Devil Music, Journal

PROJECT JOURNAL

Posted: September 22, 2004

The sun is going down in Dudley Square as the three leaders of the Devil Music Ensemble - Brendon Wood, Jonah Rapino, and Tim Nylander - huddle in a doorway. They're smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and waiting for the musicians they've recruited for a pair of upcoming performances, one on Sunday, another May 31. The three, all in their late 20s, have scored silent films, played groovy techno, and employed accordions for what they call Eastern European folk music. For their latest incarnation, the DME is going classical.

But not Bach, Brahms, or Beethoven. When the ensemble meets in Roxbury's Berwick Research Institute, a nonprofit art space facing an overgrown lot on Palmer Street, it is to play the kind of modern music rarely heard in Symphony Hall. "Welcome to the underground," says one of the players, greeting David Patterson, the University of Massachusetts at Boston music professor who has agreed to conduct a piece.
Patterson, for his part, admits later that he felt slightly subversive when he arrived at the grungy former factory building. This seemed a long way from the conservatory: "I felt like maybe I wasn't supposed to do this."
Inside a cavernous room with a concrete floor, rehearsal begins. Patterson leads the assembled musicians, none of them older than 30, through a piece by John Adams. The Pulitzer Prize-winning composer's work is drenched in humor and mischievous skronkyness.

Then, with Wood taking over, they work on a second piece, by Pauline Oliveiros. For this, the players gather in a circle. There is no set music, only guidelines for improvisation. The bassist violently thwacks his instrument, almost knocking over a music stand. A saxophonist taps the inside of the horn's mouth with a pen. The drummer pounds a gong until the sound is deafening.

"That was much different than on Sunday," says Wood, referring to another rehearsal, and then, cracking up the players, he offers a lone instruction. "Remember what we did."

The music the Devil Music Ensemble plays is hard to define. That's because it is always changing. But the concerts the group plays - modern classical, which is loosely defined as work by living composers - do have a lot in common with what has been played in the past. It is brainy, fun, and unexpected. This is a group that, in the fall, will strip down to its three leaders for a tour of movie houses. They have performed scores for seven silent films.
"Given the whole music palette, it's hard for me to exist in one style," says Wood.

Wood founded the group in 1999. He came up with the band name, inspired by a George Crumb composition and his grandmother's insistence - years before - that the Van Halen record he was listening to was "the devil's music." (The name has caused problems, particularly at a gig in Washington, D.C., when the venue shortened the moniker to "D.M.E." for the sign outside.) Musically, the members come from different places.

There is Wood, the record-store geek, who served seven years at Planet Records. He cites Kraftwerk and Can as major influences. Rapino, a violinist, studied classical music and earned a music degree from Boston University. Nylander dropped out of Berklee College of Music before eventually graduating from Harvard. In recent years, he has played with Say Zuzu. He confesses a love for ZZ Top. They're sharp, capable of dropping the names of obscure composers at will. But they didn't form the band to show off their musical references or chops.

"This isn't about trying to make the impossible solo, or the fastest beat," says Rapino. "It's not about letting people know we know that Purple Heart Flame record. It's just about rocking and getting people to move." Or, in the case of the upcoming shows, sit down and listen.

The performance on Sunday features works by Adams, Oliveiros, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Elliot Schwartz. On May 31, the program includes original compositions by Wood and Rapino. The players will be postering the city in record stores, colleges, and anywhere a piece of paper can be stapled. They're expecting to bring in a crowd that doesn't normally come to hear an orchestra.

"A lot of people know Devil Music because of our movie soundtrack music," says Rapino, who wears red Nikes and a hoop in each of his ears. "We've done a lot of rock shows, and we've had our folk band. So it's not just the university folks and the people going to Symphony Hall. A lot of people coming here are people we know from punk shows."

There is also the relationship with the Berwick Institute. Rapino sometimes books punk-rock shows in the building and, for some of his band members, it has become an artistic center. "Everything else is school or work or trying to be a professional," says bassist Michael Tuttle, 27. "This doesn't feel underground," says Kaethe Hostetter, a 19-year-old violinist entering the Boston Conservatory in the fall. "You're playing with your friends. It feels like the missing link."

-Geoff Edgers, The Boston Globe, May 2003