The Musical Force Behind the Communal, Queer 'Bark of Millions' - The New York Times

krotoson.blogspot.com

Matt Ray is a prolific songwriter and the musical nexus of New York’s alt-cabaret scene. His next project: Taylor Mac’s latest marathon performance.

“It’s the last hour, and I’m feeling the energy draining,” Taylor Mac, the performing arts polymath, announced near the end of a recent rehearsal at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

If the artists — an ensemble of a dozen singers, as well as several instrumentalists — were exhausted, it was because of the sheer scale of what they were working on: “Bark of Millions,” a show by Mac and the musician Matt Ray, which has its American premiere on Monday at BAM’s Harvey Theater. Essential to that scale is Ray’s score of 55 original songs that add up to four hours of performance.

That would be enough to fill several albums by any recording artist, and yet it’s business as usual for Ray. He has been not only the musical core of Mac’s recent shows — the daylong marathon “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music,” for which he arranged over 240 songs with the purpose of queering the American canon, and “The Hang,” for which he wrote 26 — but he has also been the force behind much of New York’s alt-cabaret scene, with collaborators including Justin Vivian Bond, Joey Arias and Bridget Everett.

“This is a community of risk-takers and rule-breakers,” Everett said in an interview. “It’s a really exciting, vital scene. And there’s one person who’s the musical nexus of that. It’s Matt. His heart is beating at the center of all of it.”

The performer Justin Vivian Bond called Ray “such a sensitive artist,” and said, “for being a consummate Leo, he’s just great at letting other people shine.”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

RAY, 51, has had expansive taste in music since his childhood growing up on the East Coast. Whether as a player — he started learning the piano when he was 2 years old — or as a listener, he never limited himself to any one genre. “I really admire monochromatic types of work,” he said, “but I just don’t work that way.”

---

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

---

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Adblock test (Why?)

"behind" - Google News
February 05, 2024 at 04:37AM
https://ift.tt/d5vJpIP

The Musical Force Behind the Communal, Queer 'Bark of Millions' - The New York Times
"behind" - Google News
https://ift.tt/B2AwYlP
https://ift.tt/mM0Ua84

Bagikan Berita Ini