http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/18/ar...=1&oref=slogin
The Bang on a Can All-Stars — a sextet of electric guitar, cello, keyboards, bass, clarinet and percussion — riffled through compositional strategies built on patterns and propulsion.
Michael Gordon’s “I Buried Paul,” conducted by David Cossin as he stood at his snare drum, placed brief, dissonant curlicues in staggered layers, regularly shaking them like the shards of color in a kaleidoscope. Louis Andriessen’s “Workers Union” had the members playing in rhythmic unison on dissonant pitches: short lines stopping and starting, delving into various registers, all with a choppy industrial drive.
“Stroking Piece No. 1,” by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, transferred an evolving Sonic Youth drone to sextet, with Mark Stewart’s guitar upfront. The set’s centerpiece was four transcriptions of Conlon Nancarrow’s studies for player piano, originally performed by punched piano rolls. The transcriptions held to the complex, staggered rhythms and fugal passages of the originals, but also discovered jaunty, bluesy melodies amid the dizzying counterpoint.