Getty's Foundation: Dirty Projectors Play Disney Hall

How the album itself will be conveyed is a different matter entirely. There's a reason Longstreth had to duet with his computer five years ago, and not simply because he didn't have a band at the time. It's that no band would be able to perform music like this. No band, that is, other than New York's 20-piece chamber ensemble Alarm Will Sound. The group rose to prominence in 2005, when it recorded Acoustica, an album of pitch-perfect Aphex Twin covers. That may make it the only orchestra on Earth qualified to execute this album in the time allotted.

"When Dave told me we'd have two months, I cracked up. The idea seemed absolutely crazy," says Alarm Will Sound conductor Alan Pierson. He initially became a fan of Longstreth's upon hearing The Getty Address in 2005. "But taking that record back from the computer world and into the acoustic one has always appealed to me. It's a huge amount of work, but the challenge for us isn't the complexity — it's figuring out how to make the sounds."

Dirty Projectors: from Black Flag to Wagner, a band that contains multitudes

Location Info

Map

Walt Disney Concert Hall

111 S. Grand Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Category: Music Venues

Region: Out of Town

Photos

1 user reviews	Write A Review
Save to foursquare

Related Content

• The Dirty Projectors Are Not Good
  February 4, 2013
• The Five Best Concerts in L.A. This Weekend
  July 27, 2012
• The Dirty Projectors' David Longstreth on Wearing a Haz-Mat Suit in the Largest Landfill in the Country
  July 26, 2012
• The Ultimate in Ultrasound
  October 18, 2012
• Vienna Comes to Downtown
  December 27, 2012

More About

• Dirty Projectors
• David Longstreth
• Walt Disney Concert Hall
• Classical Music
• Chamber Music

Pierson likens the process to alchemy or cooking: "A pinch of this or that to get that weird effect you're hearing."

Ensemble member Matt Marks spent the better part of a month scoring every intricacy of The Getty Address. When asked to estimate the number of hours he worked on it, Marks laughs, and instead shares an anecdote. "I'd just gotten a new pair of jeans for Christmas and hadn't washed them yet. And there was this period of two weeks where all I did was sit on my ass and transcribe music, from the time I got up to the time I went to bed. At the end, I looked down, and my off-white Ikea chair had turned blue."

His devotion seems to be shared by all of those involved — some 130 players will grace the stage before the night is over — in the three separate rehearsals occurring around the clock at opposite ends of the country. Pierson says there are a thousand decisions to be made between now and Saturday, but like Longstreth, he's confident that they'll get there — and mostly blind to how immense "there" actually is.

The Dirty Projectors, Alarm Will Sound and the L.A. Philharmonic Orchestra perform at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Sat., Feb. 27.