When Andrew Bird performs live, he doesn’t play music, he makes music. Each song is composed uniquely for the evening, built partly with layers of freshly recorded loops, improvised solos, and always spirited whistling. Wednesday night at Carnegie Hall, it seemed to me that, in fact, every bit of energy that he exuded was the creation of music. Every note he plucked or bowed, strummed or struck, sang, spoke or whistled was perfectly musical. And it all came out with such ease. All of his racing about—hitting peddles with a shoeless foot to activate his spinning Siamese twin horn speaker; recording and looping lines of violin, handclapped or whistled melodies; setting down a violin to play guitar or swinging around a guitar to pickup a violin; holding a mallet while strumming or striking bells while whistling; even just singing a perfect melody while playing the violin—as frenzied as anyone else would make it seem, was ostensibly graceful and effortless. So skilled was he in his maneuvering that we all seemed to take it for granted until midway through his set, at the conclusion of a masterpiece from his new album, he paused finally for a momentary respite during which he admitted, “It can be a lot sometimes, ya know?”
Carnegie Hall was the perfect place to hear Andrew Bird: no crowd and struggling to see the tip of his bow at every other stroke; no mediocre sound quality with speakers blaring so loudly you can’t hear for an hour after you’ve left the show; no battle between musicians and sound technician to achieve the perfect balance of loud by halfway through the set. Instead, there was music in a place built to house music, and a musician perfectly equipped to take full advantage of it.
Watching him perform, I think he was made to produce music. I imagine his journey through the mundane events of life whistling and humming all the while, hearing elaborate orchestrations in his head. I admire that there are people on this earth like him. I am grateful for their generosity in sharing it with the rest of us.
