Recently Reviewed

Los Angeles Philharmonic/ Grizzly Bear

 (Walt Disney Concert Hall; 2,265 seats; $35 top)

By STEVEN MIRKIN

Presented by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Society. Reviewed March 1, 2008.
 
Band: Ed Droste, Daniel Rossen, Chris Taylor, Chris Bear. Philharmonic conducted by Joana Carneiro.
 

The recent revival of rock bands playing with symphony orchestras has not exactly proven auspicious. Sure, it's good to see bands stretch themselves, but for the most part, the result has been some muddled music that displays neither band nor orchestra at its best. The L.A. Phil and the quirkily ambitious Brooklyn quartet Grizzly Bear took a different tack for their joint appearance at Disney Hall Saturday night -- they played separate sets. Instead of two entities shouting at each other trying to be heard, there was a conversation, with ideas and sounds echoing between the orchestra and band. It was a rousing success.

It worked largely because Grizzly Bear is the perfect band for this kind of experiment. They're not tethered to traditional ideas of how a rock band sounds, using a wide palette of sounds in painterly, architectural manner. On 2006's "Yellow House" and last year's "Friend" EP -- both released on the experimental British label Warp -- they built their spacious, pastoral songs around spidery, plucked guitars; impressionistic drums; odd blends of instruments including autoharp, flute and accordion; and vocals that straddle Brian Wilson and Thomas Tallis. Their songs generally eschew the verse-chorus-verse structure, instead adding and subtracting layers of sound, shifting textures and moods in a way that's organic and sensual.

Conducted with a firm hand by Joana Carneiro, the three pieces in the Philharmonic's 45-minute program -- Berio's transcription of Luigi Boccherini's "Ritirata Notturna di Madrid," Britten's Four Sea Interludes from his opera "Peter Grimes" and Stravinsky's "Firebird" -- all offered congruences to Grizzly Bear's music. Each creates its own sonic world, moving from the urban -- the surging and receding hurly-burly of the Boccherini -- to nature -- the violent tidal rhythms and calm swells of Britten -- and on to the phantasmagorical soulfulness and energy of Stravinsky.

"Firebird" is what impressed the young aud, most of whom were hearing their first orchestral perf. Although the nearly 100-year -old piece has become part of our modern musical grammar, it still sounds fresh and radical, so much so that one fan responded as if he'd just heard a hot guitar solo, letting fly an impulsive "Yeaaah!" at the end of the "Infernal Dance" section.

Grizzly Bear followed with a 90-minute set of impressionistic music; the way the band layers colors and densities connected it to what was heard earlier. Opening with the gently shuffling "Easier," the band sounded both more delicate and spacious than on record. Each element locked in and out of phase with the others, and the songs flowed into each other.

The sounds moved from the choral grace of "Alligator" to the hushed melancholy of "Lullaby," growing in intensity, until the chunky electric arrangement of "Little Brother" brought the first half of the show to a climax. The rest of the set was marked by the songs' hallucinatory sounds --from the disoriented waltz ("I can't find the cello, can't find the French horn") of "Marla," based on a song by singer Ed Droste's great-aunt, and the creepy do-wop of "Knife," where the angelic call and response harmonies belie the lyrics' violent perversity, to "Colorado's" tumbleweed aridness.

It would have been nice to have either the band or Carneiro comment or explain why each piece was chosen, engage in a dialogue instead of two monologues, but along with 2006's Minimalist Jukebox and the Concrete Frequencies series early this year, both the Philharmonic and Grizzly Bear deserve praise for taking risks and reaching across genres and generations. A show as well conceived and executed as this one can only help build a new audience for serious music.