Not Your Ordinary Marching Band....

By VIVIEN SCHWEITZER
A casual observer at Lincoln Center on Wednesday evening might have wondered what on earth was going on when a large, eclectic crowd made a frenzied dash across 65th Street, following a ragtag band of musicians who had careened across the road like deranged pied pipers.

Asphalt Orchestra on Broadway in a Lincoln Center Out of Doors concert on Wednesday night that began at Alice Tully Hall and included a solo from the reflecting pool.

The moblike scene occurred during a performance by the rambunctious Asphalt Orchestra, an avant-garde 12-piece marching band presented here by Lincoln Center Out of Doors. This quirky ensemble, the brainchild of Bang on a Can, marches to an iconoclastic beat, eschewing typical brass-band fare for funky arrangements and inventive new works.

The event began in a comparatively sedate fashion, with the audience seated on the steps in front of Alice Tully Hall, as the ensemble entered from 65th Street and paraded up and down the triangular staircase on the corner of the plaza. The musicians stopped in front of the hall for their first work, “Carlton,” by Stew and Heidi Rodewald. Listeners stayed seated despite the toe-tapping rhythms and ear-catching tunes. At a few points the band shouted out the letters of the song title.

There was an element of performance art throughout the approximately 30-minute show. The musicians played with virtuosic flair while twisting, turning and executing moves choreographed by Susan Marshall and Mark DeChiazza, no easy feat when dealing with complex metric shifts and carrying bulky percussion and brass instruments as large as a sousaphone.

Complete on  >>  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/06/arts/music/06asphalt.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss