Eli Keszlerʼs ʻL-Carrierʼ at Eyebeam in Chelsea - NYTimes.com HOME PAGE TODAY'S PAPER VIDEO MOST POPULAR U.S. Edition Subscribe: Digital / Home Delivery teedth Help Search All NYTimes.com Music WORLD U.S. N.Y. / REGION BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY SCIENCE HEALTH SPORTS OPINION ARTS STYLE TRAVEL JOBS REAL ESTATE AUTOS ART & DESIGN BOOKS DANCE MOVIES MUSIC TELEVISION THEATER VIDEO GAMES EVENTS MUSIC REVIEW Ensemble With Piano Wires, Off the Wall and Ceiling Eli Keszler’s ‘L-Carrier’ at Eyebeam in Chelsea By STEVE SMITH Published: June 10, 2012 Whenever an artist produces something so boggling and so FACEBOOK inexplicable as to defy more than a cursory understanding at first TWITTER brush, I am reminded of the science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke’s GOOGLE+ suggestion that “any sufficiently advanced technology is E-MAIL indistinguishable from magic.” There was magic in the air on Thursday evening at the Eyebeam Art and Technology Center in SHARE Chelsea, when a new piece by Eli Keszler, “L-Carrier,” was PRINT introduced before a rapt audience. REPRINTS Enlarge This Image Mr. Keszler’s work presents several paradoxes. A percussionist with roots in punk rock and free improvisation, he fuses chaos and order in his drumming: a burble and clatter akin to what European drummers like Tony Oxley and Han Bennink invented in the late 1960s to distinguish their work from American free jazz. Mr. Keszler’s penchant for pealing, ringing metal evokes another European percussionist, Eddie Prévost of the English collective AMM. Roots notwithstanding, Mr. Keszler is an original; the way he deploys his energies is even more so. Listeners familiar with both hypercomplex modernist composition and nonidiomatic improvisation know that those methods, though radically opposed in aim, can sound similar in practice. Mr. Keszler’s music inhabits a gray area between Ruby Washington/The New York Times those poles, using rigorously conceived scores to harness Get the TimesLimited E-Mail The drummer Eli Keszler, right, and the guitarist Geoff Mullen performed a the inchoate energy of improvisation and its capacity for [email protected] new piece by Mr. Keszler at the surprise. Change E-mail Address | Privacy Policy Eyebeam Art and Technology Center in Chelsea. “L-Carrier” demonstrates another facet of Mr. Keszler’s Connect With work: the construction of large-scale, interactive Us on Twitter installation pieces, which can function alone or in tandem Follow @nytimesarts for with live performers. (“Catching Net,” a two-CD set newly MOST E-MAILED RECOMMENDED FOR YOU arts and issued on the German label Pan, includes contrasting entertainment articles in the past news. versions of a similarly conceived piece.) In essence “L- 4 month All Recommendations Arts Twitter List: Critics, Reporters Carrier” is an installation of piano wires from 3 to 70 feet and Editors long, amplified and struck with mechanical beaters 1. Summoned Back to Work, Senators Chafe triggered by input from a remote Web page hosted by at Inaction Turbulence, a Web-art initiative. 2. In Flurry of Activity, Only Muted Hope for Fiscal Deal A sortable calendar of noteworthy At Eyebeam, Mr. Keszler’s spindly lattice stretches across cultural events in the New York a gallery wall and extends to the ceiling beams, filling the region, selected by Times critics. 3. Fiscal Cutoff Would Pinch at First, Then reverberant space with the steely pangs and groans of a http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/arts/music/eli-keszlers-l-carrier-at-eyebeam-in-chelsea.html?_r=2&[12/28/12 2:22:26 PM] Eli Keszlerʼs ʻL-Carrierʼ at Eyebeam in Chelsea - NYTimes.com Go to Event Listings » Get Steadily Worse ghost ship rocking on a river’s currents. For Thursday’s opening-night event, presented by Eyebeam and 4. EDITORIAL Fiscal Endgame Turbulence in conjunction with the Issue Project Room’s Darmstadt Institute, Mr. Keszler led an octet in a live version of the work. 5. Obama to Leave Hawaiian Vacation Early to Work on Fiscal Deal Anthony Coleman, playing Farfisa organ, and Geoff Mullen, who applied metal bolts and 6. With 5 Days Left and No Clear Fiscal Path, a glass slide to a partly unstrung electric guitar, worked mostly in tandem with Mr. Senators Head Back Keszler’s busy flux. Ashley Paul, on clarinet and alto saxophone, and Reuben Son, a bassoonist, provided long, slightly funereal tones; the violinists C. Spencer Yeh and 7. OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS Closing Loopholes Isn’t Enough Catherine Lamb and the cellist Alex Waterman countered with warm sustained chords and flitting squeals. 8. OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR The Flight From French Taxes For just over an hour Mr. Keszler’s music waxed and waned, the installation clanging and groaning along with the performers. At times you’d swear that the mechanical 9. OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR beaters were assessing what the ensemble’s sounds needed: a rude jolt here, a Dancing Around the Fiscal Cliff complementary hush there. Artful, perplexing and endlessly fascinating, it could just as 10. IHT RENDEZVOUS well have been magic. Arguing About the Meaning of Work PRESENTED BY “L-Carrier” is on display through June 23 at the Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, Go to Your Recommendations » 540 West 21st Street, Chelsea, (212) 937-6580; eyebeam.org. What’s This? | Don’t Show This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: June 11, 2012 An earlier version of this review misspelled the given name of the bassoonist. He is Reuben Son, not Ruben. A version of this review appeared in print on June 13, 2012, on page C3 of the New York edition with the headline: An Ensemble Attuned to the Pangs of Piano Wires. Mummenschanz returns ALSO IN THEATER » FACEBOOK TWITTER GOOGLE+ E-MAIL SHARE "The Holiday Guys: Happy Merry Hanu-Mas!" a must-see addition to the December crush Get 50% Off The New York Times & Free All Digital Access. "Flipside" delivers 28 Patti Page hits Get Free E-mail Alerts on These Topics Music Musical Instruments Computers and the Internet Eyebeam Ads by Google what's this? 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