Black tie and twiddle: DJ Radar goes fancy on the wheels of steel at Carnegie Hall on Sunday night for Red Bull's "artsehcro." (AP Photo/HO/Francois Portmann)
Violinist Brett Omara came off the Carnegie Hall stage exhausted. She just played the world premiere of the "Concerto for Turntable," for the scratch virtuoso DJ Radar and orchestra, but that wasn't what was slowing her down: "I only got one hour of sleep because I was in Kanye West's band on Saturday Night Live last night."
Omara, 22, was part of the cool kid creme skimmed for the project by Red Bull, of all unlikely sit-down concert sponsors. The ubiquitous nightlife brand befuddled by calling the group the "artsehcro," which sounds like some mystical herb (maybe even the one that flavors the pungent drink). It is actually just "orchestra" backward. Sigh.
Still, there seemed to be no ulterior motive for bringing together this world-class hipster orchestra other than to celebrate -- and legitimize -- the turntable as a serious instrument.
To that end, the Red Bull folks encouraged jazz composer and teacher Raul Yanez's to finish his "Concerto for Turntable," which was begun in 2001, in part to solve the question brought to him by fellow Phoenix-area musician DJ Radar of how to notate scratches.
(Hear a sample of the concerto: http://asap.ap.org/data/audio/20051004/20051004163343-7113.mp3 )
Since its late 1970s invention by Grand Wizard Theodore and Grandmaster Flash, DJ scratching has developed into a virtuoso form with more than 60 techniques (from the baby to the scribble) -- and has long since moved from the dance floor to the stage. Notation is another step toward making the street art of DJing into high art -- and the concert tried to prove the point.
Hopes rode high for the concerto. Hip hop kids did their best to lounge, with their baseball caps perched precariously high in current Dirty South style. And when beats dropped, heads nodded in time across the mostly full 2,800-member audience.
"This is the first time I've ever been here," Columbia University senior Anjalia Mehta confided.
But the beats dropped infrequently. And softly at that. Radar performed in four pieces before intermission as well as playing soloist on the concerto, more than anyone should ask of a young guy making his Hall debut. For all his hard work and quick wrists, his underwhelming PA system left the space bassless and his brilliant flashes were without humor: two bare bones necessities for success in club or battle-oriented DJ sets.
By its firework-like "surprise" ending -- with a cliched fake finish that welled up into more music after a dramatic silence -- it was clear that the concerto had, in some ways, failed to live up to, or be in, the moment. With a world class orchestra of kids raised with hip hop and an audience ready to hop the fence of high culture, there was no reason to stay bound to the conservative conventions of the form.
The good news is that Radar called the concert "only a baby step," and a stage full of musicians like Omara are working daily to close the space between the nightclub and the high halls.
Perhaps this hints at a future where both post-golden age genres could be born again through a more modern, sensitive blend of each other's unlikely sounds. Hopefully someone will sprinkle a little more artsehcro on the idea rather than spilling it all for one marketing-filled moment.
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Daphne Carr is an ethnomusicology Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University and is inadvertently always friends with viola players.
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