Alpenglow Performs Alongside Installation

I’ve been following Alpenglow since I saw their first concert in January 2011 – before they even had their name – in the artfully decorated M Gallery of the Old Stone Mill. It is not an Alpenglow show without some white string lights snaking along the floor or through the roof beams. I suppose I cannot claim that anymore, though, since they have been playing in real concert venues with presumably pretty advanced lighting systems for a couple years now. Their most recent appearance in Middlebury followed less than two weeks after the end of an international fall tour with the band Lucius.

Opened by Burlington band Quiet Line, Alpenglow played last Saturday night, Nov. 17, to a crowd of student fans and old friends in the Johnson Gallery. The band often chooses underutilized or unusual spaces on campus for their concerts. Singer, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Peter Coccoma ’12 of Alpenglow spoke of their return to Middlebury and their use of the gallery’s space.

“I always look forward to these shows,” he said. “I like that we can control the number of people who come to them.”

I think Alpenglow requires this intimacy for the best experience, along with the white string lights and the groups of friends all leaning on each other’s shoulders as they watch, passing around Citizen Cider and singing the chorus of “Solitude” – an Alpenglow classic.

Everyone expects this atmosphere at every Alpenglow concert, whether it be their sixth or seventeenth.

“Last year it seemed like [an Alpenglow show] was every other weekend,” Josh Swartz ’14.5 said.

But despite the number of times they have played, a huge crowd still shows up, because despite their familiarity, as Alex Jackman ’14 said, “their shows are always different in terms of their set up, and they manage to keep it interesting.”

During this set, for example, we were treated with “Fields,” a song from their recent EP that they do not usually perform live.

Another distinctive element of this particular concert was the installation art from Sanford Mirling’s Studio Art Independent Study (ART 700). Nick Smaller ’14 created a video-audio installation that involved the band.

“I wanted to use a video infinity loop … making an oscilloscopic representation of the sound they’re playing,” Smaller said.

The projection was pixelated and jumpy, like a video game, and pulsated in aquamarine and pink behind their heads. Smaller explained that the band had approached the artists and were interested in collaborating, so he created a piece for the class and the show.

Sally Caruso ’15.5 and Ali Silberkleit ’13.5, who have an exhibition opening at the M Gallery today, had pieces of work up as well. Caruso made soap paintings of dancing, melting people, made visible with black lights. A large pink tree hanging from the ceiling was a remnant of Silberkleit’s piece, which originally included hanging pink balloons that read “Daddy Issues” and a film of the naked artist chopping down the tree playing behind it.

“The piece had to do with the death of my father and trying to fill that missing masculine roll in my life in a dumb and girly way,” Silberkleit said.

Graeme Daubert ’12.5, often lead vocals for Alpenglow, pointed out the weird split formation of the audience between songs.

“I feel like we have the partiers over here and the listeners over here,” he said, gesturing to the standers and the sitters respectively.

Despite their indecision, the audience was attentive, including the Dissipated Eight a capella crew who showed up to support their former member, Daubert. When asked why she had attended, Anna Jacobsen ’16 looked at me with an expression both solemn and defiant and said, “Because I love art and hate hockey.”

Their opening act, Quiet Line, was a very sweet, if sleepy kind of Weybridge kitchen music. Alpenglow sounded clean and jangly as ever, with Daubert’s voice ringing like a seraphim beating on a hollowed-out log of a giant sequoia tree. As audience member Sophie Quay-de la Vallee ’16.5 said, “It’s all in that voice.”

“This is the peak of Alpenglow,” Paul Quackenbush ’14 said. “They’re just on their game.”