The Washington Post 4/10/06: On paper, it sounds very cool: take a young avant-garde Austrian musician, add a few supporting players (including the son of one of the 20th Century’s most distinguished composers), and set them loose to rethink the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. That was the premise Friday night at the Embassy of Austria, where guitarist Martin Philadelphy and his free-improvising group Paint promised “some pictures of Mozart’s spirit and his art.”
Great idea, and kudos to the embassy for trying a fresh approach to this year-long celebration of Mozart’s birth. Unfortunately, Paint didn’t make much of the opportunity, serving up a muddled dog’s breakfast of avant-garde cliches, airless space-rock and good old-fashioned noodling. The Mozart connection was just a thin conceit -- and the promise of Eine Kleine Freimusik evaporated pretty quickly.
Too bad; players like Henry Kaiser and John Zorn have shown that free improvising can produce some of the most intensely exciting, sophisticated and brainy music around. But it demands exceptional focus and musicianship, and Paint seemed content just to cook up undifferentiated masses of sound, letting them drift around aimlessly before they expired from sheer boredom.
Some of the few interesting moments of the evening came from percussionist Lukas Ligeti, who brought kinetic energy to the ensemble, and Marty McCavitt, who used a Mac sound processor and an antique zither to create detailed percussive effects and inject some actual Mozart into the mix. Tom Abbs mauled his cello, but otherwise did a nice job on bass. And while guitarist Philadelphy desperately needed an energy infusion, it hardly mattered – his amp was turned so low you could barely hear him over the fray.