Go beyond the geodesic dome: Performance celebrates futurist Buckminster Fuller

Around the time Yo La Tengo was recording “Fade,” the kind of collage-like album of ambient atmospherics, rockish immediacy and ear-grabbing pop melodies that has come to define at least a few avenues of the longstanding indie trio’s sound, bassist James McNew received a gift.

It was a book (“a huge, really beautiful book”) about the life of Buckminster Fuller, the architect most readily known for his geodesic dome structures of the 1950s, but whose futurist/theorist writings, philosophies and designs brought him international prominence. The gift came from Sam Green, an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker who was looking to present Fuller’s life, work and inspiration in a documentary that would, befitting the subject, be novel in design. And he wanted Yo La Tengo’s help.

“I guess it was 2012, so it was kind of around the ‘Fade’ era,” McNew recalled. “So we were still in creative mode. I didn’t know very much about Fuller at first. ‘Oh yeah, the guy with the domes.’ That was it. That was the end.”

What Green was envisioning was not simply a documentary film on Fuller. His plan was to instead offer of presentation of images he would narrate at each screening. Similarly, he didn’t want the music Yo La Tengo created as a score to be a simple recorded backdrop. He envisioned the band onstage with him playing the music live to his narration and the film’s imagery.

The results became the “live documentary” titled “The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller.” It premiered at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on May 2012 and has been shown internationally ever since. Each presentation has been a performance with Green and Yo La Tengo as opposed to a typical, unaccompanied film screening.

“The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller” makes its way to the Singletary Center for the Arts on Friday.

“Sam’s perspective, his way of approaching things ... I’ve never met anybody like him,” McNew said. “We worked very hard at the beginning. There was a lot of collaboration. There was lots of discussion, thought and work that went into coming up with the program initially. Since then, it’s changed a little bit over time, kind of in between remembering and forgetting how we did things and then just letting it evolve a little bit. But it’s been amazing. Working with Sam, I’m sure, affected how we work without him. I think he’s been a very positive influence on us.”

Yo La Tengo was formed by guitarist vocalist Ira Kaplan and drummer Georgia Hubley in 1984. After a revolving door succession of bassists, McNew joined in 1992. The trio has remained intact ever since through a series of recordings that explore varying temperaments of rock and pop design, from coarse sound ruptures reflecting free improvisation to soundscapes of rich, accessible ambience.

That sense of musical variety has extended to the non-original music featured in its concerts. At Yo La Tengo’s last performance at the Singletary Center (in October 2003), it played a pair of tunes by outer space-themed jazz anarchist Sun Ra as part of an encore. Such a vast musical scope has made Yo La Tengo a favorite among critics for decades.

“The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller” takes the band down several other musical paths. First, it is a collaboration. Second, it has the trio playing exclusively instrumental music. Finally, it places Yo La Tengo in an entirely unique performance setting.

“It’s definitely unique in our hall of projects because it’s a collaboration,” McNew said. “It’s not just us. It’s a collaboration with Sam. It’s a collaboration with the images, as well. Pieces have to be a certain length, so we’re working live with Sam to make everything fit and connect. I guess that’s unusually strict for us, but even with that construct, it’s still very loose and feels natural. Nothing really feels pressurized or anything.

“It’s just different. I mean, it still feels like us. Maybe I’ve been doing this for so long that I just can’t differentiate anymore. At this show, we sit in a cluster in the corner of the stage with a giant screen overhead showing the film, but it feels just as challenging and exciting as a gig where we’re playing our songs loud and electric. It’s just a different way of interacting with the audience. It’s also, like, really fun. It’s a really fun project. We haven’t done this show in a year, so I’m looking forward to it again.”

The instrumental music element within “The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller” isn’t entirely new to Yo La Tengo, nor is film scoring. The trio composed music that it also performed live to screenings of “The Sounds of the Sounds of Science ,” an anthology of eight short documentaries by French filmmaker Jean Painlevé. That music, also released as a 2002 album of the same title, reflected a sense of lyrical accessibility that carried over to the band’s sublime 2003 song-oriented album, “Summer Sun.”

“It’s always fun to write instrumental music,” McNew said. “It’s fun to write to images and pictures. For ‘Buckminster Fuller,’ we came up with a nice combination of acoustic and electric sounds and kept things kind of quiet yet mysterious and weird. We wrote music and performed it live for the Jean Painlevé films but that didn’t really have a speaker. Those short films were finite — beginnings and endings. The ‘Buckminster Fuller’ show is happening live. Sam is talking and narrating it as it’s going on, so it’s very much breathing and alive as you’re watching it.”

There is also another distinction. Where the music Yo La Tengo fashioned for “The Sounds of the Sounds of Science” was released in album form, the score to “The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller” remains exclusive to the performances. There has never been any intention of issuing it in any stand-alone recorded form.

“That makes this extra special for me. There is no commercial documentation of this show. It only exists if you come see it. It’s not available any other way. That’s it. I think that goes along with spirit of the whole program. It’s personal. You have to be there. You have to participate.

“Well, you don’t have to participate as in sing or anything. But it’s there for you in person — you know, from human to human. I think that’s part of what Fuller did and what Sam does. There’s something unusual and magical about doing that these days.”

‘The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller’ with Sam Green and Yo La Tengo

When: Oct. 24 at 7:30 p.m.

Where: Singletary Center for the Arts, 405 Rose St.

Tickets: $23 (students), $39 (public)