Art in all its parts
Stephen Cohen's music sounds simple, but to play "Rain, Rain, Rain" at a recent concert required the help of no fewer than five standing audience members, plus another two or three in the front row playing accompaniment on set [+]Art in all its parts
Stephen Cohen's music sounds simple, but to play "Rain, Rain, Rain" at a recent concert required the help of no fewer than five standing audience members, plus another two or three in the front row playing accompaniment on sets of tiny chimes.
"Now I need those back at the end of the song," Cohen reminded the crowd at Performance Works NorthWest, an innovative community rehearsal and performance space in Southeast Portland. The folks standing held either rain machines -- nail-studded wood blocks that tinkled quietly when played with a stick -- or big sheets of copper and brass, and a smaller sheet of silver. Big Rain, Big Wind and Little Wind.
"OK, go ahead and practice," he told the sheet metallistes, who already had begun to rumble and whang their instruments with unsettling alacrity. "Now, the guitars will start out and you guys keep still. Then the little chimes and the rain blocks come in, then the wind, but not too loud, otherwise you'll drown out everything."
Somehow, it all worked -- the song progressed from the fingerpicked guitar melody and Cohen's vocal (little more than "I've been out in the rain" repeated) and weathered some exuberant rumbles from the wind department, only to subside gently, not with a bang but a tinkle.
"Just toss 'em anywhere," he says, dismissing his impromptu accompanists after the song. "They're all metal and you can't break 'em -- I used to have some glass chimes, until they went the way of all glass."
Cohen is a great one for all manner of musical impedimenta, which he hauls around in a big duffel custom-built by a guy who makes hot rod upholstery and body bags. Cohen calls himself a "sculptural percussionist," which explains the profusion of stuff around his folding chair.
The items range from the fireplace screen-sized "sculptural percussion instrument" slung with chimes, bells and gongs to those tiny chimes he passed out to the audience. Cohen made those brass chimes and just about everything else, save for the panpipes, the longer 16-barreled Hmong pipes and his guitar.
A table next to him holds shakers, capos, tuners, the brass slide and the chunk of glass bottle neck that he uses on his guitar -- though the edge of a panpipe also has been known to serve in the heat of a song
|
 |
Genre/Tags: 
Ringtones
Full Tracks
