The legendary Christian Vander
Christian Vander has been doing this for a long time. The 62-year-old French drummer brought his legendary prog rock band Magma to the Orange Court Friday night for a set of compositional jams that were majestic, spacey and heavily atmospheric. This was music from an era when it was still cool to say you were channeling sounds from outer space, when the promised land lay somewhere beyond Pluto, and when aliens were supposed to be wise, magnanimous beings. Vander, who’s classically trained, has in fact gotten in to some of that, but he’s also gotten into a huge range of music from 20th century classical to all sorts of jazz and rock. This night he was as usual at his rock drum kit at center stage, and seven others surrounded him, including female backup singers, electric organs, one male singer and a very eerie xylophone. (I actually expecting them to pull out a theramin or a real space music instrument, but no one ever did.) The singers would occasionally come to the front of the stage when they had featured parts, and when they were done, they’d return to the wings. It was wonderfully democratic, and also very Age of Aquarius. Vander had a big smile on his face the whole time, and I have to say he seems like a man who knows how to enjoy life, and his music – notwithstanding the galactic overtones – surely reflects that.
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