Glenn Branca - Symphony 13 @ WDCH, LA 29th MarchI went out to LA last week to play in Glenn Branca’s most recent work for massed guitars, Symphony 13 “Hallucination City”, which premiered at the World Trade Center in July 2001.
85 guitarists and a drummer rehearsed for 2 days and then performed the work at the Walt Disney Concert Hall - one of the architectural highlights of Los Angeles - as part of the Minimalist Jukebox series curated by composer John Adams.
Here is a link to Charles Michelet’s Flickr gallery, where you can see pix of soundcheck and the show. Thanks Charles!
Alexander, one of two brothers who both played, has also posted this cool blog page on myspace. Ch-ch-check it out.
The show was sold out and at the end of the piece we got a standing ovation. It may be that it is Glenn Branca’s most accessible guitar work yet. The score even contains some passages to be played ‘piano’. Not that we paid much attention to that… At any rate it was still a hardcore 70 minute sonic attack. I felt that the American audience’s love of the guitar won through. Maybe the whole supersized show of the thing too.
The symphony is in 4 movements and the sound is made up of interlocking planes of tremelo (fast-strummed) guitars, a huge elemental sound, sometimes in grand unison, sometimes furious and dissonant. The last movement ends like a hurricane screeching to a halt. It’s worth listening for 70 minutes even just for that moment.
Alec Hanley Bemis wrote a great article on Glenn Branca for the LA Weekly. It gives an inspiring overview of his life and work. There is also this review of the concert from the LA Times.
I was at the show, third row center. It was an amazing performance. I’d seen Branca once before for Symp #6, also great.
I’d like to hear more from you about how the rehersals went … how did everyone stay in sync?? I saw a lot of counting going on during the performance, but some looked a bit lost.
Was Glenn happy with the performance?