Andrew Bird, Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, Illinois

Multi-instrumentalist and Chicago native Andrew Bird often plays churches each holiday season, including a sold out four night run this year at Fourth Presbyterian Church in the Magnificent Mile neighborhood of downtown Chicago, for which we had tickets to the second night.

The church is large, though not as massive as many churches that I’ve been in before. The Gothic Revival structure celebrated its one hundredth birthday last year and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The event was held in the main chapel, a long grey stone sanctuary with sweeping ceiling lines and gothic statues. Above the altar are several long stain glass windows. The entire altar/stage was bathed in warm red light. I’m not quite sure how the seats were delegated, but we lucked out with ours in a close section, not far from the center and relatively close to the stage, perhaps two dozen rows from the front. Actually, I think even being a little further back from where we were would have provided improved acoustics. I wondered if the content rather than just the context of the performance would be different in any way based on the location of the performance. I guess I’ll have to see him a second time to compare.

For his show, Andrew Bird outfitted the stage with dozens of gramophones, including four large ones (about two feet in diameter each with a pair on either side of the stage), many small ones lining the altar, and a large and small pair of spinning double gramophones. Depending on the song, he would turn their rotation up or down. The rates of spin would creating an echo/warbling effect to varying degrees based on speed.

Andrew Bird took the stage about 9pm. He was alone on stage the entire show. I thought that he would have some semblance of a backing band, at least for part of the show, so I was a bit surprised.

He mostly played the violin and sang, though he also whistled and occasionally played the guitar and glockenspiel (the German name for a xylophone made of metal). He mixed everything himself on stage, for example looping himself picking on the violin and then playing something else with a bow on top of it. Most of what he played was not significantly technically challenging in and of itself. Rather, it was the way that he layered one sound on top of another to create a complex, rich, and orchestral sound. His setlist pulled from much of his catalogue, including a pair of songs all the way back to Swimming Hour (2001) and multiple selections from his newest releases, Hands of Glory (2012) and I Want to See Pulaski at Night (2013).

Setlist:
Hover I
Hover II
Ethio Invention
Why
Action-Adventure
Lit from Underneath
Plasticities
Three White Horses
Pulaski at Night
First Song
Waiting to Talk
Cathedral
Give It Away
Orpheo
Happy Day
Dyin' Bedmaker
Frogs
Danse Caribe
If I Needed You
Weather Systems