Glenn Branca writes symphonies for guitars — really loud guitars. It’s music for large spaces, and not simply for volume’s sake, though even the most ambitious and colorful of this New York City–based composer’s works rock like hell. Branca’s music requires room for the sound of his instruments to swell up and create cumulus clouds of overtones that hang over the notes and chords and generate completely different sonic effects.
When he debuted his Symphony No. 6, the aptly titled Angel Choirs at the Gates of Hell, at Harvard’s high-ceilinged Sanders Theatre in the late 1980s, the result was astonishing. Those angels could be heard singing over the audience and his Glenn Branca Ensemble, as well as the peal of horns, hordes of buzzing bees, and the howl of the wind. It seemed like sonic magic, albeit achieved through his intensive studies of string vibration, amplification, guitar pick-ups, performance-space dynamics, and textural composition.
So it’s surprising that Branca, who is now seven more symphonies into his career (his most recent was written for 100 guitars and debuted at the former World Trade Center), is playing a pair of small clubs in the area. Next Friday, he’ll appear at T.T. the Bear’s in Central Square; the following night he’ll be at AS220 in downtown Providence.
For this Emerson College grad, it’s something of a return to his early career roots, when he led the avant-rock bands Theoretical Girls and the Static (both seminal acts in the late-’70s NYC No Wave scene that spawned, most famously, Branca acolytes Sonic Youth). But the new four-piece group Branca-Bloor he’s formed with his wife, Reg Bloor, don’t abandon the swirling sonic universe he’s spent the last 25 years mastering. " I’m playing the harmonics guitar, which is a weird doubled-backwards-upside-down guitar that I developed, " he explains. " I’ve played the harmonics guitar for many years, but it’s been this big piece of plywood on a table. A friend suggested I turn it into a regular rock-and-roll instrument that I could wear around my neck. So I took two guitars and screwed them together. There are pick-ups on both sides of the strings. It doesn’t need a resonant space. I can rely on the high harmonics always being there, wherever we play. "
But love played as much a role as his new instrument in getting Branca to retake the stage with a guitar rather than his baton. He and Bloor met at one of his gigs and exchanged a few words. Shortly thereafter she contacted him via e-mail to discuss the cyberpunk novels he was then selling via his Web site (www.glennbranca.com). But since she hadn’t introduced herself by name at the performance, " I assumed this person named Reg was some English drunk. When ‘he’ wrote that ‘he’d’ be in New York one day, I invited ‘him’ over to maybe pick up some books and thought we could talk about the cyberpunk authors whose writing I love. And ‘she’ showed up. "
Not only did Branca discover that Reg is a woman, he also learned she’s a " fabulous guitarist. She’d gone to Berklee for a couple years and had a band in Boston called Twitcher. She sent me couple of their CDs and I flipped. When we went down to my basement and jammed the first time, we clicked so well it was just unbelievable. It became obvious we were going to do a band together. " Six months later, in 2000, they married. Branca and Bloor have done a handful of improv shows in London and in Los Angeles, where they recorded music for the film The Mothman Prophecies. They also did a collaborative piece with David Bowie for Expo 2000 in Germany.
They’ve not yet incorporated songs with vocals into the repertoire of Branca-Bloor, whose line-up is completed by bassist Ryan Walsh and drummer Tony Cenicola (the latter by day a New York Times staff photographer). Nonetheless, Branca insists that " we’re definitely a rock band, and all of this has reignited my interest in playing the guitar on stage, which is something I haven’t done in many years. "
Branca-Bloor play T.T. the Bear’s Place, 10 Brookline Street in Central Square, next Friday, May 9 (call 617-492-BEAR), and AS220, 115 Empire Street in Providence, next Saturday, May 10 (call 401-831-9327).
BY TED DROZDOWSKI
