Courtesy of the artist
Percussionist Rich O’Donnell often seems as much magician as musician. Four years on, people are still talking about AQurld Waves, an above and underwater concert comprising hydroacoustic instruments, theatrical lighting, and a tai chi performance by O’Donnell’s wife and artistic partner, Anna Lum. It can be hard to draw an audience in St. Louis, but 450 people showed up—in swimsuits—to watch and listen.
More recently, the pair collaborated with Kevin Harris and Chad Eivins on an interactive sound-and-projection environment, Octarrarium; it hosted concerts and an Alternative Reality Pancake Brunch. Both events were produced under the umbrella of HEARDing Cats, the org O’Donnell and Lum co-founded in 2009 to keep St. Louis “strange and wonderful.” And O’Donnell’s been doing that for more than 60 years. He spent 43 years as principal percussionist with the St. Louis Symphony, directs the Electronic Music Studio at Washington University, and invented instruments like the sphrahng, aqua-lips, koto-veen, and tubalum.
On February 26, local musicians gather to pay tribute on the occasion of his 80th birthday with a concert at The Sheldon Concert Hall. The show will sample from O’Donnell’s decades-long career, including his MikroTimre 1 solo for Amplified TamTam (which premiered on January 1, 1970), plus a performance of virtual drumming with Wii Remote and Nunchuck, accompanied by video artist Casper McElwee’s 3D Anaglyph videos and Lum’s poetry. O’Donnell will also perform on SeeSaw drums and an electronic instrument called the KYMA as part of the Symprov Trio, a free-improv group of current and former SLSO musicians, including violinist Asako Kuboki and trombonist Timothy Myers. Other surprises won’t be revealed till the night of the concert—and you know that whatever those surprises may be, they will be both strange and wonderful. $20, 7:30 p.m., February 26.
