Pangloni

The Italian composer Pangloni is a bit of an acquired taste---considered by many to be mentally unhinged. This reputation stems from the fact that he once created an entire symphony based on shattering, mutilating, or otherwise destroying a series of small glass objects in sequence. Several musicians refuse to perform these acts for fear of severely cutting themselves in the process. The public finds his radical concepts intriguing but often fail to show up for their performances. The New York Times at least bothers to review the piece for their Sunday supplement, though the comments made to describe the event are hardly encouraging nor particularly favorable.

Even more salacious and unpopular was Pangloni's series of piano etudes, each requiring a performer to file and hack away at the heavy wire of the instrument, producing an abrasive, annoying sound that sounds not unlike fingers on a chalk board. As theoretical constructs, the conductor's ideas are fascinating. As effective performances, however, they are utterly disastrous. Pagloni will always remain a curiosity, but will toil in obscurity for the remainder of his days.

The Hip Cats

Beat poetry punctuated with bongos and a stand-up double bass reached its apex in the late 1950's and though the form never completely went away, it is found in much diminished quantity these days. Still, from time to time some brave souls will try to breathe some life into the tired old genre. The Hip Cats, as they chose to name themselves, are three socially conscious, politically active college students who simultaneously recite free-form poetry of their own composition to a jazzy tempo. That's the goal, at least.

The group/performing troupe tip their hat to their beatniks ancestors by appearing on stage decked out in berets and clad from head to toe in black. It must be noted, however, that beat poetry lives or dies on a clever combination of rhyme scheme, rhythm, and syncopation. The Hip Cats can successfully manage none of these components in tandem. Instead, they engage in lengthy political rants against almost every imaginable subject, which stretch on for minutes at a time and do nothing to hold the attention of the audience. The situation is made even worse because all three performance launch into similarly expansive militant diatribes at the same time, changing what would have been a tedious performance into an incoherent and incomprehensible one.

Sea Shaman

Conceptual performance art is, by its very nature, a bit bizarre. Those who practice it demand unique, distinct, and frequently weird sounds to compliment the equally strange goings on that occur on stage. The emphasis is not on competence or even on talent, instead the desired backing music should be obnoxious, dissonant, and grating. There is no shortage of so-called musicians eager to fill this peculiar need.

Sea Shaman certainly is up to the challenge. A five minute section in which the actors are writhing about on the floor as though inflicted with a kind of extreme motion sickness is punctuated by the sound produced when jingling car keys are scraped across cello strings. Another lengthy section of the performance which requires the cast to cluck like a chicken in sequence is backed by the amplified sound of a pair of scissors cutting through cheap canvass. The jarringly unnerving result of this effect in tandem with what's happening on stage could not be any more incongruous.