Last night I went down to the Nelson-Atkins to see the a performance of Paul Rudy’s Verdun. The Kansas City Star did a nice write-up of the work.

Embarrassingly, this was my first time to the new Bloch building at the Nelson-Atkins, even though the new building opened a little over a year ago. It’s impressive. The Washington Post’s This Bright Idea Is a Glowing Achievement has a few pictures and a good description of the architecture.

The acoustics are still “gallery acoustics” at a superficial level, which means quite reverberant with a really long decay. So I didn’t have high hopes, and expected to have to ‘listen through’ the performance in order to hear the piece. However, the acoustics were much clearer and cleaner than typical. I suspect this is because of the lack of parallel planes in the surfaces making up the space. And the result was phenomenal.

The photography of the Human Nature exhibit was often subdued in fog or exposure (or both). And the result of the acoustics on the sound perfectly matched when performed in the space. The performers (flute and bass clarinet) also navigated through the space as they performed, and the fixed media was project via a multichannel speaker configuration. Audience was free to experience the performance from a fixed position or to navigate the space themselves.

The music was beautifully fluid. On further reflection, I also find this venue for the performance of a contemporary work to be much more relevant and natural than the rigid and natural confines of a concert hall. I’m not certain I would have enjoyed the piece or taken anything from it had I experienced it in such a setting.

The Nelson-Atkins is going to be doing more in collaboration with the UMKC Conservatory over the coming year, I believe on a monthly basis beginning in October. I look forward to seeing what else will spawn from this collaboration!