In Concert: Nels Cline

About the Performance

Guitar explorer Nels Cline is best known these days as the lead guitarist in the band Wilco. His recording and performing career — spanning jazz, rock, punk and experimental — is well into its fourth decade, with over 200 recordings, including at least 30 for which he is leader. Cline has received many accolades including Rolling Stone anointing him as both one of 20 “new guitar gods” and one of the top 100 guitarists of all time.

Nels Cline’s Consentrik Quartet, a Brooklyn-based ensemble (born in Crown Heights Brooklyn in summer 2019), consists of Ingrid Laubrock (tenor & soprano saxophones), Chris Lightcap (acoustic bass), Tom Rainey (drums), and Nels Cline on electric guitar. The repertoire consists of pieces Nels wrote during the pandemic and a hefty helping of spontaneous improvisation. For those who need categorical/generally-accepted genres, “free jazz”, “folk jazz”, and “backwards + forwards jazz” could work

Says Nels about his performance at Fotografiska:

“When art & music gripped me at an early age, thanks mainly to my parents’ admiration and respect for such things, I don’t think I really differentiated between “art” (visual art) and music in a defined, codified manner at all. What seemed apparent to me was that a kind of magic, a heightened sense of life/existence was present in these realms. This transformed me and led to my inevitable involvement in music, though a connection to the visual aspects of artistic expression never diminished. As I learned and experienced more and more of what we might term artistic expression, the distinction between the various artistic disciplines still never mattered much to me; this in spite of our world’s insistence on defining and codifying such distinctions. So here you are/I am, in a space dedicated to the visual medium of photography – something I have invested considerable interest in over the last many years and from which I draw inspiration on an almost daily basis. I humbly ask that you look and enjoy as a youngster might, as well as a grownup might. Let these images tantalize and confound you, just as I hope listening to music (my music?) might also do. Wonder, imagine, create and be nourished”.

photo credit: Sean Ono Lennon