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Photo by Reuben Cox

Andrew Bird

[INDIE] Chameleonic multi-instrumentalist, virtuoso whistler and one-time Squirrel Nut Zipper, Andrew Bird, 44, recorded his latest—Echolocations: River—under the Hyperion Glendale Bridge in Los Angeles. It’s the second in an instrumental series that focuses on the nuances of site-specific recordings: how is the music informed by the environs? The project began with 2015’s Echolocations: Canyon (recorded at Utah’s Coyote Gulch canyons) and continues with the new bridge-and-water-centric recording, which brings him to UB’s Center for the Arts on Saturday, February 24. Bird found his way to recording at this particular site via his own daily travels, frequently riding his bike along the L.A. River as it sits in his neighborhood where he lives with wife Katherine and their son, Sam. By spending long hours testing out the way sound reverberates in a specific space and making field recordings, he familiarizes himself with the “echolocation” of a given environment and then takes those tracks to his home studio for tweaking where he further builds them into song form—or something closer, anyway.  Bird says his fascination with the resonance of sound in specific spaces dates back to childhood, when he would often play one note repeatedly on his violin—his primary instrument—in different spaces to hear how it would shift and evolve; it’s a conversation between the note and the space it gets played in. He says his fascination with topographical maps also comes into play in the form of “sonic mapping,” which is how he articulates the process of scoping out a site. The Echolocations: River project expands into a multimedia presentation with a companion short film from documentary filmmaker, commercial director Tyler Manson. Bird is constantly shifting his setlists around, so it’s safe to say that we can expect a hodgepodge of material from various corners of his career. If you’ve never had the pleasure of experiencing him in performance, the biggest surprise is in his showmanship—he’s incredibly entertaining to watch and he builds his songs before your very eyes, never landing in exactly the same place twice.

$39-$49

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103 Center For The Arts
Buffalo, NY

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