Decisions, decisions

The Gospel Fest, RIPO, Oval, and Tortoise

by Michael Caito

Tortoise

The choices on Saturday, May 9 are overwhelming -- the third annual Gospel Fest at the Providence PAC,or the closing night of the Philharmonic's Classical Series season at Vets. But the make-plans-now event the night before is Mendelssohn's Elijah, featuring the Providence Singers and the Back Bay Chorale. With more than 200 voices and the 51-piece Mendelssohn Festival Orchestra, this collaboration between the Providence and Boston-based groups marks the fruition of well over a year's labor, its production devouring two-thirds of the 26-year-old Providence choral group's annual budget--a large portion given their four-performance season. It goes up at the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul next Friday and again in Harvard's Sanders Theatre on May 10, and marks the most ambitious event of artistic director Julian Wachner's tenure so far, as leader of the Singers since 1996. Dr. Wachner also serves as Music Director of the 120-voice Back Bay Chorus. Soloists include soprano Gui Ping Deng, mezzo-soprano Gail Fuller, tenor Mark Nemeskal and baritone David Murray, who among them have sung with most of America's most noted professional ensembles. Mendelssohn's work -- a smash in 1840s Victorian England, which embraced both its piety and requisitely proper treatment of earthquakes, infernos and the like -- also re-elevated public interest in oratorio as a musical form to a degree only surpassed by the halcyon days of Handel, whose choral writing spurred Mendelssohn, and Bach, his mentor in counterpoint.

Whatever his aspirations (or emotional limitations set by those rock-stolid Victorians), Mendelssohn's Elijah endures, despite its demanding length, and the sheer spectacle of 250-plus performers in the Cathedral is verry tempting. So Friday night is oratorio night next week. Info at 521-7193.

FIRST-RATE MATE. Maine mariner Gordon Bok was first mate on the sloop Clearwater's maiden voyage, trusted to direct the furling and unfurling of canvas by owner Pete Seeger. Over time, Bok's songs of the ocean, whether concerning upper New England waters or the more northerly shores of Canada's maritime provinces, have endeared him to swelling ranks of folk fans. Now he's a mate of another sort, with Celtic harpist Carol Rohl, who totes her 86-year-old Irish harp to Stone Soup Saturday to join her husband in a remarkable tandem. A transplanted midwesterner, Rohl's evocative work is as likely to embrace comely Emerald Isle traditions as mellifluous Latin American folk songs, so the duo, with Bok's sea-seasoned canon at the fore, are sure to cover many leagues. Saturday next it's Australia's turn, with the equally-exemplary Eric Bogle, so the Soup in Gloria Dei's Undercroft is officially on a tear. Advice to occasional Soupers worried about parking with the Maul construction:fret not and park upstream, nearer (or across) Smith Street, and all shall be ducky.

BEAT THE POST-ROCK CLOCK.Tuesday's Oval/Tortoise show at Lupo's is one of those under-hyped concerts that may astound the under-prepared while making mincemeat of the musical performance status quo. It marks the debut American tour of Germany's Markus Popp, who besides being the entirety of Oval (on this tour at least), will be typically armed with a computer whose screen is projected overhead, enabling the audience to witness the construction of "alien electronica" wreaking havoc on traditional (read: confining) cornerstones of melody and rhythm without abandoning them to an atonal train wreck. Ambient wallpaper it's not, nor is it deliberately assaultive, and Oval's humor, evident on 1996's phenomenal 94Discont (Thrill Jockey) is a welcome respite, even if you only get the joke later. It's furthered by their oft-quoted master plan of forcing their own obsolescence by enabling listeners to easily obtain enough software to create their own Oval records. If that sounds a bit precious as manifesto, remember how other artistic expressers strive to demolish that fourth wall, and rejoice in the fact that when listening to Oval, you're starting with the premise that the listener has total control of three walls at least, with the fourth being negotiable, downloadable and delicious. If all electronica purveyors went like-a this, they'd be less susceptible to deserved catcalls of "trendsters" and more adept at cutting wider swaths of variegated emotion, however CPU-accelerated it might be. Tortoise excite with their ability to fuse jazz, lounge, Krautrock, space funk and even folk in their mesmerizing, tasty Chicago chocolate cake. Gamelan-xylo-guitar craziness abounds, sometimes imperturbable, sometimes crashing. They're art-rock with chops and smiles without sneers, philosopher-mermen, waxing and waning like some lunar cyclist rushing to get back . . . to the starting point. Droning? Sometimes, but with an ability to humanize even at their most esoteric and repetitive. That's what, in the end, makes this show a winner: when you think profound feeling can't possibly get farther away, or more impersonal, you find it in your shirt pocket, right over your heart. Wild, Tuesday at Lupo's.

Chan's hosts an sterling weekend of jazz vocalists, including Boston's Donna Byrne, whose most recent album Walking On Air (Arbor) findsthe alto teaming with Herb Pomeroy, backed by a magical all-star band of pianist Dave McKenna, guitarist Gray Sargent, bassist Marshall Wood and percussionist Jim Gwinn. Byrne's gig Saturday follows an evening with Antonia Bennett, whose pop Tony knows a thing or three 'bout crooning. It's been 18 years since her debut with Count Basie at the ripe old age of four, and since then her Berklee-honed dancing and acting talents, incorporated into live sets, have impressed from Maxim's to Ryles to the Melody Tent on the Cape. Her debut at Chan's is on Friday.

MORE SHOWS. The Providence Bookstore Café features the Jack Menna Trio Saturday, with Delta Clutch proffering tracks from Hard Luck Machine (Blackberry) at the Green Room same night. Dropdead and Landed hit the Met early on Sunday (4 p.m.) and Asbury Park's finest Evelyn Forever headline the Living Room on May 3. Dave Howard and the High Rollers get a jump on Cinco de Mayo on Uno de Mayo at the Cactus Grille; they're in mixdown stage with a new Rollers record featuring Young Neal, recorded with Joe Moody at Danger, and while we're talking quality blues Duke Robillard, now living in Kentucky, pays a hometown visit Saturday night at the Call. The Bevis Frond headline the Century Lounge on Tuesday with Medicine Ball, both bands fresh off appearances at the second Terrastock Festival in San Francisco.

A gigantic get-well wish from everyone on Chestnut Street to Clay Osborne, recovering from recent surgery. They took his legs, but no one touches the voice that touches us. Peace, Clay.