Romanticism, for guitarist Nels Cline, “speaks to me to the idea of transformation and the idea of surrender.” It’s “a vast topic” for him, he says, something he has thought about throughout a varied career, of which rock stardom with the band Wilco is just one part. Citing torch songs, flamenco, tango, and Goth, he adds, “Romanticism to me is ultimately about a kind of exuberant life force which I think is heightened by a sense of the inevitability of death.”
Cline will have a chance to revisit his theories on Friday, April 15 at Oakland’s Paramount Theatre, where he will take part in an evening of performance with theOakland East Bay Symphony Orchestra, billed as, “The Height of Romanticism.” After the orchestra performs Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony and Bernard Herrmann’s “Suite from Vertigo” (the Alfred Hitchcock film), Cline and bassist Trevor Dunn will join their Nels Cline Singers band mate, drummer Scott Amendola, for the premier of “Fade To Orange,” a piece Amendola was commissioned to compose for the symphony’s New Voices/New Vistas program.
“Fade To Orange” was written with the Singers in mind. “I know I could put any idea in front of them and they’re going to understand what I’m going for, “says Amendola “and that’s exactly what you want.” Cline and Dunn will both be plugging in, which should make the collaboration with the orchestra particularly interesting. Asked if he sees the piece as a blending of specific genres, Amendola says, “What I really want from everybody is for them to get into my genre, to get out of their own box and just listen to what I have to say compositionally…there’s a groove section, there’s some more impressionistic sort of quiet sections, they are some nosier sections and there’s some really loud sections.”
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