This is the second time I have seen Anthony Pateras in Nantes, and for the second time, he has put on one of my favorite shows of the year. Pateras, near the end of a month-long tour of Europe, stopped in to play prepared piano for the latest in the ongoing series of CABLE# experimental music nights, which have also hosted such respected improvisers as Britain’s Keith Rowe and Australia’s Oren Ambarchi. On this night, Pateras proved again that he’s more than capable of standing alongside those contemporaries.
What’s wild is how Pateras takes such raw physical tools (bolts, screws, washers, and metal cords) to transform the piano into a richer, acoustic cousin of a crummy Casio keyboard -- every key has its own voicing, but instead of cheesy MIDI presets, his piano plays from one key to the next like marimba / bucket / live wire / icicle / D flat / buzz / buzz / tinkle / tok! It’s not a piano anymore — it’s 88 detuned voicings chattering over each other in a bubbling, percussive discourse. The colors and timbres he elicits goad the imagination: you hear a swarm of lead-footed ants marching on ice; an archaic telegraph system discovered inside an African hut; the junkyard lullaby that an infant Tom Waits fell asleep to in his crib -- there’s something ludic, starry, and wonderfully broken about this music.
Tonality and technique are important, but a performance requires more than gear and chops -- it’s got to have drama, and Pateras builds loads of it into each piece through a studied and furious abuse of the instrument. He’s great fun to watch: the two hands play on top of each other, pinkies and thumbs darting out to stab notes in distant registers. He often throws his elbows and palms deep into the keys, all while swaying back and forth to hidden rhythms. The piano may be prepared, but it’s impossible for the audience to be -- his fingers scramble over notes in the higher keys before suddenly punching a resonant cluster of low ones, or he builds up a drone at once frothy and undulating right in the middle of the keyboard before breaking into a stuttering series of pauses and bursts that leap from one end to the other, leaving you on the edge of your seat and guessing (wrong every time).
From what I can tell, these dramatic turns are the hallmarks of any Pateras gig. This one was extra special, thanks to the intimate setting (a room that held about 30 people) and the staging: his bench was planted on a large carpet of bright green felt, and a mirror slanted from behind the piano over the top of his head so that from the back of the room, even though his back was to the audience, I could watch his hands sprint and grapple for the entire performance. In the mirror, all that was visible were those hands on the keys, the top of his head, and the green carpet. It was as if he were on a Hollywood green screen, open to virtual transportation anywhere -- Pateras in space! Pateras in the jungle! Pateras in a high-speed car chase!
The great luck of the night, though, was that Pateras was right there, in that room, shredding. Go see him if you get the chance.
(Anthony Pateras has released a solo recording this year on Sirr.Ecords entitled Chasms. It’s comprised of the pieces he played at this concert.)