tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9400239.post1844714760369047507..comments2008-06-04T14:29:42.831-06:00Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03881302330668164444noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9400239.post-83848636833293267622008-06-04T14:29:00.000-06:002008-06-04T14:29:00.000-06:00Czeck celloists Irena Havlova and Vojtech Havel (The Havels) brought their story to Marfa last month, in a two part musical performance at the Goode-Crowley Theater that was part jazz, part sci-fi sound track woven together in the belly of a whale and laced with Indian gin-fizzes and the ghost of Ravi Shankar grinning in the background.<BR/><BR/>These were musicians at the top of their game. They’ve been playing together since 1985. They write their own stuff and its wholly other – unique, perfect maybe, because it has no comp. Cellos, Tibetan Bowls, piano, an occasional voice and candles – but mainly cellos, alto and tenor balanced in an unreal way – going places, in and out of sync, as needed.<BR/><BR/>The first act seemed to be their story: original attraction, fatal, screechy, mid- game unison, lover lows, grinding melodies, highs, abrupt stops, a chime, train-thunder and a bench-sharing, four-handed piano finale.<BR/><BR/>Their influence: notes we cannot hear? Or pre-perestroika poets of east Europe; them who was in and out of the Soviet orb – mad dictators, a country polluted politically, industrially, Transylvanian gypsy fiddlers like Csiszar, playwrights like Vaclav Havel. The Havels got freed-up in Prague somewhere along the line, perhaps only behind locked doors to experiment in the unclassified. But the breaking of the Berlin Wall and three journeys to India, set these poet/musicians on their way to international acclaim and to feather their cellos on high octane. Check out their “Little Blue Nothing” on YouTube.<BR/><BR/>I almost ran over Vojtech trying to park for a pre-performance party at the newest restaurant in town “____ “. Much like his music, he gave me a look that I couldn’t interpret. Was it Marfan drip oozing out of his expression or did he just not understand that pick-up trucks in Texas get the street and the sidewalks too under emergency U-turn conditions?<BR/><BR/>At the party I gave him a three minute apology and he gave me one of those looks again. After realizing at the theater that he was half the act, it all seemed to work out – interpretation is a funny thing. I still don’t know if he speaks English.<BR/><BR/>The second act included more chanted words from a language where I only understand the name of a ski resort; Banska Bystreka. A lot of Banska Bystreka and again tremendous powerfully conducted sounds wrapping together for our personal deconstruction.<BR/><BR/>You don’t get this everywhere. Ballroom Marfa has done it again.Red Anthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04129825209774704744noreply@blogger.com