Word: visual
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...richen the fabric of their music. Usually regarded as gimmicks or novelty items, these little instruments have become an essential feature of the AEC's musical language. When the group travelled to Europe, they packed literally hundreds of these odd tools of their trade. The little instruments provide memorable visual images--Jarman serenely blowing a conch shell or harmonica, Moye stamping his feet to ring the bells attached to his ankles...
Unfortunately, though marked by several strong individual performances, the visual, the dramatic side of Tommy did not fare quite as well as the music. Given the material, the director must strike a fine balance between the innovative staging needed to connect the fragmentary images produced by the song lyrics and the use of conventional techniques to give the songs dramatic power. The Currier House production falls when the director, Steve Drury, fails in that task...
Take simply the matter of visual style. His early films had a good workman's lack of clutter, and since Allen was almost as fond of visual parody as he was of the verbal kind, they showed an ability to ape the masters. Beginning with Sleeper (1973), a conscious coherence, a striving for a certain elegance came into his films, growing through Love and Death (1975), becoming lush and nicely jumbled in Annie Hall (1977), turning austere to the point of being mannered in Interiors...
Several continuing events provide an excellent excuse to spend a sunny reading period afternoon wandering around Boston (exams are weeks away...) The lobby of the John Hancock Building and the mezzanine of Boston City Hall share an exhibit called Jazz...A Visual Experience which brings together the work of eleven local artists and photographers. Jazz artists lend themselves to this sort of treatment--the music is inseparable from the men who make it--and both exhibitions are free...
...said about "jazz", but then the Art Ensemble represents jazz in its most courageous and highly distilled form. Their playing reflects rigorous discipline in a context of almost total improvisational freedom, and the Art Ensemble's physical appearance--facepaint and costumes ranging from African to hardhat--makes them a "visual experience" in themselves. Probably the most important group in contemporary music, the Art Ensemble deserves to be heard and seen. For Boston Jazz Week information call...