Thursday night David Robertson and the SLSO played the
Pageant Theatre, in St. Louis' Loop District, a
hip-and-happening part of the city, which is actually mostly University City, near Wash. U., with restaurants,
retail, a movie theater, a bowling alley, Vintage Vinyl, the St. Louis
Walk-of-Fame (you'll find stars in the sidewalk and mini-bios of such notable
St. Louisans as T.S. Eliot and Tina Turner), and the one and only Blueberry Hill--to
name a few of the things that make the Loop special.
And the Pageant, which is mostly a rock & roll venue,
but last night featured the orchestra playing a new work by Glenn Branca, then
Frank Zappa and Edgard Varèse (who was one of Zappa's heroes).
I've been to a few shows at the Pageant (Wilco, Dolly
Parton, Magnetic Fields, Ryan Adams, etc.) and, as you often find in St. Louis, a lot of
people hang out by the bar and talk while the music is going on. I'm not the
only person who has made this observation, and someone in the local press makes
the occasional hue and cry about this phenomenon every year or so, but to no avail. People go to
concerts for different reasons, and it's sometimes not about the music.
One of the amazing things about last night's show was how
intently the audience was listening when the SLSO was performing. Part of it
was the effect of seeing a full orchestra on the Pageant stage, no curtains
covering the back wall so all those very precious instruments and very talented
musicians were framed in a kind of industrial setting. A bit gritty, very rock
& roll. And another reason was just how fantastic the orchestra sounded. For those who haven't been to Powell (I'm guessing more than half of the audience) that sound was a revelation.
After intermission came the main event: Branca's Symphony
No. 13, "Hallucination
City," for 100 electric
guitars. This is my favorite response to the performance, which I overheard as I
was walking out into the night, the sonic blast of those guitars still ringing
in the my head. A father and his very young son were walking out together.
Son (sounding very
excited not only by the music but by the fact he got to stay up so late on a
school night): That is the longest I
ever listened to anything!
Dad: Most of the music you listen to is made for
the radio, so it's a lot shorter.
Son: And it was louder than Metallica!
