Joanna Newsom and Brooklyn Philharmonic at BAM

Friday evening (2/01), had the opportunity to see Joanna Newsom and her "Ys Street Band" collaborate with the Brooklyn Philharmonic (Michael Christie, Music Director) at the magnificent Opera House at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. They played the compositions from her excellent 2006 album Ys from top to bottom, broke, and then she and her band came back to play a handful of older and brand new songs.

The first half brought out what is great about the songs, but it was not the transporting experience listening to the album can be. It seemed more exercised, and I never found myself swept away by her voice, her harp, or the incredibly lush arrangements. Thats not to say that it wasn't beautiful. I found myself thinking a lot about the songs, and came away with a much deeper appreciation for her as a songwriter. The songs are so instinctual, and will fly off in all sorts of directions, looping back over themselves and in and out, to great heights and depths. Sometimes she will stick in some rhythm for so long, vocally, that I start to lose sense of the lyrics. This may be her intent, though, for those moments are usually stream-of-consciousness images that seem to lose themselves in the rhythm. And when she comes out on the other side of them, I am completely spun around. Her performance here seemed more to that bent--a less conscious rendering of the emotional texture of the compositions. The string arrangements however, seemed more conscious and calculated. They seemed to follow her voice around, and cascade and collapse about it, like they were trying to make sense, at least emotionally, of what she was saying. I don't imagine thats an easy thing to do--her words carry a lot of weight. The arrangements, masterfully done by Van Dyke Parks for Ys and adapted and made playable for this orchestral tour by band member Ryan Fransesconi, seemed a separate entity from Joanna and her harp, which is such an interesting team to watch. The most moving piece of the evening came in "Sawdust & Diamonds," my least favorite song on the album, which is simply harp and voice.

In contrast, the second half was much more enjoyable. The songs seemed freer and more playful. They are so by composition's standards, but they also breathed way more. And she became the center of attention, a position, I get the feeling, though she is incomparably modest, she secretly enjoys. Knees bouncing and smiling brightly, she dug into the songs much more. There was no losing of the image to the rhythm like in the first half, she was present on every word. Her voice sometimes gets lost in the moment, in the side of her mouth, or baring down on her throat--probably an effect of the difficulty of playing the harp and singing simultaneously (I can't imagine). On the first new song she played of the evening, it was more open, more penetrating than I've ever heard it. And her fingers, when they gesture after plucking the harp's strings, seem to be somehow attached to them.

The evening took on a whole new meaning for me after a moment that came about half-way through the second set. I had been feeling (without noticing it) particularly happy to be in America after the song "Inflammatory Writ." It sounded to me so quintessentially American, harkening back to folk and western traditional song, by a visionary composer not yet at the peak of her artistic career. And I appreciated where I was, in a gorgeous Opera House run by one of the finest arts institutions in the world. And then within a few songs the band paused to mention Barack Obama and the Opera House erupted. Then her percussionist, Neal Morgan, spoke about how he canvased for Obama, and he brought up Hawaiian Congressman Abercrombie's endorsement of Obama as the first "citizen of the world" to run for president. Again, applause.

It was delightful and humbling and for some reason I started to love the American-ness of everything--Ryan F's banjo, Maggie Gyllenhaal sitting a few rows over, Joanna's boney bouncing knees, "Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie." Can't remember feeling like that before.

mark.