more complex and challenging music, classical included...
...Flower Kings, from Sweden, opened their set with a stirring half-hour version of "The Truth Will Set You Free," which has openly Christian, pro-American lyrics...
...Melding influences from classical, jazz, and folk traditions, bands such as Yes, Genesis, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, Kansas, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer broadened the conception of what rock music could constitute, in the process selling millions of records...
...Led by singer, virtuoso guitarist, flautist, and songwriter Andy Latimer, the band performed a long set of epic and melodic music from throughout its extensive career...
...Heady stuff, but the band made it work, receiving thunderous applause and a standing ovation...
...A word about "progressive" rock (and fear not—this has nothing to do with "progressive" politics): as a recognized style, it rose to prominence in the early 1970s, moving into the vacuum left as classical composers increasingly turned away from any evident desire to create music that would be enjoyable for listeners, as in the works of John Cage...
...The final act, Camel, has been around for more than three decades, and received a standing ovation just for walking onto the stage...
...The artists' influences, too, are typically quite traditional...
...That would be a very good thing indeed...
...As in most rock concerts, the brain-crushing volume can be more of a physical trial than a musical experience, and the music often gets lost among the smoke and flashing lights—strangely self-defeating in a form where the performers explicitly pursue subtlety and artistry...
...Ranging in age from about ten to the mid-fifties, the assemblage of nearly two thousand people included everything from preteen girls to longhaired, tattooed biker dudes...
...Every performer with whom I spoke was similarly open, earnest, and personable...
...The band connected strongly with the crowd, thanks to an evident willingness to create beautiful sounds without straining for gratuitous originality Camel aptly illustrates the objectives of progressive rock musicians: beauty, grandeur, artful contrasts, intelligence, virtuosity, passion—the very things we miss in today's classical and jazz music...
...Lead singer and guitarist Nils Frykdahl told me after the set that the band's work is actually a critique of humanism, specifically the modern tendency to see man as the center of the universe...
...Aside from gospel and "Christian contemporary;' progressive rock may also be the most pervasively religious style of popular music, and among many current groups the faith is explicitly Christian...
...The North East Art Rock Festival—is an annual, two-day nonprofit event "celebrating the resurgence of progressive and eclectic music in the United States and around the world," according to founders Rob Laduca and Chad Hutchinson...
...Even more unusual was Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, which takes its name from an obscure avant-garde art collective...
...Some came from as far as Montreal, Colorado, Florida, Nevada, California, Peru, and even Ghana...
...Neither is it as nuanced, and when performed live it is even less so...
Vol. 36 • August 2003 • No. 4
