Stew lights up Curran with blues-rock song cycle
Under Construction series — looks for all the world like the alt-rock concert Stew claims it is, with the instruments of Stew’s quintet, the Negro Problem, taking up half the Curran stage (the audience occupies the other half).
The piece is structured like a song cycle, with less of an overt connective-tissue story line that hovered about Dave Malloy’s brilliant “Ghost Quartet” song-cycle play in the Curran season in October.
Even as you’re swept up in the captivating jazzy riffs and irresistible blues and rock rhythms of the songs — by Stew and his principal collaborator Heidi Rodewald (as in “Passing Strange”) — the always fuzzy line between theater and other forms of live entertainment seems to get blurrier.
There’s no mistaking the delightful theatricality of Joan Grossman’s videos, especially the ones featuring animated photos of James Baldwin — sometimes with his face replacing that of a famed blues or rock artist in an iconic poster or album cover (the ones involving the Beatles are particularly funny).
Baldwin, not theater, is the principal theme of “Notes,” as telegraphed by the title’s take on Baldwin’s famed (and controversial) 1955 collection of essays.
“Notes” doesn’t pretend to be a tribute to Baldwin in the form of either a musical biography — as “Passing Strange” is very much Stew’s autobiography as an artist — or an appreciation of Baldwin’s novels, essays and other writings.
The backup is great, with Rodewald on expressive bass and guitars and moody Moog, Art Terry’s brilliant piano, the driving, explosive rhythms of Marty Beller’s dynamic percussion and Mike McGinnis’ wailing sax, incisive flute and other woodwinds.
Most of all, there’s Stew, crooning, rasping and selling not just every song but each single phrase or note as if born to rock or sing the blues — and playing a mean guitar as well.
From the personas he adopts to the comic and dramatic expressiveness of his gestures and expressions, you can’t help but notice what a good actor he is as well.