Culture

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CULTURE

[STREAMS]

Video Thrills

e Sinkhole and ACAV team up for bonkers streaming series featuring St. Louis acts

Written by DANIEL HILL

Matt Stuttler says his experience recording for his band’s upcoming streamed show — one that saw him surrounded by hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stage and lighting equipment on a recent afternoon — was unlike anything he’s ever done before.

As the guitarist and vocalist of St. Louis garage-punk act Shitstorm, as well as the owner of the Carondelet venue the Sinkhole, Stuttler is far more used to performing in the corner of a dimly lit bar or perhaps the basement of a dilapidated punk house than on a topnotch professional soundstage. But thanks to an exceptionally odd con ence o nli ely e ents chief among them the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic — here he was.

“It was really neat,” Stuttler says. “Personally, I hadn’t been on a lighting stage quite like that. We worked with in-ear monitors, which is also a new thing for myself and my bandmates. Everything involved was professional, so we adapted from our usual playing on the oor in a p n ar routine, and we found out that it turned out to be really cool to be able to hear yourself and all that.”

It’s part of an ongoing trend in which DIY St. Louis bands with names like, well, “Shitstorm” are invited to perform shows to be streamed online with the backing and full support of the local Arch City Audio Visual production team — a group that, in normal times, is more used to lending its talents to such huge productions as that of El Monstero and the like. In recent months, St. Louis doom metal act Fister and the similarly local but dissimilar in every other way Le’Ponds have also stepped onto that soundstage for shows that have been professionally lighted, fil ed and edited y the gro p before being put online for fans to view. It’s an incredible twist on the livestreaming model most bands have been relegated to as live events remain on hold — one that breathes new life into the concept by allowing artists to perform with a level of production that would otherwise be unheard of for many of them.

The latest iteration of this is the “I Watched Music on the Internet” series of events, presented by the Sinkhole and ACAV. That series will see four nights of music over the course of the next month: Shitstorm, Glory & Perfection and Electric Toothbrush Sisters on March 21; Choir Vandals, Cara Louise and the River Kittens on March 28; 18andCounting, Shady Bug and Jr. Clooney on April 4; and the Lion’s Daughter’s record release event with Hell Night on April 11.

Stuttler, who curated the lineup, says that one of the members of ACAV’s team contacted him after wrapping up the Le’Ponds show.

“So Chris Keith, member of local punk band Maximum Effort, reached out to me,” he explains. “Maximum Effort, of course, had done record releases and stuff at Sinkhole; I’ve booked their band for years. So him and [ACAV coowner] Robert Scahill wanted to do a series with a venue to copromote something, and Chris tho ght o the in hole first and asked if I’d be down for it. And I was. And then we started putting together the lineup, drawing from bands that have been a part of something that the Sinkhole has done or played shows there, but also bands that we felt would benefit ro getting the prod ct o this video, this high-quality professional video that maybe they didn’t have access to prior.”

According to Chris Keith, who says his role at the company is that of event producer — he jokes, “it’s basically a title that they give you when they like you but you don’t know how to do anything” — ACAV got the idea to host local acts for streams in a professionally produced setting shortly after the pandemic began. It would take a few months of sorting out logistics, many related to pandemic lockdowns and restrictions, before they’d be able to get everything off the ground, but by November the production company had already done three wellreceived streams with local juggernaut Story of the Year.

From there, they wondered, what next? y first tho ght was ister and that turned out to be great,” Keith says. “And from there I wanted to go in the opposite direction, so I found out about this local act Le’Ponds and I thought that would be a perfect followup for Fister. And after that one was done, I suggested maybe just going in a different direction altogether, and instead of working with a band maybe working with a venue. And I spoke with Matt Stuttler and he agreed to do it, so we went to just picking out what it was we were gonna do and kind of piecing it together from there.”

Stuttler got to work putting together a lineup. He says he deliberately chose acts that would complement one another, and many that he thought were on the rise or otherwise worthy of highlighting.

“Night three is 18andCounting, Shady Bug and Jr. Clooney, which have shared bills in the past in some form such as the RFT fest, or spotlights with KDHX or something,” he says. “I felt like that community of people, bringing those three bands together for one night would be a cool thing to see. And the same thing with night two, Cara Louise, River Kittens and Choir Vandals — all three acts which I think are pretty high profile a ing a na e for themselves inside and outside St. Louis. And then night one, my band Shitstorm, which Chris really wanted me to include so I obliged, with Glory & Perfection, which is a new project from members of Bug Chaser, Dracula and Hoonbag Moonswag, which is a hootenanny of sorts, a country Hee-Haw style show with mini skits and stuff. So this will be their debut, this show. And also Electric Toothbrush Sisters, which is Nick Zengling from Maximum Effort and his daughter Nina as a duo that’s really, really cool, and the production for that turned out really awesome, too.”

Following those three nights

e Electric Toothbrush Sisters take full advantage of the ACAV setup. | CHRIS KEITH

[STRINGS]

St. Louis Symphony Resumes Live Shows

Written by DANIEL HILL

After a months-long pause due to exploding COVID-19 numbers, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra has announced that it will resume live concerts at Powell Hall (718 North Grand Boulevard, 314-534-1700) for its spring season.

The in-person concerts will take place from March 26 through May 15, and will go forward in a socially distanced fashion with a limited capacity. Only 300 tickets will be available per performance, priced between $25 and $50, and each show will last an hour with no intermission.

Masks will also be required for all attendees, Powell Hall staff and the orchestra’s string musicians, in an attempt to avoid the spread of coronavirus.

According to a press release, highlights of the spring season will include: • Music Director Stéphane Denève leads five weeks of chamber orchestra concerts at Powell Hall, leading the SLSO

Welcome back, SLSO. | VIA ST. LOUIS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

in works across genre and time including works by J.S. Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, TJ Cole, Aaron Copland, Arthur Honegger, Ester Mägi, Felix Mendelssohn, W.A. Mozart, Arvo Pärt, Sergei Prokofiev, Camille Saint-Saëns, Dmitri Shostakovich, Richard Strauss, and Igor Stravinsky. • Stephanie Childress makes her debut as SLSO Assistant Conductor, leading works by Sally Beamish, Benjamin Britten, and Antonín Dvorák in concerts April 9-11 and conducting the SLSO again April 16-18 in works by Luigi Boccherini, W.A. Mozart, and Ottorino Respighi. She also makes her SLSO debut as a soloist in Bach’s Double Violin Concerto, March 26-28.

• SLSO Conductor Laureate Leonard Slatkin returns to the lead the SLSO April 23-25 in works by Benjamin Britten, Alberto Ginastera, and Maurice Ravel. • Five SLSO musicians are featured soloists during the spring: violinists Kristin Ahlstrom, Celeste Golden Boyer, Xiaoxiao Qiang, Erin Schreiber, and violist Shannon Farrell Williams.

The SLSO will also continue offering digital concerts, recorded in front of a live audience in the fall, for those who are not yet comfortable venturing out into the world (or, even, for those who are simply extremely comfortable taking in some music at home). Additionally, the organization will offer an expanded collection of educational resources including its popular Soundlab series, a fourpart digital affair that teaches kids about the science of sound.

Even in the context of a press release, the excitement those in the organization have to be able to perform in front of a live audience again is palpable (note the liberal use of exclamation points).

“‘Retrouvailles’ is one of the most beautiful French words to me,” SLSO Music Director Stéphane Denève says in a statement. “It perfectly describes the happiness of being together again, after too long an interval! At last, we are indeed able to welcome our dear audience safely back at Powell Hall. What a joy to reunite our family, including our Conductor Laureate Leonard Slatkin and also the exciting addition of Stephanie Childress, our new Assistant Conductor! What a thrill to share altogether the power of live music anew! Music is a precious balm for these times and its essential resounding gives me hope for the bright future that lies ahead.”

All of the shows in the spring season will be recorded by the SLSO’s new highdefinition camera system, and each will be put online at a later date — so even if you can’t catch them live, you can bet you’ll be able to stream them down the road.

For tickets for the live performances, more info about Soundlab or streams of previous concerts, visit slso.org. n

will be metal act the Lion’s Daughter’s record release, Stuttler explains, and pairing them with longtime cohorts Hell Night just makes sense.

“They’re building a custom setup for that night,” Stuttler says. “But each set has a little bit of variance because of the light show, the color and the moods and stuff.”

That lighting work will come via ACAV’s Kevin Kwater and Gerry Dintelman, the latter of who was recently profiled y the trade publication Projection Lights & Stage News for his work on Fister’s event. The rest of the team is rounded out by Keith and co-owners Robert Scahill and Michael Barton.

The production company is in this for the same reason the Sinkhole is: to help local artists during an unprecedented time, and also to get the word out about what they do and how they’ve adapted. According to Keith, ACAV has stayed busy during the pandemic despite the drying up of live events, largely by doing installations for churches and other organizations that are using the downtime to beef up their facilities.

“There’s been enough work to eep e erything a oat and oth the bosses have got a good hustle going as far as keeping things going, doing installs here for different places,” Keith says. “When everything calmed down, a lot of venues and places decided they wanted to upgrade things. So they’ve been able to piece together work little by little.”

But even when live events return, Keith doesn’t think the beefed-up streams they’ve come to specialize in will go away.

“I mean, I hope the problem of getting back to where we were happens, because we love what we were doing before,” he says. “But I feel like this is kinda one of those situations where the cat’s out of the bag as far as livestream goes. I think they’re here to stay.”

For tickets and more information about the I Watched Music on the Internet series, visit liveentnow.com. n

[SLIDES]

City Museum Rooftop Reopens

Written by DANNY WICENTOWSKI

City Museum’s marvelously weird rooftop is now open, as the beloved local deranged art installation/ adult playground moves back to a sevenday-per-week schedule.

The news should bring delight to those who have spent months waiting to share a reverent moment with a giant praying mantis statue, or wishing they could explore what only appears to be a precariously-dangling bus.

“Rooftop access includes everything you love,” the museum said in a Facebook announcement Friday. “Exceptional skyline views, slides, climbers, Big Eli, people-watching from the bottom of the Ramp Slide, and the Rooftop Café.”

Still, things won’t be quite back to the way they were in the Before Times. The reopening will allow only 120 guests on the roof at a time. Sessions will be limited to 1.5 hours.

On March 20, the museum will host a rooftop “Bubble Dance Party” from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. That’s not all: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that Circus Harmony performers are returning on Saturdays and Sundays, and Art City will be on hand to set up an indoor and open-air station where guests can work on arts and crafts, marking “the first time the performers and Art City have returned physically to the museum since last year’s shutdown.”

In all, it’s a sign of brighter days ahead — the shutdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic took a major toll on St. Louis’ most beloved institution. A message on its website last year noted that more than 70 percent of its revenue comes from tourists to the city of St. Louis, but since tourism was necessarily down dramatically due to the pandemic, the City Museum had to drastically cut its hours in order to save money, opening only on the weekends.

But those days are now in the rearview mirror. For more info on upcoming events and rooftop rules, visit citymuseum.org. n