MOG

Summertime is a great time for free concerts in New York City.  When the weather cooperates it can be absolutely perfect - like the Nicole Atkins show at Socrates Park on June 17 and The Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks headlinging show at the Coney Island Siren Fest on July 19th.  Then it can be almost perfect, like the Sonic Youth show in Battery Park on the 4th of July (it rained some but not much, considering).

Then there is the next level down on the "satisfaction" scale - the Ting Tings/MGMT show at McCarren Pool on July 27.  It poured buckets at the beginning of this show - everyone got drenched - but then it ultimately stopped and MGMT pulled out the day successfully.

Then there is the best-laid-plains-but-utlimately-complete-disasters such as the Blonde Redhead scheduled appearance at Pier 54 in NYC on August 14.  Even though it had been a beautiful sunny week, the clouds began looming late on this Thursday afternoon.  Still, I had my fingers crossed that Mother Nature was going to hold off this time. However, after two hours of waiting outside the pier in a steady growing rainfall - and despite the shows organizers having fought hard to try to get the show on - in the end, all of the equipment drenched, the stage in about a foot of water and the lightning illuminating the sky, the show was unfortunately called off for safety reasons by the NYC Parks Department.

Bummer.

So, it was with some trepidation that on the following night -  Friday, the 15th of August - new concert going BFF Nancy and I headed over to Lincoln Center and its Damrosch Park Bandshell for one of their Out of Doors free concert happenings.

No sooner did we get there that it started raining again.  Uh, oh . . .

Respected composer Rhys Chatham was to premiere his  A Crimson Grail for 200 Electric Guitars (Outdoor Version) performed not on the Bandshell stage but along the sides of the audience at Damrosch Park, to heighten the work's polyphonic effect.

However, once again, the rain made this impossible.  All of the amps surrounding the three sides were drenched, despite attempts to cover them.  It was too much of an electrical risk and unfortunately, this performance had to be canceled.

Rhys apologized to the audience and promised to bring this show back some time in the future.

However, the night was not a total loss as they were able to present to us the second scheduled co-headlining appearance of composer/guitarist Manuel Gottsching's electronic composition E2-E4.  This piece is today generally acknowledged as the influential starting point for early techno and house music. 

I captured some of this hour-long performance in more time-managable video clips:

E2-E4 builds from calm and quiet to multiple layers of texture and repetition, culminating in an ecstatic groove.

Collaborating with Gottsching for this first-ever U.S. live performance of E2-E4 was visual artist Joshua White and his Joshua Light Show, who created live visual projections designed specifically for this piece, projected on the suface of the Damrosch Bandshell.

The projection uses "liquid light" techniques developed at Bill Graham's Fillmore East during the late 1960s.

This performance and experience was nothing short of amazing.

So, in spite of the element and disappointment of part of this show being rained out, in the end it was yet-another enlightening New York concert experience.