On a beautiful Saturday night in Los Angeles, The Broad hosted the first event of their Summer Happenings series of live performances and art. The first in the series titled “A Journey That Wasn’t, Part 1” featured performances by DJ Stretch Armstrong, Gang Gang Dance, Terry Riley and more.
Around 8:30 p.m. The Broad Contemporary Art Museum was already packed with guests enjoying DJ Armstrong’s funk, soul and hip-hip hop set near the main outdoor stage. The indoor exhibits were just as full, featuring magnificent works from Jeff Koons, Keith Haring, Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha, Cy Twombly and many more. Guests took plenty of photos and gathered around the areas where live music was being set up. A group of performance artists walking about the premises in all white and creepy face masks on the backs of their heads had several audience members following them in intrigue, recording them on their phones.
Promptly at 10:10, Gang Gang Dance took the outdoor stage to a packed crowd. The electro/psych/world music genre-bending act wasted no time as the synth introduced the first song of the set, an instrumental number. Singer Lizzie Bougatsos was set up with a couple tom-toms and cymbals front and center, joining and adding alternate drum patterns to the drum and drum machine. Each song kept the audience engaged, waiting for what’s next. The guitar/bass player casually lit a cigarette on the stage between songs. The audience danced along to more upbeat, electro-forward tracks like “Thru And Thru.”
Songs from their recently released album Kazuashita made their Los Angeles debut, including “Kazuashita,” which featured dreamy and fluttering synths and was mostly instrumental, with the addition of spoken words like “eucalyptus” and “welcome to the world.” Slow, dreamy songs like “When My Voice Fails” and “Vacuum” had the crowd swaying around in a trance. Bougatsos donned an all-white getup that transported everyone straight to a windy desert. Towards the end of their set, Bougatsos shared a bit with the audience “This song is about humility…when you get older, one thing you can’t do is hold back,” before the sample loop of the next song started. She gave a shout out to some “old friends” in the audience and shared about their upcoming show at Zebulon in Los Angeles.
On the second floor of the Broad, one of the founding fathers of minimalism, Terry Riley, was mid-performance in the Oculus Hall. The intimate hall could only accommodate so many guests, and several were left standing outside, waiting to catch a glimpse behind the closed doors. The setting for Terry Riley’s stage was simple; a blue, back-lit backdrop and some lights that changed colors periodically, sometimes shining in the audience, who stood or sat on the floor, utterly transfixed by the sounds.
Riley performed a mesmerizing, layer building, dissonant set, not really stopping to look up at the audience until introducing the last piece of the night, “This is a new piece,” sharing that we’d be hearing more intervals not found in the typical Western scale. The piece titled, “The Force” featured pentatonic arpeggios and ended literally on a high note, featuring rising and cascading high notes with “vibrating” rainbow colors in the backdrop, inducing a sense of awe within the audience. To finish, Riley humbly stood and acknowledged the audience who clapped wildly, leaving everyone with a “good night and good luck,” before stepping off the stage.
Just before midnight, the attendees filed out of the Broad into the cool night. This special night of music is just one of three Summer Happenings at The Broad. Take a look at the rest of the schedule here.
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