Luna’s Gaze
Courage is often misidentified in the performing arts. Critics make a habit of praising big, loud pieces for their daring, which is a bit like gauging the boldness of a Hollywood film by the number of exploding objects. Sure, the faster-louder school of art provides its share of thrills, but they’re usually cheap and easy; how much brainpower does it take for the otherwise ingenious Blue Man Group to conclude their show by blaring techno music and dumping a few thousand feet of toilet paper on the audience? In a culture as coercively histrionic as ours, perhaps the most courageous artistic act is the act of stillness.
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If so, the Movement and Sonic Sculpture (MASS) Ensemble display an inordinate amount of courage in their new piece, Luna’s Gaze. With a stage full of oversize, well-amplified instruments (designed by company cofounder Bill Close), a dozen or so drums and cymbals, and two huge video screens, the group seems equipped to blow the roof off the Chopin Theatre. Instead they create a work as subtle and nuanced as the shifting colors at sunset. It sneaks up on you like a welcome midafternoon nap–and it’s every bit as refreshing.
Which isn’t to say the music is a featureless wash, despite the fact that nearly all 11 selections are played in the same minor key. Compared to the last MASS Ensemble concert I saw a few years ago, Harvey’s musical direction shows much greater attention to phrasing and build. He also reveals an admirable willingness to pare down arrangements, sometimes suspending walls of simple harmonics for minutes at a time. And rather than trying to convince an audience that their simple music is difficult, as the MASS players have done in the past, this time they find the emotive power of simplicity. Nothing shocking or drastic happens; there are no virtuoso moments. Instead, delicate shifts in tone and texture keep the evening moving forward.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): uncredited photo.
