On November 15th, the Atwood Concert Hall held a performance the likes of which Alaska has never seen before. Andrew Bird, an extremely talented singer/violinist/guitarist/professional whistler from Illinois, visited Anchorage to perform for the first time. The audience was populated mostly by college students, as the performance was sponsored by the University of Alaska Anchorage concert board. “I started listening to him when ‘Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs’ came out,” says UAA freshman Felipe Godoy, referring to Bird’s 2005 album. “The concert made me really nostalgic for that time.” During his concerts, Bird uses a looping machine to record one element of the song, and then proceeds to add each layer — guitar, violin, xylophone, whistles, a double-headed gramophone and finally his own arresting, otherworldly voice — to create a combination of sounds to make up one intricately detailed song. At the crescendo of each performance, you feel, fittingly, like you’re witnessing a bird being released from its cage: a euphoric, indescribable feeling woven in between the sting of a violin and the pierce of a whistle — something only the subtle and beautiful music of Andrew Bird can deliver. “I first heard about the Bird a year ago,” says concert attendee Oliver Petraitis, a sophomore at UAA. “I liked his music because it was texturally dense; a polyphony, really.” Bird is releasing his sixth solo album, “Break It Yourself,” on March 6th of next year, and plans to go on a North American tour throughout spring 2012. “The full experience was seeing a performer who didn’t have much stardom and could genuinely communicate with his audience,” says Petraitis. “I felt like he really spoke to us.”