Review: Julian Lage and Leo Kottke deliver a memorable night at the Vilar
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Julian Lage and Leo Kottke shared the bill for the first time in their careers Thursday night at the Vilar Performing Arts Center, and both presented spectacular, moving and entertaining sets.
Lage began his 60-minute solo with “Gardens” and “Day and Age,” two songs off of his 2015 solo album, “World’s Fair,” which he said started as a bit of a dare and terrified him — “and it still does.”
His personality came out both in his playing and talking to the audience between songs. At one point, he shook his arm, as if it were tired, showing his humor, which also emerged as he referenced songs and thanked the audience for supporting live music, commenting, “otherwise I’d be at home doing this (which is) very different.”
The majority of audience members’ heads bobbed in appreciation as Lage made the guitar sing, so to speak. Masterful fingerpicking and extraordinary technique combined with his animated facial and bodily expressions for a mesmerizing hour of acoustic guitar.
“Etude” combined elements of his previous records like “View with a Room” with an upcoming album he described as avant-garde, gospel-inspired and spiritual, imbued with “deep empathy and compassion and all the question marks we have as humans.”
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During intermission, one man in the audience aptly commented to his friends: “I heard the guy (Lage) was good, but that was unbelievable. It was like: ‘Here, let me show you everything I’ve got.'”
Along with their extraordinary guitar skills and warm personalities that make complex, instrumental music completely accessible and enjoyable, Lage and Kottke’s ability to transform an acoustic guitar into an expansive band — and even orchestral — sound is stunning. From soft melodies to percussion and hard-and-fast passages, both musicians imbued their solos with rich textures. They even made tuning their guitars sound beautiful.
Kottke sang four tunes, including “Sonora’s Death Row” and “From the Cradle to the Grave.” He intermingled them with instrumentals and charming storytelling about his daily life, from witnessing a cottage-cheese ball in a diner collapse to meeting friendly strangers who made all the difference when he quit college and hitchhiked across the nation to join the Navy. Throughout, his humor and humility emerged during these sometimes 5-minute stories, which covered the gamut, from making up words that already existed (though he didn’t know that at the time) to dogs passing gas.
His set was a bit more mellow than Lage’s more energetic solo, making the double-billed duo a wonderfully complementary pair. The audience clearly loved these two masters, evident from spontaneous, audible “wows” and praise to standing ovations. Lage and Kottke definitely delivered a memorable evening of music.
