"It was beautiful, and best enjoyed while lying flat on your back and staring straight up, through the palm trees and the sunroof to the deep night outside, with the neighboring, towering buildings overhead appearing to curve inward around you as breathy keyboards slowly gave way to meandering clarinet."
In 1978, Brian Eno put out Music for Airports, his first "ambient" album. It was the precursor for the broad spectrum of music that today is called ambient, a term Eno himself invented. It was a four-part piece, composed in the studio, devoid of all but the most basic aspects of song, challenging listeners to re-imagine what music might be.
Twenty years later, the Bang on a Can All-Stars created their own version of the work with live musicians, all the while staying close to the source by sharing the project, as it developed, with Eno. It was released on record in 1998 to wide acclaim.
Fast-forward another ten years, when Cantaloupe Music released this live version of Music for Airports. By then the All-Stars had frequently performed the classic work at various venues, including the 2007 Bang on a Can Marathon in New York City, where the Village Voice's Rob Harvilla was there for the performance along with hundreds of fans, and had this to say:
"It was beautiful, and best enjoyed while lying flat on your back and staring straight up, through the palm trees and the sunroof to the deep night outside, with the neighboring, towering buildings overhead appearing to curve inward around you as breathy keyboards slowly gave way to meandering clarinet."
In 2015, the All-Stars finally had the opportunity to present the piece in an actual airport — at San Diego International's Terminal 2 — thus applying the original intention of Eno's music, which was to foster a mood of relaxation to counteract the tense, anxious atmosphere of air travel. In the All-Stars' interpretation, the overarching calm of Music for Airports is enhanced with touches of instrumentation behind and around its central six-note piano phrase. In the two sequences that follow the phrase, a choir of voices fades in and out against the sparest of sonic landscapes.
All songs performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars:
Maya Beiser - cello
Evan Ziporyn - clarinets (keyboard/samplers on 1/1)
Lisa Moore - piano/keyboards
Mark Stewart - guitar
Robert Black - bass
Steven Schick - percussion
