NAKED NEON
William Doerrfeld’s teasingly titled (Naked Men Music (1985) was one of the audience favorites in “Naked Neon,” a multimedia potpourri presented recently by CBE, a performance group consisting mostly of wind instrumentalists. (Naked Men Music also wowed the crowd at the New Music Chicago festival four years ago.) According to a program note, Doerrfeld has studied the lives of the Humbanee people of Africa. An acute observer, he’s cleverly taken elements from what must be a tribal rite and transposed them to the “civilized” confines of a concert space. By having a quartet of white men (in this case, music educators Russell Clark, George Flynn, Jeffrey Kust, and Philip Morehead) enact slight variations on that rite, he’s at once calling attention to the similarities and incongruencies between cultures. At first we’re amused by the (mock?) seriousness of the proceedings, then drawn to the intricacies of the chant rhythm. When everything comes to a halt, what had started as inspired silliness ends on a note of poignancy.
