Hear Ye! (Review)

Sometimes the categories of “art” and “music” run the risk of overlooking a fruitful niche community in Cincinnati that likes its art tuneful and music artful.

Were I to attach this movement to one local figure, it would be Jane Ortrun Carver. While we were at the Art Academy of Cincinnati together, I witnessed a whirlwind of her mysterious performances, poetry and band projects, such as presenting an opera in the bathtub in her apartment or the modest project And How! with Kendall Bruns, which focused on ballads for the sea and other pirate-themed jaunts.

Leapin Lizard Gallery in Covington hosted Carver’s latest endeavor Nov. 19. Hear Ye! was a variety show with local performers playing alongside a clan of fantastical female experimental musicians based in California and Berlin. The gallery space is a converted church sanctuary, complete with soaring ceilings, stained-glass windows and a huge pipe organ on the stage. The space’s churchly remains seemed to influence the concert, but maybe it just affected my experience of it.

As the evening progressed, the performances revealed increasingly complex source material, where Latin liturgy was mixed with bluesy a cappella, hysterical wails, choreography and back-up singers.

Carver’s own performance was preceded by three acts. The first called itself The Fellowship of the Singing Woodsmen. Banjo and tender vocals brought folksy tones to a brand of Christian imagery enriched with the glory, quests and natural wonder of Lord of the Rings. The merry band sang religious praises with clear voices and notes of humble self-deprecation.

The musical groups — Alas Alak Alaska and Fancie — were the same set of four women from out of town, playing as two different bands. Fancie, fronted by Berlin-based Elizabeth Wood, intensified the glorious cacophony one might hear in a sing-along of Handel’s “Messiah.” A nervous video dense with appropriate footage was projected alongside fog machines, veiled girls dancing jerky choreography and layers of sampled audio that interacted with the live performance. Overall, both bands were delicious, but for my tastes maybe too rich for as long as it went on. Maybe I can only take so much of angelic proclamation.

Carver began her set seated with her back to the audience and playing the pipe organ, joined by back-up singers and three musicians playing upright string instruments. Her supporting cast was attractive with heads of tousled dark hair, as if she had costumed them. When she sang, “I fell in love with an ocean man/I fell in love with his bright blue hands,” she sat like a mermaid with long wavy tresses. Along with the organ, Carver broke out a rich repertoire of acoustic guitar, keyboard and her signature accordion. Darkly humorous lyrics were tinged with the mixture of hope and resignation one might hear in Depression-era tunes. The most touching piece was a revival of a choral work originally sung by Eva Georgieva. In it, Carver was both vocalist and conductor, backed by strings and softly spoken word.

If some of Carver’s projects read as artworks with soundtracks, the evening at Leapin Lizard risked being a musical with visually aesthetic implications. The disciplines of art and music are hardly mutually exclusive, and each performance of the evening showed different forays into finding striking blends of the two.

This article appears in Nov 26 – Dec 2, 2008.