Then the second half of Saturday session 2. First up an interesting session perhaps led
by Jim Denley. Unlike others, this was a
series of "tunes", each with a theme or approach, seemingly prepared
to be led by one or other performer. It
had me wondering if this was a CD launch!
Performers were Elizabeth Jigalin, Helen Svoboda, Jean-Sebastien
Mariage, Jim Denley and Laurence Pike.
Feels variously changed and were led by or centred on instruments and
instrumental techniques. Thus I noted:
rippling piano with distorted guitar; pining feel with guitar and brushes;
bowed guitar with bass harmonics and unison vocals; busy frantic distorted
guitar and slammed piano; rubber mallet on bass with damped guitar notes;
harmonics, guitar e-bow, mallets on cymbals, bowed bass, sparse piano, flute
vibrato, build to finale. Fascinating,
unexpected and well received. Next was
mainly electronics with projections performed by Hannah de Feyter, Danny Wild
(Lowflung), Yichen Wang and Nicci Hayes.
Hannah had a viola but mostly played effects and presumably loops in the
effects chain. Danny played a complex
looking suitcase of a synth and Yichen a tiny but surprisingly powerful (and
costly) Teenage Engineering OP-1 synth.
The whole was electronica, groove and metallics with some effective
projections behind. Nice. Then the Clayton Thomas Large Ensemble. Rules, structure and guidance were discussed
in another post. Clayton introduced it
as a political action as any group activity is (interesting thought) and
highlighted the horror of Gaza and related and committed the performance to
this stand. It was an intelligent, thoughtful,
quite radical and informed presentation.
Much admiration for that. Then we
played. I stood centre with basses right
and left wing, behind Miro so I was particularly well placed to luxuriate in a
glorious tone and subtle melody. This
moved into our community improvs with rules and ultimately to a drone from
Helen, a piano solo from Novak (again a stunner) against a growing crescendo of
moving all-in drone until it dwarfed the piano and Clayton signalled a stop. The whole was ~30-minutes as these sets
are. The solos from Miro and Novak were
stunning, I felt the improv segment was better in practice but still OK, the
crescendo was a stunner and very loud at the end. The audience was small but the reception was
strong. So a success. Much enjoyed.
Performers for set 4 were Elizabeth Jigalin (piano),
Helen Svoboda (bass), Jean-Sebastien Mariage (guitar), Jim Denley (winds) and
Laurence Pike (drums). For set 5 were
Hannah de Feyter (viola), Danny Wild (Lowflung) (synth), Yichen Wang (synth)
and Nicci Hayes (projections). Set 6 was
the Large Ensemble led by Clayton Thomas (bass) and featuring Miroslav Bukovsky
(trumpet), Helen Svoboda (bass) and Novak Minojlovic (piano).
