Björk In Concert: What I Thought
Nature, music, and technology are the key ingredients in Björk’s recent wonderful, multi-apps project, “Biophilia,†and she brought that potent mix to the New York Hall of Science the other night in a live concert. Performing a set list drawn mostly from the project, Björk showed us once again that she is, quite simply, inimitable in her greatness. The 90-minute show was the first night of six at the New York Hall of Science in Queens, part of a residency that includes workshops for children. Björk will be playing four shows at Roseland in Manhattan later this month and in early March.
She played the other night in NYSCI’s Great Hall. Video screens displayed imagery above the in-the-round stage. There was a pipe organ, activated via MIDI controller by the programmer and keyboardist Max Weisel, who is 20 but who looks 16. There was Graduale Nobili, a 20-member of Icelandic choir – a berobed, roving band of sometimes fierce, sometimes gentle young women. There was Manu Delagu, who played drum kit, electronic percussion, and the melodic percussion instrument called the Hang.
For me, however, the high point of the evening – one of the most transcendent I have experienced recently in a concert – was Björk’s work with her harpist, Zeena Parkins. Decked out in a rust-colored wig and blue plastic dress with organic attachments at the hip and breasts, Björk and Parkins produced such a moving, other-worldly mix of sounds that I sent up a secret pagan prayer for them to do an entire CD together. While awaiting such a dream project, I urge you to see Björk in concert this year, whether in New York or on one of the festival gigs she’s doing later this year.
You call Bjork’s screeching singing! When she sings my dog runs and hides!
She is, as you say, inimitable. Not plastic like Madonna or Rihanna, even though Bjork sometimes wears plastic!
When I grow up, I want to be Bjork.