Some People fly by in a Helicopter was a concert held on October 9th at 412 N Thayer featuring The Suburban Piano Quartet.
Suburban Piano Quartet Facebook
The Suburban Piano Quartet is a contemporary classical ensemble made of several students from the School of Music: composers, Clay Gonzalez, Nadine Miller, Corey Smith, and oboist Perry Maddox. The concert technically started at 10 pm, but throughout the whole day various members of the Suburban Piano Quartet stood outside the Moore Music School building reciting records about the weather during October in the 1800’s. After each daily entry was read, a handbell was rung. This performance piece continued right up to the beginning of the concert.
I got to the concert a few minutes before 10 pm and the place was already packed. The SPQ had set up in the living room with a keyboard and drum placed on the stage side of the room while the audience sat on the floor in front of the instruments or on the couch against the back wall. It was a super casual arrangement, and the audience was told that clapping was okay at any time, a separation from the normal, rigid, classical atmosphere.
The night was made up of several different movements featuring a lot of improvisation, experimental instrumentation and performance setup. There were only two pieces where the performers actually played their principal instruments, the second and the last. During the second piece, one performer played an electronic drone via the keyboard while the others retreated to different rooms throughout the house and played independent melodies on their principle instruments from their room, creating a surround sound, meditative experience. The last movement was the most in-the-box movement with solo oboe, drones and drums. The two most interesting movements were the third and fourth. In the third, the group stood in a line and blew bubbles into glasses of water while humming. It was an interesting effect! In the fourth, Corey recited ambiguous motivational statements while Perry and Clay made kazoo noises to supplement the silly falsity of these commonly found BS lines.
All in all, the concert was a really enjoyable social experience, and a great way to hear and be inspired by an extreme variety of sounds and colors. The best part was that there wasn’t any piano played the whole evening. If you like surprises and adventurous musical performances, be sure to catch their next concert!
