Jonathan Wood Vincent lives in a world where you can do nothing but eat watermelon without threat of retaliation. A world where businessmen hold meetings in glockenspiels. Consonance and dissonance collapse into a single point of miraculous possibility. Jonathan resides in an architectural landmark on Manhattan’s Upper West Side that maintains every idiosyncrasy, ideal, paperweight championed by its former occupants, who once sang opera for the Met. This abode is aka Papacookie. Want to see some Butoh? Eat durian at a vegetarian potluck? Sit on a 70 year old recliner and listen to the most radical sounds expounded in our current climate of experimental sound? Go there.
Then there’s Jonathan at the piano, molting. Spinning songs like faberge eggs. Melodies are dissected, rerouted, segue paradoxically. Listen to his songs and your eyes grow wide like new ears trying to grow where your eyes are. His octaves translate a primal, guttural imperative to discover new terrain. Here’s necessity. Here’s the sensation of traveling by night. Technically, Jonathan plays the chords you least expect him to. The top and bottom keys are redeemed. Listening to him is deeply satisfying in a way that’s rare outside of honest reflection or marveling at Gothic Churches. Plus there’s an esteemed humor to it all. See: his songs about CNN, Baltimore. The mundane becomes extremely funny, there’s nothing ironic or defeatist about it. Listen carefully to what an artist who actively surprises themselves as well as the audience does to brainwaves, dream life, tomorrows’ commute… – Valerie Kuehne
