Song project with compositions from Simon Ho & Shelley Hirsch
Shelley Hirsch – lyrics, voc, Simon Ho – piano, keyboards, David Simons - drums, Dave Hofstra –bass, tuba, Shazad Ishmael - drums, Okkyng Lee - cello, Thomas Ulrich - cello, Stephanie Grifth – viola, Jason Whang - violin . Concerts in New York 2006/2007
Polly Cotton
September 29, 2006
(Roulette at Location 1, NYC)
review by Phil Zampino
2007-01-03
Polycotton is a blend of synthetic and natural fabric, explained Shelley Hirsch as she took the stage at Roulette's relocated Location 1. Polly Cotton is also an excellent performance platform for Shelley Hirsch and Simon Ho. Ho is a Swiss born pianist and broad-minded composer whose works have premiered in Europe and in the Americas, writing often for the theater. Hirsch is a New York Downtown improvising vocalist, conceptualist, story-teller and composer, with a large oeuvre of indescribable sound poetry and autobiographic work. The pieces for Polly Cotton were co-composed by Hirsch and Ho, either as new works, or constructed from fragments and reworkings of previous pieces by both artists, with all words coming from Hirsch and Ho providing all string arrangements.
Polly Cotton performed two months earlier with the same lineup of Shelley Hirsch and Simon Ho, David Hofstra on bass and tuba, Stephanie Griffin on viola, David Simons on percussion and theremin, and Tomas Ulrich on cello. The group looks a blend of classical and downtown NY, Griffin and Ho in concert formals, Hirsch in her elegant eccentricity, and Ulrich, Hofstra and Simons in more casual garb. The show began with a few bumps in the road from a direct box oddly located in Griffin's lap, while Hirsch unpretentiously explained that the band hadn't had a chance to rehearse properly; the latter was unnecessary as the professionalism of the group hid any problems the audience might have perceived.
Hirsch introduced the members of the band, over which Ho began playing a figure that led out of the credits and into the first piece with a looping "gotta get it done," boosting the show into a groove. The second piece turned the band to a more theatrical mode with an articulate song well fitting Hirsch's style. The music had a Weill flare to it, as Hirsch laid out her family history of Grandpa Seymour coming from France to East New York, across from the Cypress Hill Projects. The group listened and played both sympathetically and in counterpoint to the stories, with Ho's theatrical elements working incredibly well with Hirsch in an autobiographical frame of mind.
The stories and pieces that followed continued on to Hirsch's Ludlow apartment, a cat "Tiberius," and a trip to Amsterdam. The music was supportive but hardly secondary, where Griffin's beautiful violin lines added interest to Hirsch's story, or in a segment about martial arts, where David Simmons pointed percussion worked in duo with phlegmatic "hoyts" that Hirch spat out. On the fifth piece, a premiere for Polly Cotton, everything came together in a story set in the 70's at 625 Hemlock St in East NY. Ho setup a drifting structure along with Griffin, over which Hirsch chanelled the era of overt bias with "no niggers or jews"; Ulrich, in excellent form through the evening, played an hallucinatory cello solo while Hofstra's placid and strong bass tones solidified the dreamy orchestration.
The mood set, Hofstra switched to tuba while David Simons stepped up on the stage to a theremin, the two joined by Ho in a clever café figure. Hirsch's uncommon and colorful life returned to the foreground, bringing us closer to the current day in stories familiar to Hirsch's fans, speaking of collaborator Aki Onda and the son of the landlord in the building in which they both once lived, describing his long purple scar and greasy skin. Hirsch brings out the humor and eccentricities in others in a playful and unusually delicate way that makes for fascinating commentary.
After an intermission the band returned for a second set, starting energetically with something that sounded like a mutated German beer song, Hofstra again switching to tuba. The theatrical elements of that demured into more delicate arrangements in a piece led by Hofstra's solid bass, as Hirsch took us to Napa Valley, California, a guitar and a tree, Ulrich playing a solo as though his cello were crying for the beauty of it.
The night continued in this entertaining, wonderfully twisted pattern through waltz-like songs, yodeling, danceable bell rhythms, and many other impressionistic and genre-colliding formats. Hirsch and Ho were clearly enjoying the moment, relaxed and in their creative element. The final piece, "Take down the Wall", brought the evening to a close on a serious note in a swelling and monumental piece, a metaphor for the barriers between Israel and Palestine, and for people of all kinds. The results were strong stuff, a "mix of organic and synthetic" that made for both a powerful work of cultural comment and connection, and a show that was just plain fun and unusual to watch.
