Brian Eno: Music for Airports

Music for Airports features a double-bill from Dutch filmmaker Frank Scheffer. In the title piece, which premiered at 1999's Holland Festival, Scheffer's abstract video imagery provides the visuals for New York's six-piece Bang on a Can performance of Brian Eno's 1978 ambient music album (this version was also released on CD in 1998). Divided into four parts, each section features an arrangement by a different member: Michael Gordon, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, and Evan Ziporyn. Since the musicians themselves remain off-screen—viewers are instead treated to out-of-focus shots of passengers and airplanes arriving and departing from Amsterdam's Schiphol airport—the end result feels more like an art installation than a concert. As for the music itself, Eno explained in the liner notes to the original record that “it must be as ignorable as it is interesting,” which about sums it up. The second Scheffer film—2001's In the Ocean—takes a wide-ranging look at contemporary avant-garde/minimalist music, focusing on the story of Bang on a Can, while offering commentary from peers and influences such as Eno, John Cage, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Elliot Carter, and Louis Andriessen. Music samples and scenes of bustling Big Apple street life are interspersed throughout. Modern music collections will want to consider—more for the informative documentary than the lackluster title piece—but this is optional elsewhere. Aud: C, P. (K. Fennessy)