"Hey, Fred!" 10/09-10/15/2024
Goings On in Columbus, OH: Lynn Goldsmith | Blackheart Fest | Carpe Diem String Quartet: Mark Lomax Premiere | Illogic Celebrates 20th Anniversary of Celestial Clockwork | Available Light's Haunts
As promised, this last week diving into my favorite season in Columbus was a beautiful reminder of the intersecting scenes in this town, the beauty of creativity, and the love of community.
Steve Dawson and Diane Christiansen brought pure, sublime beauty to the intimate basement confines of Hogan House, with favorite songs of mine off the last couple of Dawson records like “Time to Let Some Light In,” “Running Out of Time,” and harder narratives like “Leadville” and “Sooner than Expected,” standing easily alongside classics like Buck Owens’ “Together Again” and Neil Young’s “Long May You Run,” astonishing harmonies without a vocal mic that reminded me how special this space and this series is.
That sense of the vintage informing the new - of history not as radiating anxiety but building blocks treated with a lightness and a sense of joy vibrated through one of my favorite piano players, Kris Davis, leading a crushing trio of Robert Hurst and Johnathan Blake, and a blistering rock show from Davila 666 with new favorite band Ladrones and long-running Columbus favorites The Ferals at Rumba.
There was also a sense of digging into the past and finding what in it is still alive, what can inspire us to go further, and what’s amazing about doing that digging together, finding community there. I got that intense charge hearing three curators talk about the shared Ming Smith exhibits at the Columbus Museum of Art, a beautiful set of Thelonious Monk tunes led by Paul Strawser in honor of Hasan Abdur-Razzaq, Gary Hustwit’s astonishing Brian Eno documentary in a packed house at the Wexner Center where I’ve seen more movies that changed the way I think about film than anywhere; and the intergenerational play through standards at Derek DiCenzo’s perfect Monday residency at Dick’s Den. So much beauty everywhere you look, especially now, because I’m prone to love the fall, but probably at all times.
Visual Art
10/10/2024
An Evening With Lynn Goldsmith
Lincoln Theatre, 769 E Long St
October 10: 7:30 pm
Tickets starting at $27.62 at CAPA Site
Photographer Lynn Goldsmith’s images set the tone for decades of what many of us think of as the rock and roll myth, in large part because the access and trust she built let her capture moments that didn’t feel forced or staged, as the beautifully fragile photo of Bob Marley this terrific Sia Michel article in the New York Times describes.
Her work is housed in collections from MoMA to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; she was at the center - and at a crucial observing distance - of key moments in this music so many of us love, and by extension, at key moments in contemporary history. This rare appearance at the Lincoln promises some stories you won’t hear anywhere else and a book signing focusing on her two most recent books covering different facets of the early ‘80s, Music in the ‘80s and Patti Smith: Before - Easter - After.
Music
10/11/2024
Blackheart Fest: A Benefit for Unsanctioned Harm Reduction in Central Ohio
October 11 and 12:
Cafe Bourbon Street, 2216 Summit St
Doors 6 pm each night, $10 at the door
October 13:
Avalon Park, 633 N Nelson Rd
Noon to 3 pm, free
Joey Moore - under the nom de rock Joey Blackheart - cast an immediately identifiable shadow over his corners of the Columbus rock scene, fronting bands like The Gallows and providing thunderous guitar in my pick for the best power-pop band to ever come out of this town The Girls! When he died in 2014, it felt like a lot of the air was let out of the scene. Andy Downing’s contemporaneous article for Columbus Alive is still the gold standard for discussion, and I’ve been told there will be a piece about this for his outlet, Matter News; keep an eye out for that.
Not long after Joey passed, his friends aligned to throw Blackheart Fest at Cafe Bourbon Street and The Summit - with a smaller comedown gig at Used Kids on Saturday afternoon - and it was one of the most beautiful, cathartic nights I’ve had out in the world. I still talk about the Hexers, at the height of their powers, doing a one-time-only cover of The Dictators’ “Stay With Me” and every molecule in my body on the verge of vibrating into space.
Longtime guiding light of the scene, Kevin Failure, whose band Pink Reason also provided one of the most devastating sets at the original Blackheart Fest, has rallied an astonishing set of bands to raise funds for unsanctioned harm reduction in central Ohio, a cause Blackheart championed, over two nights at Bourbon Street and an afternoon at the East Side Free Store in Avalon Park. Highlights for me include Didi, who put out their best-yet record this year; Married FM, who I’ve raved about here and more than delivered live when I finally caught them opening for the New Bomb Turks; synth maestro Jacoti Sommes; and a rare solo show from Cheater Slicks’ engine Dana Hatch. But I’m probably more excited about all these bands I haven’t or have barely heard of. A great cause, in the spirit of someone I still miss, and guided by one of the people who booked more great stuff I didn’t know than anyone in my almost 30 years of going to shows here in town.
Carpe Diem String Quartet: Ubuntu
October 12: First Community South, 1320 Cambridge Blvd, 4 pm
October 13: First Unitarian Universalist Church, 93 W Weisheimer Rd, 2 pm
$35 tickets available at the CDSQ site
Central Ohio’s Carpe Diem String Quartet has racked up more-than-deserved praise from the highest corners: the Washington Post’s Robert Battey said, “When it came time to deliver the most compositionally and emotionally complex music ever written, their imagination and instrumental skill took them to a different level entirely;” Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle selected a piece of theirs for the New York Times’ 5 Minutes That Will Make You Love String Quartets.
They kick off a 2024-25 season that will also bring them back to Carnegie Hall with a fascinating program, Ubuntu, that highlights the thing that first drew me to their work: an appetite for new work, including a commissioning program, that stands at the same exquisite level as the works we all love from the canon.
Ubuntu is named after the Bantu philosophy of humanity to others and the title of the World Premiere piece by one of Columbus’s greatest composers, Dr. Mark Lomax, II, which leads off this program. It’s a fascinating concept, one Lomax described in the first five minutes of our long conversation about his epic The 400 (formerly hosted on Jazzcolumbus, lost to the world in a format change) and one that’s stuck with me for years. My jaw was in my lap seeing his Underground Railroad piece performed by Ucelli and the Worthington Chamber Orchestra in February. I’m overjoyed to see another brand new piece in the same year.
The rest of the program also promises wonder and delight. Sarah Gibson, who passed far too young this year, had an astonishing melodic and harmonic sense and a way of sculpting whole worlds even in shorter pieces; I first saw her work at a MATA Festival in New York and immediately had to hear more. Her beautiful work is represented by the 2020 piece I do not want horses or diamonds accompanied by Michelle Schumann on piano. It’s one I haven’t heard live, and I'm hyped.
The program pairs these towering 21st-century composers with two 20th-century Russians who set the bar. Anton Arensky’s Piano Quintet in D Major, Op. 51 is a stunning piece of melancholic repetition, and Sergei Prokofiev’s String Quartet No. 2 in F Major, Op. 92 is a high watermark for translating folk themes into the quartet form. Two astonishing afternoons of gripping music.
Illogic with The Smokin’ Section, 20th Anniversary of Celestial Clockwork
Natalie’s Grandview, 945 King Ave
October 12: 8:30 pm show
Tickets Starting at $18.75 available at the Natalie’s site
Illogic was the first Columbus rapper I was a huge fan of - the whole Weightless Records group with Blueprint, Manifest, Inkwel - and that opened me to DJ PRZM, Camu Tao, and a scene happening a few blocks from the bands I immediately gravitated to as a teenager. I remember dragging several friends who didn’t dislike hip-hop but also wouldn’t have sought it out to the OSU event Springfest (2001? 2002?) and what had them cheering was a combined Illogic/RJD2 set.
The record that set the bar for me for local hip-hop for many years was 2004’s Celestial Clockwork, produced by Blueprint. Hearing there would be an anniversary show for this landmark Columbus record got me instantly excited. The promise of Illogic working with the band Smokin’ Section, led by bassist Levi Brown, added to that excitement. Knowing Illogic’s work convinces me this will be a celebration, not just a nostalgia trip.
Theater
10/13/2024
Available Light: AVLT Haunts!
Riffe Center Studio One Theater, 77 S High St
October 13: 4 pm
$50 Tickets available at the AVLT Site
I haven’t made it any kind of secret that Available Light is the company that got me interested in local theater again (even in my period of not checking, I still kept up on what touring stuff the Wexner brought or would catch things in Chicago or New York on my annual trips) with a performance of Sheila Callaghan’s Dead City in 2008.
By the next season, I had a membership - when I was not making the kind of money that lets me be a member of several institutions annually like I’m lucky to do now - and I got a membership every year until Columbus Underground hired me to write for them (with my first review, appropriately, being AVLT’s production of Qui Nguyen’s She Kills Monsters).
Part of that sustained interest is, obviously, their taste in plays (under original Artistic Director Matt Slaybaugh and the current leadership of Eleni Papaleonardos): they’ve made my Best Of List (since I’ve been keeping track) in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023, and have three things in strong contention for this year. But the reason I’m specifically recommending this event is their previous run of fundraiser/galas, Feed Your Soul, were easily the most fun I’ve ever had at that kind of event in my life.
I have to review something else the afternoon of this - but the promised stories told to the highest bidder, an early look at founding director Matt Slaybaugh’s intriguing Ready for the Quest book, and spending time with one of the organizations that sets the bar for active, warm engagement with the community and the world, always gets my highest recommendation.