AYO2014/3 (Perc)

The violins may be the fastest and the double basses the hardest working, but Andrew Howes joked that the percussionists have the most fun. I could imagine this is true. Percussion always seems so corporeal and uncerebral, something you just indulge in. But with all these dotted charts and pitched keyboard-equipped instruments - the glocks and marimbas and vibes and even tubular bells - I'm not sure that's true. This must be hard, intellectual work, but none-the-less they bash and hit and that must be indulgent in some way. And from the gig tonight, of the Australian Youth Orchestra's Percussion ensemble, I can only maintain this expectation.

The concert started with a bit of audience participation led by one of the tutors. We were shown various clapping routines, slapping hands and chests and thighs, in three and four and five. The audience was split into sections so their parts moved in and out of time, and the musicians did various claps and drum patterns against this. The patterns were taken from an old standard book that I have on my shelves, Ted Reed's Progressive steps to syncopation for the modern drummer. All fun and involving. Then furniture moves. There were lots of these and we were regaled by tutors while we waited. The second tune was Rouse's Ogoun Badagris. I heard it as jungle-earthy with mostly untuned drums in a moderate speed four. There was some of the earthy primitive about the first two tunes, which is what you expect of percussion. Third was Frank Zappa's Idiot Bastard Son. How different is this? Richard Gill came on to voice (sing?) acerbic Zappa lyrics over four keyboarded instruments. This was more pop, more harmonic, more grooved, and endlessly cynical. Then Nishimura's Padma in meditation. It was introduced as soft, warm, velvety. I heard it as airy and spacey with swells and drones and occasional melody and unchanging harmony. Lots of rolling sticks and mallets, lots of varied tones, marimbas, glockenspiels, bells, cymbals, gong, played with mallets and sticks and bows. Quite lovely and mesmerising. Last was Rouse's Bonham, dedicated to Led Zeppelin's drummer John Bonham. This starts with the simple 2-bar drum phrase from When the levee breaks. The groove is held on drum kit throughout, although not as incessantly as on the original, and enriched with a batch of 7 drums playing variations on the groove. I wondered if the written lines were influenced by a Bonham solo. So, this was a varied and entertaining program. The hour went suddenly and it was ended. Much enjoyed. It certainly looks like the percussionists have all the fun.

The tutors were Rob Cossom and Alex Timke. The AYO musicians were Jordan Berini, Gabriel Fischer, Anastassia Korolev, Tegan Lebrun, Mathew Levy, Jamee Seeto, Katie Thomas, Hugh Tidy and Euphina Yap.

Looking aggressively, not

Classical percussion concerts are surprisingly delightful things. I got to one this evening by the Australian Youth Orchestra Percussion Ensemble. I’m always amazed that these batterers learn the keyboard, and wonder what it is that groups marimba or vibraphone with the far more earthy skinned drums. I assume it’s just that they are hit. Piano strings are also hit, and pianos are also described as percussion instruments, but they are not hit with a stick or a mallet and they are not played by percussionists. I was amused the description of his art by one of the percussion tutors: “hitting, bowing, scraping … or just looking at something aggressively”. It’s not at all true - lots of percussion is soft and detailed and we heard drums voiced with the gentlest of taps tonight – but it fits the image and it’s amusing. They seemed to joke aggressively too, or at least frequently. Is aggression a characteristic of percussionists? From the looks and sound of them, it was very far from my impression. So how was the performance?

I’d use words like light, sweet and even discursive to describe this performance. There was some groove but not much was intense or danceable. The first tune was probably the strongest groove. This was Ritmica no. 5 (1930), Afro-Cuban music by Cuban composer Amadeo Roldan. Early, it was delightful with a quiet but busy interplay of multiple instruments - bongos, cowbells, toms, a range of Cuban percussion - but then, several times, it came to a stop with insistent unison quarter note hits from the deep toms. I heard this like African jungle drums, talking drums, a complex interplay of simple patterns. The next tune was Canticle no.1 (1940) by Lou Harrison, a student of Schoenberg and collaborator of John Cage. This was introduced as intricate through the overlapping of simple rhythms. I heard is as intellectual, less bodily, with a clear influence from gamellans and again with a structure in several parts with stops and starts. Third was an original compostion, tagged as an improvisation but pre-composed by the performers, Rhapsody on a theme (2012). I missed some details, but the process went something like this: the students were provided with a 4-bar theme around Christmas and asked to develop a 212-bar (?) part. They then put them together and perhaps edited their parts and performed. It was busy and conflicting at times, but I enjoyed the movement between lashings of contrasting sounds, even if the piece lacked obvious structure. But huge congratulations to tutors and students for the creativity of it all. Improvisation is not a feature of the classical field and a task like this that breaks the reticence is a great exercise. The fourth tune was the longest and most complex: Gavin Bryars’ At Portage and Main (2009). Bryars is a jazz bassist, as well as a composer and student of John Cage, and you can hear the bassist approach in some of the chordal segments. This was performed on 3 marimbas, 2 vibes and various drums and cymbals. The intersection of Portage and Main in Winnipeg is supposedly the coldest and windiest corner in North America. I heard mystical rather than cold, although it could have been snow, and only once thought of a possible wind, but it was a lovely, lyrical and lengthy piece featuring the dull thuds of the tuned marimba and the ringing, metallic vibes against downy kick drum and toms and swelling cymbals. Portage and Main must be a quiet corner but it informed some attractive music. The concert ended with a very short Roldan piece, much like the first, Ritmica no.6 (1930).

So, this percussion concert was anything but aggressive. Yes, they used mallets and sticks and the like, and they hit things, but this was detailed and delicate and only once or twice letting go to forte. Quite unexpected for we new initiates.

Getting rhythm

I’m taking whatever opportunity I can to hear the Australian Youth Orchestra while they’re in town. My second concert was the Percussion Ensemble and it was a hugely varied performance which was truly thrilling. I had struggled with classical percussion before and was never quite convinced, but this was different. This performance was varied and entertaining and occasionally overwhelming, and a great introduction to the art.

The first piece was meditative with long, ringing cymbal passages contrasting wildly with tympani and bass drum hits and features, all under discrete conductor control. It was a piece entitled Die Welle by Swiss percussionist Fritz Hauser (who I think I’ve heard in the Band Room). I found this a bit challenging to enter, especially soon after a busy day at work, but its calming and involving role was evident as the program continued.

The piece that followed was Peaux by Iannis Xenakis from his larger piece, Pleiades. Xenakis wrote more widely, but was introduced here as the “Beethoven of percussion”. From this I guess classical percussion must be a new idiom, as he only died fairly recently. Peaux was a mathematically informed, clearly structured poly-rhythmic piece that says percussion to me. I felt more comfortable with this piece than the previous one, I think because its essence is defined by rhythm and pitch rather than timbre (much more jazz-like). Six players each had stood in an island of drums for a total of 44 drums on stage. The players were widely separated and arranged in a semicircle across the Llewellyn stage, with a conductor off stage centre. The complement of drums varied slightly between players, but was very close to this: four players with bongos, one conga, two toms and a tympani; two players each had an additional mounted bass drum. All played with sticks. Imagine the complexity of pitch and rhythms that’s possible. This was loud and varied and grooved with hugely complex interplays and occasional solo-like features. Fabulous.

Piece three was Djilile by Australian Peter Sculthorpe. PS is renowned for representing the Australian experience. This piece borrows from an Aboriginal melody of the north (Kakadu?) and was commissioned by the Sydney percussion ensemble, Synergy, and premiered at the Adelaide Festival of Arts in 1990. It starts and ends in the dark with the sounds of thunder, so it’s obviously of the top-end. The core (excluding the thunder) is played by 3 musicians sharing one marimba, and a fourth on vibraphone. The core is a pretty and beguiling tune and I seem to remember an insistent bass riff or lower pitched chord pattern which spoke of popular song. I particularly enjoyed the contrasting timbre of the toneful but thuddy wooden marimba against the sustained and reverberent, metallic vibraphone.

The last piece moved further afield to Japan and its taiko drumming tradition. It was called Yataibayashi, and was a TaikOz arrangement of traditional music from a day-long festival held annually in a Japanese village for the last 350 years (I missed the details). This was performed by 8 players on three large taiko, four small taiko, and a triangle-like instrument that played a surprisingly cutting metronomic eighth-note beat throughout the performance. I noted the formality of presentation and performance, the different Japanese-style techniques including heavy mallets held in clenched fists, the repetitive rhythms, and what seemed to be a totally square (I mean notes spilt into two not three and unswinging) rhythms. And the volume and the sweat and strained muscles on the performers, of course. I guess this was new to some of these performers, but they did it well, and the audience loved it. Powerful and steady and insinuating and Japan-formal.

Such a wonderful program! Variations of styles and approaches and rhythms and tonalities. It seemed to me to be a perfect introduction to classical percussion and impeccably enticing. The Australian Youth Orchestra Percussion Ensemble comprised Robert Allan, Sophia Ang, Joel Bass, Catherine Betts, Rebecca Lloyd Jones, Brent Miller, Robert Oetomo and Anna Zeltzer and they were tutored by John Arcano, Ian Cleworth and Tim White.