Edgy Consort Gets Wierd

By Bob Young / Jazz/World  |  Friday, March 19, 2004

The name alone - Callithumpian Consort - pretty much guarantees that you're not going to wrap yourself in the dreamy lyrics of a Bobby Short or the lush melodies of Johnny Hodges when this experiment-loving ensemble takes the stage.

Stephen Drury, the Consort's founder, pianist and artistic director, wouldn't have it any other way.

"One of the things I tell people straight up is that, `Yeah, it's weird,'' he said. ``That's the point. I really like weird. For me, the weirder the better.''

Just how weird? Local music fans will have several opportunities to judge for themselves in the next few weeks.

On Tuesday at 8 p.m., the New England Conservatory-based, revolving-membership group presents a free concert at Jordan Hall in Boston featuring works by Lee Hyla, Xenakis and Grisey.

On April 2, members of the ensemble continue their monthly experimental music series at the Zeitgeist Gallery in Cambridge. Drury, reedmen Eric Hewitt and Jorrit Dijkstra, and Dutch composer and pianist Guus Janssen will be among those featured in ``Sax,'' music composed and/or performed by saxophonists. The Friday night series picks up on May 7. All shows start at 7 p.m.

The Callithumpian Consort has been around, according to the description on its Web site, since ``sometime in the 1990s.'' Drury, who teaches at NEC and has performed with everyone from John Zorn to the Boston Philharmonic and Vienna Radio Orchestra, has seen an uptick in appreciation for what the Consort does.

``We're not in the period like we were in the '60s or early '70s, but audiences now are catching up,'' he said. ``When I toured Europe with John Zorn a few years ago, he had both string quartets and noise band stuff. The audience would come and dig all of it without prejudice.

``It's an audience that's hip to Edgard Varese and the Art Ensemble (of Chicago), John Cage and Ornette (Coleman). These are the people I love. Especially at the Zeitgeist, that's who we're trying to cultivate.''

An open mind and open ears are all Drury asks from his listeners, who he hopes will have the same reaction that he inevitably does: Wow, that was a blast! ``I got into modern music because it was fun,'' he said.

So expect to be exposed to sounds made not only by traditional instruments but by a laptop computer and theremin, and by thematic evenings such as June 4's ``Quiet!'' - described as ``silence, stillness and micro-differentiations.''

Weird? You bet.

``Weird is almost an aesthetic for me,'' said Drury. ``It has a really strong and important political function. Weird makes you think. It's easy to be just weird, obviously. But if it's done well, it really disrupts the prevailing paradigm.''

Drury cites Cage and Italian composer Luigi Nono as inspirations.

``Nono started out as an old line Italian Communist writing operas about the downtrodden workers,'' Drury said. ``And then there was a shift in his work to stuff that was really still and quiet with no agitprop. But that music would take you to a place where you would start thinking independently and start observing and puzzling over things.

``That's the serious side of weird. The other side is that weird is something you haven't heard before. So you don't know what it's going to sound like. And especially in the context of the Zeitgeist, people walk into the room and maybe they came because they know Coltrane or John Zorn's stuff or because they like chamber music and want to hear a piano trio. And then they're going to hear music that they don't know, that they've never heard before and that they wouldn't come across otherwise.

``I think the people who have the most fun at our concerts are the ones who like to be surprised.''