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Writer, composer, and multimedia artist Paul D. Miller deftly assumed his alter-ego, DJ Spooky “That Subliminal Kid,” as he took the stage of Atkins Auditorium at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art on Friday night for an audience of nearly 200. The multimedia performance included a full DJ setup for Spooky, live strings courtesy of the UMKC Conservatory Graduate String Quartet, and video projection. Presented in collaboration with the Nelson-Atkins exhibition Impressions and Improvisations: The Prints of Romare Bearden, Spooky’s “An Acoustic Portrait” performance explored the thread of the African-American experience through Bearden’s prints.

In his introduction, Spooky outlined a twentieth-century artistic lineage, invoking artists from Picasso to Rauschenberg to Bearden to the present-day culture of audio sampling. It was a compelling hypothesis and one which DJ Spooky subsequently explored in the course of the evening’s performance.

Presenting fascinating archival videos of Lionel Hampton’s “It don’t mean a thing” and Fats Waller’s “This joint is jumpin’,” DJ Spooky following each with live remixes. “This joint is jumpin’” was particularly vibrant, with lively strings and the “illbient” drumbeats Spooky is known for, combined with a striking visual remix of Fats Waller’s video.

DJ Spooky’s Goldberg Variations remix unfolded as a conversation about cultural appropriation flipped on its head. Spooky introduced the piece in the context of himself, an African-American man, remixing and reinterpreting one of the pinnacles of Western European culture. Though some might see remixing Bach as a kind of musical heresy, here it was an effective artistic examination. After opening with Glenn Gould’s classic interpretation, a drumbeat kicked in underpinning the strings’ mosaic fragments of Bachian licks with further interludes of Gould’s playing sprinkled throughout.

A multimedia piece commissioned by the NAACP, Winds of Change: A Composition and Hommage to the NAACP on 100 Years of Change, was set to fragments of the spiritual “Go down Moses.” Here, striking and timely imagery of Civil Rights-era protests and police brutality called to my mind imagery of the Occupy Wall Street protests currently taking place across the country. The visual timeline of the Civil Rights Movement was bookended by clips from Obama’s Election Day acceptance speech and complemented by Spooky’s beats and intricate music for the string quartet.

The presentation was not without it hiccups. There were moments, especially in the first half hour, that strayed too far into Apple press junket territory, with Spooky flipping between DJ apps, iTunes playlists, and photo albums on his iPad, all of which were projected onto the large screen. Demonstrations of his own iPhone DJ app also bordered on the commercial side for my tastes.

Despite several captivating video compositions, quality suffered at the hand of quantity, with several musical offerings by Spooky and the string quartet accompanied by little more than artistic iTunes visualizations. It would have been much more impressive if each piece received the kind of video treatment that accompanied the Fats Waller remix or the NAACP tribute.

Though there were certainly improvisational and crossover elements inherent in this performance, some parts featuring the string quartet with Spooky felt under-prepared. However, one relatively quick fix for most of these problems would be for DJ Spooky to learn to cue classical performers the way classical performers have been taught to receive cues, with more singular, decisive gestures immediately before their entrance.

Overall though, the performance stood out for its unique collaborative efforts and thought-provoking multimedia presentations. DJ Spooky was very engaging and humorous making this special presentation by the Nelson-Atkins interesting and noteworthy.

REVIEW:
Impressions and Improvisations: The Prints of Romare Bearden
DJ Spooky “That Subliminal Kid”
An Acoustic Portrait
Atkins Auditorium, The Nelson–Atkins Museum of Art
4525 Oak St, Kansas City, MO 

Impressions and Improvisations: The Prints of Romare Bearden is on display through January 8, 2012. For more information, call 816-751-1ART (1278) or visit online at nelson-atkins.org. 

Top Photo: DJ Spooky at Wheaton College (Photo by Jessica F. Kuszaj)

By Topher Levin

Classical Editor and Contributor

Christopher (Topher) Levin is a composer, pianist, music theorist, and music blogger based in Kansas City, MO. His compositions have been performed at music festivals across the US and in Europe. He has spent two summers in Paris, France studying music at the Ecole Normale de Musique through the EAMA program. His trio for clarinet, piano, and percussion is published in the SCI Journal of Scores.

Topher holds degrees from the University of Missouri-Kansas City (M.M.) in music theory and (M.M.) in composition and from James Madison University in Virginia (B.M.) in composition. Primary composition teachers have included John S. Hilliard, Paul Rudy, Zhou Long, James Mobberley, Chen Yi, Claude Baker, Narcis Bonet, Michel Merlet, and João Pedro Oliveira. His piano teachers have included Patricia Brady and Karen Kushner. Topher maintains a piano studio of 22 students.

Having recently completed a Master's thesis on the beautiful complexities of Chinary Ung's trio, Spiral I, Topher turned his writing attention to the more informal blogging medium. He has taken to it quite well, sharing posts on strange and wonderful music and art found across the web with a modest but growing number of blog followers. He looks forward to writing for KCM and sharing with its readers the stories of all the amazing musicians performing in Kansas City.