A Symphony for 100 Electric Guitars
Playing Glenn Branca’s excruciatingly beautiful 'Hallucination City' at Lincoln Center was one of the deepest musical experiences of my life.
I arrived on the first day of rehearsal for Glenn Branca’s Symphony No. 13, Hallucination City, carrying my bass guitar on my back and a heavy amplifier borrowed from a bandmate by its top-mounted handle. The dinky practice amp I keep in my apartment wouldn’t do.
One might think that a piece like this one, scored for 80 electric guitars, 20 basses, and one drum kit, would call for each musician to play at about the volume of a violin or a clarinet, so that together they approximate the dynamic range of a more traditional orchestra. That may have been what the people who left were expecting as we performed at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall on Friday. A substantial lot picked up their things and made for the exits within the piece’s opening minutes, or so I’m told. I was too consumed with anticipation to notice, counting my way through the 78 and a half measures of silence that open my part as the other guitars buzzed like lightning-charged locusts, gathering in a swarm that was also a storm. The beginning is one of the quiet parts, relatively speaking. In soundcheck, Reg Bloor, our leader, listened to each of us 100 playing for a few seconds unaccompanied to dial in our volume, and often conveyed with a brusque upward gesture that the amp should be louder. I don’t think I once saw her tell someone to turn down.
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