Haley Heynderickx and the Westerlies
Millennium Stage, Washington DC, March 22, 2024
In 2018, or so, which seems like a lifetime time ago, a quirky song from an Oregon folksinger called
“Oom Sha La La” got a lot of attention on NPR and related outlets. It generated the same kind of vibe and buzz as Feist’s pop breakthrough “1 2 3 4,” although it didn’t make the singer a pop star in the same way. The folksinger was the unspellable
Haley Heynderickx, who also had some attention from ruminative songs about insects and gardens and oblique commentary about race and identity. But that was a long time ago, and to be honest, the songs’ charms were not enough to generate any of my sustained attention.
Six years, and roughly 2000 news cycles, later, I spotted Heynderickx’s name on the upcoming list of Millennium Stage free shows, accompanied by something called the Westerlies. And as I have attested numerous times, I am a sucker for a free show at the Kennedy Center. I found the show at the Millennium Stage a striking and delightful contrast between two none-too-obvious collaborators: Heynderickx is an Oregon hippie with positively Luna Lovegood-levels of weirdness; the Westerlies are four chamber-trained brass musicians, two on trumpet and two on trombone. These are not instruments often associated with quirky folk-pop guitarists. (Yes, Nick Drake had horn arrangements on
Bryter Later, etc. but it’s not obvious.) Indeed, it’s not until you watch the way the musicians interacted that the innate connections became apparent: whereas a brass quartet is typically either seen in jazz, or in a marching band or chamber music ensemble, with Heynderickx the trombone and trumpet added intriguing color and fleshed out her fingerpicked guitar and whimsical lyrics, many of which played with themes of nature and redemption, like “The Bug Collector,” from 2018’s
I Need to Start a Garden.
Much of the Heynderickx-Westerlies set involved a collaborative songwriting process that emerged in the pandemic, so there were a lot of new songs that have not yet been released (although Lars Gottrich of NPR told me that the recorded work is excellent). But on balance, I found all of it quite lovely, and the contrast in the genre expectations made for a more engaging show than Heynderickx might have presented on her own.
You can watch all the Heynderickx-Westerlies show on the Kennedy Center website.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/05/2024 08:40PM by zwirnm.
