[Summit]

https://montopolismusic.com

I just found out about this concert/ multi-media art show that will be at the Modern in Fort Worth on 2/24.  It looks like they've played recently in Austin at the Bob Bullock museum and will be in Houston in April.  I bought tickets just based on the description and the musicians involved (members of Okkerville River, Polyphonic spree and Austin Symphony).

If anyone has seen a concert--please let us know what you thought.  I look forward to being transported to the bend, if only for an evening. 

[Flash]

Hmm... interesting 

[House Made of Dawn]

Well, I love Polyphonic Spree. I live right around the corner from the founders of the group and I've known them for years. Their kids went to school with my kids. I can definitely see how members of that group would gravitate to this kind of project. I'll have to drive over to Ft. Worth and check this out.

[PacingTheCage]

Went to the one in Austin last Friday evening.

The music was chamber music, which I thought was going to be set to a beautiful and expertly executed slide show, shot at the right time of day displaying the magnificence of the park. It wasn’t. The music WAS GREAT, but it stopped there.

The photographer over used his limited quiver of techniques in my opinion. He used a Go-Pro for the motion pictures, and then sped them up. I don’t know what sort of camera he used for the stills. Neither the movies nor the stills were sharply focused, and there was no blending of one image into the next and some images appeared more than once.

The ‘speed up’ technique was used over and over. Initially, there was a long highway sequence of the trip to the park, most of which was highway stripes, but included the occasional image of something recognizable. It appears that the entire sequence was shot on U.S. 290W up to the edge of Fredericksburg, but no further. Unclear how they made it the rest of the way to the park, but they photographed every stripe for the first 150 miles.

Once at the park, all days were either overcast or the lighting was flat at the time it was photographed. The rocks had no highlight and no shadow detail.

Photographically, all were washed out. He stayed pretty much on the main roads (more shots of highway stripes), and the places he shot were in the sequence that he came to them, particularly on Ross Maxwell. He did include Old Maverick Road (highway shots without the stripes), but he did not tell a cohesive story with the photos.

I appeared he had a week off from work and went to the park to do his part of the presentation, but the weather was, at best, only fair. But one day the sun did shine. I would not have put them out there for the audience that attended.

I would guess that close to 100% of the people there were multi-year/multi-trip experienced, which could not have helped the photographer. My wife and I were surprised – we were expecting more. Perhaps unfairly.
 
Oh, and one more thing… Toward the end, it became obvious that the chamber group wrote about 15 minutes more music than there were BB photos, so the photographer filled the time void with astronomy photos, a few of which were shot in the park, but the bulk were shot by the Hubble Space Telescope. I wasn’t expecting this (the photos had nothing to do with the park) but I was thinking that I misjudged the guy. Initially, I thought, “These astro-photos are stupendous!’ So I just enjoyed space photography until, low and behold, I realized that there was no way these shots could have been made on Earth.

There were probably 30 extremely sharp deep space images of very, very dim objects, most of which are just barely visible by the best scopes on the planet. What was that all about??? It was like the end sequence on 2001, A Space Odyssey, when the astronaut descends onto the surface of Jupiter. It’s a light show!
 


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[rocketman]

Perhaps there is a way to supplement/supplant their presentation with BBC member photos? Like take all the prior calendar shots and create a massive slideshow for them to use - maybe at a cost, maybe not depending on the photo copyrights? Could be an interesting partnership. Just thinking out loud.

[House Made of Dawn]

Perhaps there is a way to supplement/supplant their presentation with BBC member photos? Like take all the prior calendar shots and create a massive slideshow for them to use - maybe at a cost, maybe not depending on the photo copyrights? Could be an interesting partnership. Just thinking out loud.

+1 !!!!!!!!!

Nothing shows off Big Bend better than the photos of BigBendChat members (present author excluded ).

And thanks for the excellent, thoughtful review, PTC. At least I now know what I’m getting into...

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[Summit]

Pacing the Cage: very solid critique of the photography.  I think some of the narrative pieces could have been better too.  I agree with you that the music was superb.  I really enjoyed the variety of music that they produced. 

Part of the fun was being in a room filled with lovers of Big Bend.  One narration had to do with a marriage proposal; the narrator said, "we hiked up to the Window..." and someone behind me said out loud what I was thinking "DOWN to the window".   

[wotantx]

Part of the fun was being in a room filled with lovers of Big Bend.  One narration had to do with a marriage proposal; the narrator said, "we hiked up to the Window..." and someone behind me said out loud what I was thinking "DOWN to the window".

Hey, you can hike up from the desert floor.

[Summit]

Part of the fun was being in a room filled with lovers of Big Bend.  One narration had to do with a marriage proposal; the narrator said, "we hiked up to the Window..." and someone behind me said out loud what I was thinking "DOWN to the window".

Hey, you can hike up from the desert floor.

Doubtful that this is what happened in this case.  The narrator did not sound like the type.  In fact, that was one of the gnawing critiques I had overall of the narratives: they didn't seem to come from folks who really know Big Bend well, but rather from folks who have been there once or twice.  For a musical and visual and narrative celebration of the "Legend of Big Bend" it could have been stronger. 

And yet, we still really enjoyed it, especially the music. 

[wotantx]

Part of the fun was being in a room filled with lovers of Big Bend.  One narration had to do with a marriage proposal; the narrator said, "we hiked up to the Window..." and someone behind me said out loud what I was thinking "DOWN to the window".

Hey, you can hike up from the desert floor.

Doubtful that this is what happened in this case.  The narrator did not sound like the type. 

I guess I should have added "I'm sure they didn't, though," after all.

[Summit]

Failed to mention the highlight of the night!  I got to meet HMOD, as we met for coffee before the show.  I'm happy to report that he is as kind, eloquent and engaging in person as his online persona would indicate. 

[House Made of Dawn]

Failed to mention the highlight of the night!  I got to meet HMOD, as we met for coffee before the show.  I'm happy to report that he is as kind, eloquent and engaging in person as his online persona would indicate.

 

Among other things, Summit, his charming wife Denise (who is from Mexico City), and I had a great talk about the Mexican Revolution and the Glenn Springs Raid. They noticed I was reading Rawles Williams' novel, Boquillas Crossing, which if you have not yet read, I highly recommend for lovers of The Bend. It's a rollicking good read written by a long-time Bender with a deep and hard-earned knowledge of the area and its history.