Dresher’s Schick Machine: Revised and Reviewed
The Paul Dresher Ensemble just closed a two-week run of a newly revised version of their inventive, solo stage work Schick Machine, featuring percussionist Steven Schick. The production earned critical acclaim for its unique, boundary-pushing musical creations. The New York Times featured Dresher and his invented instruments, as did the San Francisco Chronicle in a thoughtful interview. The San Francisco Bay Guardian’s Robert Avila writes:
A gorgeous clutter of instruments fills the stage at Z Space/Theater Artaud this week, and audiences, after an eye- and earful of Schick Machine, are invited to go up and play them, too. […]
Master percussionist and contemporary music veteran Steven Schick […] wanders around a garden playground laboratory of ingeniously crafted percussive and stringed instruments (composer Dresher’s fanciful yet practicable inventions), against a video backdrop evocative of everything from superstrings to abstract expressionist painting to architectural blueprints and scientific scribblings. The instruments of wood and steel form elegant ridges, playful spirals, majestic fans, Ferris wheel–like magic circles, and sonic tulip patches — a kind of Eden for a lone but rarely lonesome madman.
[San Francisco Bay Guardian]
For more information, check out Schick Machine on bernsarts.com.
