Curt Sydnor's "Bach Artillerie" in Support of Studio Two Three

Make the familiar seem weird.
Make the weird seem familiar.
This simple equation is one of the most reliable ways for an artist to blow minds near and far. Head one direction, and everyday routine is reinvigorated with a spark of the imagination. Head the other, and hidden passageways become illuminated; magic previously unknown becomes intimate. Both the artist and the audience are offered the chance to see the world anew. It’s an act of transformation that permeates the piece I wrote about the Monuments show:

The monuments were forever altered because the moment the protestors’ paint hit their surface, each of them was transformed from a relic of an outdated and inherently misguided ideology to a living document reflecting the will of the people. They were instantaneously made relevant again.

The process is also at the core of (friend and longtime comrade) Curt Sydnor’s fascinating new album Bach Artillerie. Made in collaboration with Greg Saunier, the album is an absurdist take on the nine canons from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations and his Brandenburg concerto no. 5.

In music, a canon is a form in which two (or more) voices sing the same melodic line, but start at different times. A simple example is “Row, row, row your boat” - When the first voice gets to the second line “merrily down the stream” the next voice begins. Canon composition is based on math and pattern; driven by an internal sense of logic that can get incredibly complex. Canon is also the root word for canonical - which according to our boys at Merriam Webster is defined as:

conforming to a general rule or acceptable procedure : orthodox.

Math. Logic. Rules. Orthodox. Not necessarily words that a frequent reader of NNH would associate with this newsletter. Nor would one normally associate them with imaginative, perspective shifting art. But that’s precisely what makes Bach Artillerie so exciting. It isn’t either/ or. It’s both.

I was lucky enough to see Curt and Greg perform Bach Artillerie at 2220 Arts and Archives while he was on tour. It was one of the most energizing shows I’ve ever been to. Curt stood in front of an array of keyboards and synths; set up like the bridge of a ship on some psychedelic voyage through time and space. The sight of someone simultaneously playing two instruments with separate hands is, was, and forever will be, the coolest. Meanwhile, Greg attacked the drums in way that seemed like it was his first encounter with the instrument. Each different part of the kit was treated like raw material; sometimes to be hit with a drum stick, sometimes to be hit with a hand. Sometimes the drum head was waived in the air like a giant tambourine. Other times Greg’s beanie was incorporated as a dampener. Also, so, so cool. The performance felt way more like a Fluxus happening than a performance of music written 285 years ago (in the best way possible.)

But don’t get it twisted- This show wasn’t two dudes up there cosplaying avant-garde, or faking the funk. Curt is accomplished composer with graduate degrees in both classical and jazz piano performance; six albums under his own name; a recipient of recording grant from the Virginia Commission for the Arts; and plays organ at historic St. John's Church in Richmond, VA. Greg’s day job is getting radical as the drummer and founding member of the impossible to categorize, hugely influential indie rock band Deerhoof.

Richmond Monuments/ LA Monuments
After the show, knowing that Curt would be in LA for a few days, I suggested he see the Monuments show before it closed. I was excited to hear what a local would think of seeing his city’s homegrown resistance institutionally celebrated on the West Coast. I also knew he had composed his own chamber symphony, The Fall of Richmond which depicts Lincoln’s visit to Richmond in the final days of the Civil War. The show resonated with Curt in the exact way I had hoped. In his own words:

…impossible to describe the feeling of seeing these disgraced shards of Richmond’s Lost Cause laid out before me. As a kid, they loomed large in my imagination even as I learned to reject their false narrative. As an adult, I was there for a police riot at the Lee monument and watched my oldest child play on the edifice before it was dismantled and trucked away, to be replaced by non-committal nothing, at least for now…

That’s a whole lot of the past coming right up against the present. Right on, Curt. Now it's up to all of us to create what goes in its place.

One of the few critiques of the Monuments show was that it existed in the safety vacuum of Los Angeles’ predominately progressive politics and culture. That it's themes of power, history and revolution were somehow diluted on it's way across the country. But that take is as short sighted as the AI that will inevitably summarize it. You and I both know, there ain’t nowhere safe in 2026. As someone who also grew up in the South, but has called LA home for over a decade… I kindly invite any Angeleno who feels like they can view the twisted mess of the Civil War from an objective distance, to turn their gaze towards the empty plinths where monuments to Caesar Chavez once stood.

As long as heroic myth is privileged over people power, abusers-of-all-kind will continue to hide in plain sight. And you can bet your concert tickets that they'll be disguised as the guy whose going to save the day for the rest of us.

Speaking of which, whose in charge here?!?
Curt and Greg are artists of the highest order.
And in 2026, it is a vocation in turmoil. We work in a time filled with existential worry about what AI will mean for The Arts. And truth. And beauty. And everything else. But stick with history, and you'll see that there's always been a technological advancement lurking around the corner. Bach's Brandeburg Concerto was composed at a time when one of it's primary instruments, the harpsichord, was under siege by a controversial new piece of tech threatening to turn the music industry into a vulgar shit show. It was the piano.

If I find myself spiraling, I remind myself to think of AI as the most sophisticated and comprehensive mirror ever created. Like a telescope or a funhouse attraction its job is to reflect, amplify, and/ or distort information from the past. AI, no matter how genius it appears to be, relies on data points that already exist. It is aggregating; which is different than creating.

That takes imagination.

So even if things play out like James Cameron's most dystopian wet dream, and Earth is overrun with ruthlessly efficient thinking robots that have lasers in one hand and musical instruments in the other... You know what those motherf***ers won't be doing?

Combining chirpy midi keyboards with Fluxus-primitive drumming to make math music sound completely unique. Or linking childhood psyches between father and son because of an art exhibit at a museum far from home. Or reminiscing with me about lugging band equipment across NYC to get late night drinks after a gig; a memory that only 1 other person on the planet can confirm (who can be found here.) Or being a friend. Or a comrade. Or a collaborator.

Because that’s what artists do.

A call to action, commonly known by the initialism CTA, is a strategic marketing tool designed to spur an immediate response from an audience, guiding them toward a specific action.

A call to action, commonly known by the initialism CTA, is a strategic marketing tool designed to spur an immediate response from an audience, guiding them toward a specific action.

NNH began with the (perhaps naive) hope that it could be of service to folks who needed it. I wasn't exactly sure who that meant- Was it the potential readership? The Mutual Aid groups that would be featured in each post? Or other creative types (equally fed up with the constant "me at the center" paradigm required by our Tech Overlords) looking for a place to get weird and do some good.

SO, if you're out there- whomever you may be- Let me know. Leave a comment. Click a link. Tell a friend. Pitch an idea. Do anything to feel less alone in the world.

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