City Life
New Municipal Art
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TACOMAWEEKLY.com
FRIDAY, JANUARY 18, 2013
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SECTION B, PAGE 1
PHOTO BY NADYA LEV
STRINGS AND THINGS. Zoe Keating & Portland Cello Project play the Rialto Theater Jan. 25 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets run from $19 to $39. Call (253) 591-5894 or visit www.broadwaycenter.org for more information. By Ernest A. Jasmin ejasmin@tacomaweekly.com
Z
oe Keating is a one-woman orchestra. She is a classically trained cellist who crossed into the indie-pop world as a member of Rasputina and a session musician for the likes of DJ Shadow and French rock band Dionysos. Along the way, she developed the experimental, one-woman show she will put on display in Tacoma. Armed with her cello, Ariez, a few pedals and a laptop loaded with sampling software, she will build lush, improvised string arrangements that will resonate through the Rialto Theater on Jan. 25. Recently, Tacoma Weekly caught up with the Sonoma County, Calif. resident to learn more about what to expect when she and Portland Cello Project come to town. TW: You actually started playing the cello at 8 years old. What are your earliest musical memories? Keating: Well, it’s funny because I don’t have any memory of wanting to play the cello. It was one of those things where I think I was tall, and it was that time when they dole out the instruments in school. I was the tallest. My first memory was a really tiny school in northern England, and I had my lessons in the storage closet. I remember being surrounded by stacks of paper and pencils … with the door cracked open for light. (She laughs.) TW: So your life path may have been
set because you were tall at age 8. programmers. One of them was a softKeating: Yeah, quite possibly. I could ware programmer for a company called have been playing viola or something if I Cycling 74. He was making some looping was smaller. But I was pretty tall, and I’m software for them, and we were always still pretty tall. trying things out. TW: I have read that stage fright We would have these parties where changed your career path. he would have the latest build of his softKeating: When I was ware, and I would hook my about 16 – so it was my cello up to it and he would last year of high school – sample me, and we’d sort of I remember I was struck do it for a horizontal audiby terror. That’s the time ence. So that’s when I first you have to audition everygot the idea, ‘Hey, people where. It’s like I was floating might actually want to listen through life with this incredto this stuff.’ And I develible sense of doom and dread oped it right there. every day because there was TW: What appeals to always some new audition you about playing this way? around the corner. Keating: There would be So I just decided not to so many battles when I was pursue music as a career, playing with other groups and I went off to Sarah Lawthat I wished the cello could rence College. It was there be louder. Or I’d go into that I started improvising the studio with some band and playing jazz, playing and record some elaborate rock ‘n roll with my friends’ string arrangement, and bands. ... I found when I was then it would get buried in -Zoe Keating doing any kind of music that the mix. So to actually crewasn’t classical, anything ate my own cello orchestra else; I had no fear at all. to play in is the best, most TW: Take me to the cathartic experience I could epiphany that led to what think of. you are doing now. TW: What is your setup like? Keating: I went off to San Francisco Keating: Right now I’m using Ableton and fell into the dot-com boom. And like Live and something called SooperLooper so many liberal arts grads, I wound up and something called MidiPipe, which working on computers somehow. together work pretty well. It’s always the I was living in a warehouse … with balance between having the right software some other electronic musicians and and latency.
The computer (is) really just a pencil. I don’t think of it as a musical instrument. It’s just a tool that allows me to create music, and I want the audience to kind of get lost in the organic feeling of the cello. TW: There is an interesting quote of yours maybe you can expand on. “Everything I do is based on the limits of technology. I’m dealing with the repercussions of what it means to be able to do almost anything.” Keating: When I first started out with this idea of looping, it was very linear and very specific. I had one little pedal that could do one thing; it could record a phrase then it could play it back. Now, it’s like a piece can have any structure I want. Traditional looping music has one long, kind of pyramidshaped structure to it, and now I can have things be much more complicated and compositional. What makes it harder is there are less limits, so therefore choices you make are creative ones rather than technical ones. The canvas is much more blank than it used to be, and larger. So I find that challenging. TW: That can be overwhelming, I guess. Keating: Yeah, I think people in other creative fields talk about this, too. Sometimes when you have some kind of artificial constraint it can really help free up your creative process so you don’t doubt yourself. There’s this whole array of things that I can do. So I think by limiting myself ... I can make myself be more creative.
up the winter doldrums. In this hilarious tribute to musical theater, one story becomes five delightful musicals, each written in the distinctive style of a different master of the form. June is an ingénue who can’t pay the rent and is threatened by her evil landlord. Will the handsome leading man come to the rescue? In the hands of different musical theater composers, the end result may be quite different than you expect! Opens Jan. 18. Visit www.tmp.org.
African-Americans were not allowed to buy or rent homes in Tacoma? Come to “Moving King’s Dream Forward in Tacoma: A Community Conversation” to learn about these and other barriers for African-Americans and other people of color in the Tacoma area. Hear from former Tacoma mayor and civil rights activist Harold Moss and other leaders of Tacoma’s Black Collective regarding past efforts to ensure equality. Learn about current issues affecting African-Americans and other racial minority groups in Tacoma and Pierce County. Jan. 22, 5-6:30 p.m. in Philip Hall at University of WashingtonTacoma.
“It’s funny because I don’t have any memory of wanting to play the cello.”
THE THINGS WE LIKE ONE ‘GET YOUR LAUGH ON’ For two years NWCZ Radio has championed the cause of the Northwest’s independent rockers. Now the online station, which you can hear at NWCZRadio.com, is branching out into comedy with its Rockin’ Comedy Extravaganza, a listener party that will kick off at 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 18, at Backstage Bar & Grill, 6409 Sixth Ave., Tacoma. Station founder Darrell Fortune will host while Travis Simmons, Greg Baldonado, Jeremey Whitman and Eric “Puddin’” Lortentzen provide the laughs. Local rockers CFA and Hookerfist will make sure it stays loud. Tickets are $9, and you can find them at www.brownpapertickets.com.
TWO ‘THE MUSICAL OF MUSICALS’ Exceedingly clever and extremely funny, “The Musical of Musicals” has charmed theatergoers across three continents. Tacoma Musical Playhouse brings this brilliant parody of the American musical to the South Sound just in time to brighten
THREE CHILDREN’S ‘SOUND OF MUSIC’ The Community Music Department at the University of Puget Sound presents a Children’s Music Theater Performance with song selections from “The Sound of Music” and lots of dancing and acting. Directed by Elizabeth Gettel and choreographed by Stacey Johnson, admission is
free. Performances are at 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Jan. 31 in Schneebeck Concert Hall on the UPS campus.
FOUR DRAW YOUR DREAM B2 Gallery (722 St. Helens Ave.) is celebrating Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On Jan. 18 from 6 p.m. to midnight, and Jan. 19 from noon to 2 p.m, the gallery will hold an open art studio/drawing party where you can sketch your artist interpretation of the themes “Dr. King’s Dream” and “Your Future or Subliminal Dream.” Afterwards, there will be a Mini Sketch Exhibition to hang in the windows of the gallery on MLK Day.
FIVE COMMUNITY CONVERSATION Did you know there was a race riot in Tacoma in 1969? Did you know that