What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/1462578
12 WHAT'S UP! MARCH 27-APRIL 2, 2022 A Current Of Composition Brit brings long-awaited live show to Momentary MONICA HOOPER NWA Democrat-Gazette B lessed by National Public Radio's Bob Boilen and hailed by Pitchfork magazine as "one of the most innovative minds in modern British music," Anna Meredith brings her eclectic, immersive electronic sound to The Momentary at 8 p.m. April 2 for a show that was rescheduled two years ago because of covid. "Coming to Bentonville feels quite special for us," Meredith shares. In 2019, she and her band had just crossed the pond to do a tour of the U.S. and were driving to Bentonville as "the whole tour just crumbled on the way there," Meredith says. "So it's really nice to be coming back. We're really excited to finally make it." Meredith's energy is apparent as she speaks from her sunny Los Angeles hotel room ahead of the band's U.S. tour, which includes stops in San Francisco, Montreal, Chicago, New York and more. Meredith and her band — which features keyboard, tuba, cello and drums — plan to perform songs from her pop albums, "FIBS" (2019) and "Varmits" (2016), and possibly some small bits from her recent installment, "Bumps Per Minute: (18 Studies for Dodgems)," which features music made for bumper cars. Why bumper cars? Covid is partly to blame. "My studio is in a big, quite grand building for Somerset House, that has a really nice, big courtyard which normally has an ice rink in winter. When covid hit, ice skating had to get canceled because it's too close contact," she says. While speaking to one of the executives of Somerset House, they devised a plan. "It sort of just came to me that bumper cars — 'dodgems' as we call them in the UK — would be perfect: You could control the space, nobody gets too close, you can wipe it down, all that kind of stuff. And then I thought it would make a great music installation piece. "So [how it worked] was there was a sensor in each dodgem. And then the cars hit each other, and there was actually a pendulum inside each dodgem, and depending on how fast the cars hit, contact would be made, which sends a signal and triggers a new bit of music. So I wrote 18 pieces of music, one for each car." The video of the installment included Meredith, her band and their friends creating an electronic music mashup from crashing bumper carts into one another. The result is dizzying and flashy, but it looks like so much fun. There's even an online game based on the installation at annameredith. plctrmm.to/BPM. Meredith's website shares that her music "straddles the different worlds of contemporary classical, art pop, techno, large-scale installations and experimental rock." In addition to bumper cars, she's also composed sound installments around elevators and a Zamboni. She wrote the score to the Bo Burnham movie "Eighth Grade" and the Netflix show "Living With Yourself," and her music was also featured in two other films, "The Favorite" and "Dheepan." She estimates that she spent around 10 years studying classical music before she began working on installations and electronic music. "I just wanted to do something where I could have complete control. When you write orchestral pieces or classical pieces, sometimes they are only played once and not recorded, and they're never played again," she explains. "You write a piece for months and months and months, and it's gone. And that feels quite strange to me. [I] just felt like I wanted something that would be permanent and could kind of live forever, and that I would have control over." She adds that she still writes orchestral music in addition to her installments, scores and electronic music. "I think I've sort of stopped worrying too much about how things are perceived or categorized. I don't think about genre at all when I'm writing. I'm not thinking: This as a classical piece. This is a technical piece. This is a pop piece. This is instrumented piece, you know, that's not how I write. I'm just trying to think about musical material," Meredith explains. "If I bump into someone at the hairdresser and someone says, 'What's your kind of music?' and I don't want to go into it, I'll just say, 'Oh, it's electronic music with some classical instruments.'" "When I was much younger, I don't think I had quite the same skill or confidence to be so direct, sometimes, with the material. When I look back at this, what I wrote when I was a student, I sometimes tiptoed around an idea rather than grabbing it by the horns of it. Now I find it easier to run with something in whatever kind of music I'm doing," says performer Anna Meredith. (Courtesy Photo/Gem Harris) BENTONVILLE FAQ Anna Meredith WHEN — 8 p.m. April 2 WHERE — The Momen- tary in Bentonville COST — $22 INFO — themomen- tary.org/calendar/ anna-meredith-2/ FYI — All participants must proof of covid vaccination or a negative covid test. At-home tests will not be accepted.