Tributes to singers who broke the mold
What becomes a legend most? In the world of popular music, creating a body of incandescent songs is a good place to start, but transcending fame’s fleeting grasp often means tapping into an archetype.
David Bowie reinvented himself again and again as a polymorphously androgynous avant-pop star. Joni Mitchell engaged in her own shapeshifting while refusing to follow record label dictates as a sardonic, ingenious, heart-onher-sleeve singer-songwriter. And Leonard Cohen aged gracefully as a dashing poet and ladies’ man turned incantatory prophet.
Over the next week a series of events around the region exemplify starkly different strategies for celebrating the music of these iconic figures, artists who are as influential today as ever.
On Wednesday, Nov. 7, Stanford Live presents cellist Maya Beiser and the Ambient Orchestra conducted by Evan Ziporyn playing his arrangements of “Blackstar,” the singular album Bowie released on his deathbed in January 2016.
Originally written for a one-off concert and premiered last year in Boston, Symphonic Blackstar was initially inspired by “the emotion around
Bowie’s death,” says Ziporyn, the founding director of MIT’s Center for Art, Science and Technology.
“It wasn’t so much that I was so shook up, but everybody I knew was shook up,” he recalls. “It felt like a larger cultural moment, and it came out of this hunger to get inside the music more deeply.”
As founding members of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Ziporyn and Beiser have collaborated extensively over the years, including her 2014 album “Uncovered,” featuring Ziporyn instrumental arrangements of songs by the likes of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Nirvana, Howlin’ Wolf and King Crimson.
For Beiser, interpreting pieces inextricably linked to legendary acts provides a protean platform “with the cello taking on both the singing roles and instrumental solo roles,” she says. “Bowie recorded ‘Blackstar’ with amazing jazz musicians, so the cello goes back and forth from playing the role of vocalist to tenor saxophone and guitar. It’s an emotional roller coaster every time we’ve played this piece.”
While Bowie is a potent but spectral presence at “Blackstar,” the 30-member all-male choir Conspiracy of Beards started multiplying the natty persona of Cohen some 15 years ago, when the songwriter was just getting back to making music after a decade off the scene. The group’s mission hasn’t changed since his death in November 2016. Over the weekend, they expanded its musical purview to its first San Francisco Leonard Cohen Festival at the Swedish American Hall, with plans to make it an annual celebration.
But the tributes this month aren’t limited to artists who have left us. For the past five years, Santa Barbara jazz vocalist and guitarist Kimberly Ford has been at the front of “A Celebration of Joni Mitchell,” a project that embraces the artist in all her diversity. While Mitchell suffered a serious ailment a few years ago, she will be celebrating her 75th birthday on Wednesday, Nov. 7. To honor the milestone, Ford’s six-piece ensemble plans to play several dates around the region as part of its longest tour yet, hitting Yoshi’s on Wednesday, Sonoma’s Reel Fish Shop on Thursday, Nov. 8, and Santa Cruz’s Kuumbwa Jazz Center on Friday, Nov. 9.
With her jazz background, Ford interprets Mitchell’s best-known songs and pieces from her later jazz-infused masterpieces like “Hejira,” “Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter” and “Mingus.”
“We know the early stuff is really meaningful to a lot of people, but we’re on a mission to let people know how much more she was than ‘Blue’ and ‘Court and Spark.’ ”