Fortissimo (Clem Snide, Orange Opera, Metavari)

“This Fortissimo show is just a one-off for us. I have to give most of the credit to a certain Matt. The guy from One Lucky Guitar – it was his idea. It was him that was in touch with me and your Philharmonic. He said they were looking for something different to do. And man, I’m so excited to spend some time with my Fort Wayne peeps. Fort Wayne is always so nice to me and Clem Snide. We have other little pockets, but Fort Wayne is definitely one of the most special places for us.” - Eef Barzelay (Clem Snide)

Fortissimo, an ambitious locally produced concert event that’s all the buzz as of late, pairs The Fort Wayne Philharmonic with locals Metavari and The Orange Opera, as well as national indie rock studs Clem Snide, for a night of live music. Or, as Metavari member and One Lucky Guitar Art Director Nate Utesch puts it: “a symphonic collision of the precise and the unbound.”

Why classical music? Why indie rock? As usual, Matt Kelley, the event’s de facto curator (and One Lucky Guitar owner), has an answer.

“We were thinking, who are bigger music snobs – classical fans or indie-rock hipsters? They’re both so precious, so elite, so judgmental, so … incorrigible,” Kelley explained. “Well, the only way to figure it out once and for all was to bring ‘em all together for one knock-down, drag-out concert of epic proportions. May the snobbiest snobs be left standing.”

Really, though, Kelley is just a longtime Clem Snide junkie who wanted to do a project with some friends he met a few years ago.

“I’ve been on The Phil’s board of directors since 2008 and OLG has done a lot of marketing work with them and really loved it. As we’d talk about The Phil in the One Lucky Guitar office, and see some of the great non-traditional things it was doing (such as the Ben Folds show and writing arrangements for Heather Headley’s national tour with orchestras), we started daydreaming about The Phil playing original music with some Fort Wayne bands,” Kelley told me in a recent interview. “So we put together some early ideas for it. Then I got to serve on The Phil’s Audience Development Task Force, and I brought our idea to one of the group’s first brainstorming sessions. That was December 2009 – 18 months ago. And they loved the idea and wanted to explore how it might work.”

Enter Eef Barzelay (pictured right with Gemma Hayes), a songwriter who many consider to be one of the best of his generation. A man who, for reasons know one can quite nail down, shares a magnetic love with the rockers of Fort Wayne, having played memorable shows here several times over the last four years.

“This is my first time doing anything like this. I had no background with orchestral stuff. I came to music through rock n’ roll. I can’t pour over some charts, ya know. I’m a nitty, gritty dude when it comes to music,” Barzelay told me when asked about playing with the Phil. “I just picked two songs and sent them to [the Philharmonic's Associate Conductor] Brad Thachuk. He’s going to write out all the orchestrations for those songs. So I’m just letting him do his thing.”

While working on committees and planning this event, it would seem Kelley has become quite the fan of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, singing their praises in a recent OLG blog post.

“I think that The Phil probably arrives in people’s minds with some outdated, preconceived notions about being stuff-y or all buttoned up,” Kelley told me when asked about his experiences with the Phil. “Turns out, that’s not really the case. They want to do things in new ways and be a really progressive orchestra. Bradley has scored original, symphonic accompaniments for each artist’s songs. He is every bit the beautiful, artistic, slightly eccentric madman you’d hope for. He’s tremendous.”

As far as picking the right bands to work with Thachuk and his orchestra goes, Clem was a no-brainer for Kelley, a devout fan who came on board with the band’s string-heavy Your Favorite Music.

“What I like about Clem Snide being a part of this is that it sets it up from the very beginning to be two local bands and one national band. After the first Down the Line event, I always wished we had gone with this model – all local and one national. We just couldn’t get that to happen with that event. If Fortissimo is a success and becomes an annual thing, we’re already set up to continue this framework. It’s pretty fun to daydream about the bands that might be able to play in this context.”

For those not familiar with Down the Line, it’s a popular annual concert event at the historic Embassy Theatre that Kelley and his OLG crew had much to do with until this year. With this new event, Fortissimo, one has to wonder if Kelley has jumped the Embassy ship in favor of his new idea. Not the case.

“Well, there’s been some talk that Fortissimo is what OLG is doing now that we’re not doing Down the Line. That’s not really the case; Fortissimo started 18 months ago. But I do feel that Down the Line showed that something really wild – local bands playing on a large, non-traditional stage – could actually happen, be a success, and be pretty great.”

When asked how the event planners selected the local bands, Kelley had much to say.

“With both bands you hear these tremendous, cinematic things going on with the melodies and songwriting. They both seemed like perfect fits,” Kelley (pictured right) said. “And also, very importantly, they’re both ambitious and open-minded enough to really get into an uncomfortable, brand-new situation and bring some real energy to it.”

Kelley’s co-worker, Utesch, also had some thoughts.

“Not only can Metavari not read music, we don’t write out or notate any of our music. On a good day, we play it exactly the same twice,” Utesch joked in a recent blog post where he talked about working with the Phil. “When we write, it’s a massive spill of emotion in a noisy basement. We’re lucky if we get a shard of salvageable material because most evenings we’d rather stare at each other’s faces and talk shop. [We've] spent about a half decade staring at each others fingers and taking pictures of chord positions so we don’t forget them. Fortissimo will stretch us to play in stricter parameters than we ever have. And we’re excited to see how close we can come to messing that up.”

Anyone who has seen a Metavari set knows that there’s not much to worry about, as the post-rock band we’ve all come to know and love has always been quite sharp and creative – not to mention open to big ideas that push them forward.

As for the Snide, well, Fortissimo is just one of many things Barzelay has been doing lately to, as he told me, “embrace the new paradigm.”

“There’s a lot in my tank right now. I’ve been making weird videos. Whatever weird content I happen upon. I’ve been doing this stuff for three, four, five years as something to amuse myself,” Barzelay said. “Also, I just did a Kickstarter-funded six-song EP of Journey covers. That worked out nicely. So, yeah, I’m looking for weird little things to do right now. Trying to function in a different way. The new paradigm – I’m trying to embrace it. The old way of making a consigned record for a label, then touring, isn’t working for me these days. So I’m looking into new things to do these days.”

In addition to the work OLG and the Phil have down, one might also credit the timing of Barzelay’s current state of creative openness to this event happening. In addition to Fortissimo, video projects, cover EPs and possible vinyl reissues of early Clem Snide records that have been out-of-print for a few years, Barzelay has also been recording original songs for fans for $100 or so a pop. Before that, he was recording individual fan-curated live EPs for something like $15 a pop. Kelley, of course, ordered an EP or two of his own.

Long known for his low-key approach to rock n’ roll stardom, I couldn’t help but wonder how Barzelay would feel if he knew just how big of a deal Fortissimo has become here, locally. Kelley, known for his elaborate ideas and sound execution, has created quite the ordeal.

“We’re gonna try to get some national PR, as I think there are two stories here. First off, it’s just going to be an incredibly terrific, wildly creative evening of music. Secondly, what does it say about an artistic community that has the bravery and the sense of adventure to bring together two ends of the musical spectrum in Fort Wayne for a single concert? It’s an incredible statement about the progressive, collaborative nature of artists, musicians and all of us as music fans. I mean, I think there’s a real story here for NPR Music to come in and do a report, you know? This shit isn’t happening in Spokane.”

If you’re not able to make the Fortissimo show (or just count yourself an uber-Snide fan), be sure to check out The Orange Opera, Metavari and Eef Barzelay at the Tiger Room on Saturday, July 9, where they’ll be playing encore sets, sans the Phil.

“For this weekend, Fort Wayne will belong to me,” Barzelay joked in closing. “Fort Wayne is mine. To manipulate and entertain, all at the same time.”