When musical worlds collide … Musings on Nick Cave
As proven in physics and in romance, opposites attract. That is how, dear friends of PPI, I happened to find myself very recently at Portland’s largest music event space, the Moda Center, not attending a classical concert. Instead, there I was, shoulder-to-shoulder with black-clad, middle-aged goths, geeks, and everything in between, eagerly awaiting the appearance on stage of iconic Australian rocker, poet and storyteller Nick Cave. With his band, The Bad Seeds, Mr. Cave has been as integral to my husband’s coming-of-age and being-in-the-world as Brahms and Beethoven have been to mine. And even though sitting in a plush seat in a darkened hall would always be my first choice for musical escapism and elightenment, I have to admit: There was something about that really loud, decidedly non-classical event that truly moved me.
Maybe because there are so many parallels between that world, and my own – most obviously, perhaps, the tools of the trade. Yes, I was likely the only person out of the estimated 5000 people in attendance who was fixated on seeing what make piano Mr. Cave would perform on. (He famously owns a Fazioli, describing his first encounter with this exceptional Italian instrument on his blog in rapturous terms). Wouldn’t that be a story hook, I thought, if I could report on Angela Hewitt and Nick Cave performing on the same make instrument less than a month apart?! Alas, Mr. Cave played a Yamaha. But by the time he performed his iconic ballad, “Into my arms”, I was no longer the piano critic. I was completely carried away by the pure simplicity of the melody, the poetry of the message.
Back in 2018, cartoonist Emily Flake wrote an excellent piece for the New Yorker, describing why she connects so strongly to Cave’s music. Now, beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder and, in the case of music, the ear of the listener, but it’s this last comment of hers that really struck a chord with me (pun intended): “We tend to see music as entertainment. Performances like this pull it firmly back to where it belongs – in the realm of spiritual experience.”
Profound feelings of connection with the divine. Being moved. Leaving feeling different than when you arrived. All these things that the dictionary describes as a “spiritual experience”, are exactly what drives us at PPI to seek out the best pianists in the world and bring them to you. As we keep up our commitment to making Portland a better place, one piano recital at a time, we truly want our audiences to feel about our artists the same way Cave’s supporters feel about him. We in the office certainly do!