Saw Marisa Monte’s sold out show at the Beacon last night. (Full disclosure: I have a duet/collaboration with her on one of her new CDs.) She is a Brazilian artist, with one of the most beautiful voices in the world, who stages her shows as if they are art events. The sound was impeccable (the musicians and Marisa all were using in-ear monitors, which allowed the acoustic instruments: cavaquinho, bassoon (!), violin, cello, acoustic guitars, etc. to not bleed into one another via the usual stage monitor speakers.)
Marisa has released 2 CDs simultaneously recently — one a record of acoustic sambas — new and old — and the other more “electronic”, where keyboards and programming dominate. Emblematic of a generation that doesn’t want to lose its culture, its past, but is at the same time contemporary, Marisa’s 2 CDs make that schizophrenia concrete, in a good way. The samba CD just won a Latin Grammy.
Anyway, the show of hers that I saw a few years ago was staged in collaboration with artist Ernesto Neto, who has an exhibit in a gallery here now. He’s known for gauzy tent-like structures that feel like a white hazy version of the inside of some creature. I recall the whole stage on that tour was a kind of tent.
On this tour she wanted to be integrated more with the band, for starters. In most cases, during rehearsals a singer faces the band, standing or sitting in their midst, so that everyone can see and hear one another. Then, as rehearsals turn into “show”, the singer usually turns around and steps downstage, with his or her back to the band — physically and symbolically separate, slightly distant and “above” the musicians. Marisa wanted to find a way to retain the integrated rehearsal feeling, to ask why not let that be on stage and why assume the singer has to be out front.
The typical setting for this kind of samba band would be in someone’s house, backyard, or around a table at the beach, with beers and comings and goings. Like a country or folk music gathering up north here — which would also be in a living room, a porch, patio, around a campfire picnic table with beers and maybe tequila, if one is in Texas. That’s what Marisa wanted to present, capture and preserve — so with her manager she began to devise a staging that would reflect that.
For much of this show she was in the center of the musicians, mid-stage, on a platform that rose up and down from time to time. The musicians closest to the audience were the violinist, cello and bassoon players — but the lighting, all of which was shades of white, privileged Marisa, so it wasn’t like she was trying to hide back there.
There were set elements, which I suspect were added later by the artists and designers (one of whom is a film director — the lighting was very movie-like): minimal slabs that moved slowly back and forth and lit up on one side, a massive slab suspended overhead, almost as large as the entire band, that glowed on its big surface, cranes that moved over the band with film lights clustered at one end, panels with video screens built in and even a robot-driven “moon” — a huge glowing cloth sphere that moved right to left behind the band supported by a little robot vehicle.
There was none of the usual pop band lighting; almost all the light came from lighting instruments visible on the stage — only occasionally would a pin spot from above pick out Marisa, and sometimes just her face. No colors or vari lights, no flashing pulses of light — all very “natural” but very theatrical at the same time.
Photos by Renato Lopes:
