The Justice

A video of, like, Winamp visualizations followed. Naturally, the lights in the auditorium were turned all the way off, except the lights over the steps on either side of the auditorium. The issue with the darkness is, once the video ended, a three-part electronic work entitled "Possible Spaces" by Ciamaga himself began with no warning. At first I thought the video had broken and the music had continued on without it; after the second of Ciamaga's movements, I realized that the dark auditorium with nothing projected on the screen was an intentional setting for "Possible Spaces." Perhaps it's convention to play electronic music in pitch dark when there aren't any musicians to look at anyway. Regardless, the focal point that the video gave the audience previously was welcome, if only to give us somewhere to put our eyes. The long, rectangular floor lights along the sides of the auditorium along with the metallic-sounding scrapes and sparkles of "Possible Spaces" whizzing past our ears evoked not only that seminal Disney World ride but that seminal videogame, StarFox. I expected each movement to end with "MISSION: COMPLETE" and some cartoonish statements like "That was a close one, Fox!" Instead, the movements were met with tenuous applause and more movements.

After the intermission, the audience filed back into the auditorium only to watch composer Christian Gentry Ph.D. '13 and Hartford-based guitarist Matt Sargent and one of the audio engineers debug the connections between laptop and mixing board for what seemed like ten or fifteen minutes. Said one concertgoer, "They've got five more minutes and I'm walking home. This is unprofessional." Luckily, Gentry's performance, "Dixie Highway," was rather entertaining, if a little long. Gentry read José R. Ballesteros' poem "Dixie Highway" along with electronic samples, jazzy piano chords and Sargent's guitar strains. Gentry's somewhat David Byrne-ian delivery was a little hilarious but at the same time very welcome in a more serious respect. Lines like "When we pull up at the house/it occurs to me/that I never saw any other person/outside of the car" and "knowing that as long as we/don't step out of the car/the whole world is ours" come straight out of the much-parodied "futuristic" aesthetic of the 1980s (think Gary Numan's "Cars"), but I applaud the somewhat concrete meaning proffered by the song. In the program notes, Gentry says that Ballesteros was inspired to write "Dixie Highway" after an afternoon of driving around southern Florida, which Ballesteros sees as "representing all that is beautiful and gut-wrenching about America." After an hour and a half of mostly un-visual, un-human works, this jazzy vocal work was quite refreshing in that it had more to say than "this is what electrons sound like, in my opinion."

Continued...

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