Cline and Kotche are best known as members of rock band Wilco, which Kotche joined in 2001 and Cline in 2004. Their work, however, includes an eclectic range of projects beyond that of their well-known band.
Cline has performed on over 150 albums and with various acts, working in such diverse genres as rock, pop and country. He currently fronts the free jazz ensemble The Nels Cline Singers. Kotche, who also performs with his own jazz duo On Fillmore, is a talented composer. He recently wrote pieces for and performed with The Kronos Quartet.
Kotche and Cline said they primarily came to Dartmouth for the teaching opportunity the visit has provided. On Sunday, Kotche met with percussion students for a workshop in which he taught improvisation techniques. Students had prepared some of Kotche's pieces to perform at the workshop, and Kotche provided helpful critiques after hearing their renditions. Cline ran a similar workshop Monday night for guitar students.
Thursday's performance will provide an opportunity for Wilco fans to get a sense of how the band's individual members contribute to Wilco's sound, Kotche said in an interview with The Dartmouth. It will also be a unique spectator experience, as Kotche and Cline will perform along with Wisdom, a painter who is equally unconventional in his own field.
Wisdom's canvas is a backlit plastic screen upon which he applies, manipulates and reapplies diluted paints of vibrant colors. His works are free-flowing and ever-changing the constant motion of the pieces renders them never finished. Once an image appears on his screen, Wisdom destroys it or drastically morphs it into another image.
Wisdom, who has worked alongside musicians since the '60s, employs techniques that are as spontaneous as those of improvising musicians. When painting on stage, he provides a visual interpretation of the musical progression as he hears it.
"I'm not just up there performing," he said. "I'm trying to find a moment."
While his visuals are influenced by the musicians he performs with, his onstage art serves to shape each musical moment in turn. This back-and-forth illustrates the interconnection between the sonic and the visual.
Wisdom first met Cline in the early '80s, while Wisdom was painting with a Los Angeles-based improvisational punk band called Panic. Cline later invited Wisdom to perform in Banyan, an experimental rock band founded by Stephen Perkins of Jane's Addiction.
Cline started performing with Wisdom alone because he wanted to feature Wisdom's work more prominently. The duo now performs sporadically under the moniker Stained Radiance and has released a DVD of its performances.
Cline and Wisdom's performance this Thursday night will be a completely improvised set. The other half of the show will feature Kotche performing some of his composed works accompanied by animated films and shadow puppetry.
In the finale, all three artists will perform a joint improvisation. The dynamic will undoubtedly shift into something completely new, as the finale will be the first time the three will perform together. There will be no rehearsal or deliberation prior to the performance.
"It's very different for each person," Cline said about what he thinks the audience will take away from the performance. "In a way, it can be a narrative, it can be emotionally engaging, it can be perhaps merely novel."
The artists said the performance should be an immersive experience for both themselves and the audience.
"I go somewhere else when sound is around," Cline said.
Wisdom similarly becomes engrossed in his art he often has to stop and take photographs to later recall the work he has done in his trancelike state, he said.
Both the workshops and "Sonic/Vision" show were planned in collaboration with the music department after an initial suggestion by percussion lecturer Doug Perkins. The artists' time at Dartmouth marks a brief window in their individual schedules in which all three artists are in the same place at the same time. The event was only tenuously scheduled until recently, according to Margaret Lawrence, Hopkins Center director of programming.
The artists have no immediate plans to do a similar performance in the future. Wilco will be touring briefly in May and has plans to release an album later this year.
