With only about 300 people in attendance, Nils Frahm offered up two hours of beautiful sounds flowing out of a dozen synths and keyboards that traveled with him from Germany. Throughout Nils’ performance, this one-man orchestra had me thinking about Bach and how he might have seen a single man working the 12 keyboards on stage. Caroline had brought up an interesting point that it might have been the magic of a dozen instruments remaining in tune for the duration of the concert that would have most intrigued Bach. This got us thinking about how an instrument would be brought into tune back in the early 18th century and on our way out of the show Google let us know that the tuning fork wasn’t even invented until 1711. Well, that opens up the can of worms of trying to understand just intonation, meantone, and equal temperament for tuning. But this is not going to be a lesson about the history of tuning, it is about seeing Nils Frahm.

Pulling sound from so many instruments while utilizing loops and a judicious amount of chorus and echo that Nils was actively working helped lend the impression of a man frantic to keep all the plates spinning for his live performance. His two hours on stage was just long enough to satisfy us and we were able to leave happy in our knowledge we’d seen a brilliant artist at play.