"The Music Box: a Shantytown Sound Laboratory" was among the most amazing installation/performance art events the Crescent City had ever seen. And now the Piety Street spectacle, which first showed in the fall of 2011, is back for an encore. The lid comes off for an opening reception from 6 to 9 on April 14. Regular daylight visiting hours will take place from noon to 5 on Fridays and Saturdays from April 20 to June 2.
There may be special hours and events during The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival Presented by Shell, April 27 to May 6, and a farewell evening performance is in the works for early June. According to a press release from the Music Box management, the Bywater neighborhood marvel will then be dismantled.
Check the website www.dithyrambalina.com for details as they develop. E-mail info@neworleansairlift.org or call 347.784.5226
The Music Box, located at 1027 Piety St., is difficult to describe, because there?s nothing else quite like it. Imagine a village of rough-hewn shacks that double as highly unconventional artist-made musical instruments. Imagine a sort of tool shed that produces music from gurgling plumbing pipes. Imagine a small green house that contains a tinkling, bell-studded wedding gown-like umbrella. Imagine a pipe organ blended with a spiral staircase, a weather-activated electronic music pole, a floor board xylophone, a synthesizer that suggests the sounds of neighbors heard through a wall.The splendid collaboration was orchestrated by Delaney Martin and Theo Eliezer and produced by a crew of brilliant artist inventors including Quintron, Taylor Lee Shepherd, Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels, Eliza Zeitlin, Ranjit Bhatnagar, Elizabeth Shannon, Micah Learned, Rainger Pinney, Johah Emerson-Bell, Ross Harmon, Angeliska Polachek, Colin McIntyre, Ben Mortimer, Aaron Kellner, Ratty Scurvics, Jamye Kalal, Frank Pahl, Andrew Shrock, Lindsay Karty, Mahnk Smith, Patty O?Connor, Aaron Taylor Kuffner, Lindsay Karty and Simon Berz.
The project was inspired by celebrated street artist Caledonia ?Swoon? Curry, who provided dreamy cut-paper embellishments and hopes to place a permanent musical house on the site.
The musician sculpture environment was the site of six star-studded collaborative concerts conducted by New Orleans musical mad scientist Quintron, co-curated by Jay Pennington and featuring a changing roster of musicians including Mannie Fresh, Hamid Drake, James Singleton, Dicky Landry, Helen Gillet, Andrew W.K, Jim White and others. Crowds lined up to attend the performances and few were disappointed. As everyone from the Times-Picayune to the New York Times to National Public Radio discovered, the Music Box was a gas.
Read my story "A Bywater lot becomes 'The Music Box,' a bohemian musical playground," here.
Read the New York Times story "A Symphony of Floorboards, Pipes and Stairs" By Campbell Robertson here.
Read or listen to the NPR story "In The Music Box, New Orleans Residents Hear Hope" by Kathleen Osborn here.
Read the Offbeat Music magazine story "The Music Box in the Bywater: A House in E Major" by John Swenson here.
Read my review of the first Music Box performance "The Music Box concert was a Bywater dream come true" here.
Doug MacCash can be reached at dmaccash@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3481. Read more art news at nola.com/arts. Follow him at twitter.com/DougMacCashTP.
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Source: http://www.nola.com/arts/index.ssf/2012/03/the_music_box_a_shantytown_sou.html
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