A very special evening with Dirty Projectors, one of the most original groups in contemporary music. With an opening set by the NYC modern-classical ensemble yMusic.
Dirty Projectors was formed in 2003 by David Longstreth, using the moniker to release wildly imaginative albums spanning guitar-based experimental song, scored composition, electronic music, hardcore, and medieval vocal polyphony. The early years of the band featured an evolving cast of musicians, eventually solidifying around Longstreth (vocals & guitar), Amber Coffman (vocals & guitar), Nat Baldwin (bass), Angel Deradoorian (vocals and keyboard) and Brian McOmber (drums). Haley Dekle (vocals) joined in 2009. 2009’s Bitte Orca was Dirty Projectors’ breakout moment, landing them on almost every Album of the Year list in the country and bringing them to five continents over two years. 2009 saw the band collaborating with David Byrne and The Roots, appearing on Late Show with David Letterman and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, as well as playing myriad club shows and international festivals. In 2010, the band collaborated with Björk on the Mount Wittenberg Orca EP, which generated over $60,000 for a National Geographic endeavor to preserve wild ocean reefs. They also presented the 2005 album The Getty Address with 20-piece chamber ensemble Alarm Will Sound at Lincoln Center in New York, the Barbican in London and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, as well as selling out New York’s 3000-cap Terminal 5. At the dawn of 2011, Longstreth began writing songs for the band’s next LP.
The songs of Swing Lo Magellan are culled from a sprawling twelve months of constant writing and recording in a weird house in Delaware County, New York (four hours northwest of the city). Longstreth, who produced and mixed, wrote seventy new songs and beats. The band — Amber Coffman (vocals & guitar), Nat Baldwin (bass), Brian McOmber (drums) & Haley Dekle (vocals) – often joined him, rehearsing the new music more or less constantly in the house’s A-frame attic. (Vocalist Angel Deradoorian is on hiatus). The twelve songs of Swing Lo Magellan were winnowed down from about forty finished demos. The finished recordings bear the impress of this informal working style: the album is a collection of moments: accidental, fortuitous, spontaneous. The performances feel warm and imperfect. Unguarded intimacy is somewhat of a new look for this band, and it turns out it’s a very good look.
Michael Johnson (drums) & Olga Bell (keyboards and vocals) joined Longstreth, Coffman, Baldwin and Dekle for the most recent year of touring.
All Ages, Doors open: 7:30pm / Show time: 8pm