True Eclecticism with Wild Up

ONE of the oddest and most beautiful concerts I've been to this year took place at the Hammer Museum a few weeks ago.

Here's a bit of what was on offer as the museum and the musician's collective wild Up (they don't cap the "w") came together:

The fruit of this union was a July concert that began with a conductor in a cowboy hat, a menacing toreador, the sound of tumbleweed being rolled through the museum's courtyard, and the twangy strains of Ennio Morricone's music for Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns.

By the end of the afternoon, the group had launched ping-pong balls into the air in a tribute to minimalist composer LaMonte Young, and offered a meditative, early-music version of Katy Perry's "California Gurls," accompanied, as it happened, by helicopter in a particularly delicate passage. This was not the only place where the city seemed to be conflicting with – or filling out – the group's music: What police sirens smashed through a song by indie-rock heroes Magnetic Fields, and what sounded like a fire truck roared through the climax of a gnarly early Schoenberg piece.

HERE is my story on the group, which has a concert at Schoenberg Hall this Saturday and a lot of stuff, at the Hammer and elsewhere, through December. I speak to Hammer curator Elizabeth Cline and the group's conductor, Christopher Rountree.

Very much looking forward from more from these guys...