Potpourri

This was the first concert of the Canberra International Music Festival 2017 and it was a veritable potpourri. No surprise there; it was promoted as the Gala opening : a world of music. obviously touching on a range of performers and styles coming up in the festival. Festivals are not easy things to organise and I was surprised by some of the names: they hadn't been on the brochure, released well before the program. But nothing lost: these were great and fascinating players. First up was Luminescence Chamber Choir with William Barton on didj, a world premiere called Beaver blaze, based on White Australia, the poem by Oodgeroo Noonuccal. The theme of the Festival is Revolution, after all, and this was profound. Then Lisa Moore starting with Bach then through a lithe and flighty Schumann Bird as prophet to end with a modern piece by Rzewski. He was a new name for several I spoke to (me too) but he was also well received by several: my little survey suggested a discerning and adventurous audience. I was particularly taken by Lisa's estimable sense of time: firstly in the firm and resolute Bach then in the delicate, featherweight Bird as prophet. Then my passenger, Alex da Costa and his Strad, played some duos with Roland Peelman. Phenomenal technique, wonderful loud tone. Yes, it's a Strad but you need technique to get that from it. Stunning tone and chops, playing Vitalia, Prokofiev Montagues and Capulets, Tchaikovsky, de Falla. There's a good bit of performance here and prodigious capability and an alluring instrument to boot. Then interval and an Australian premiere from composer Chen Yi, currently at the ANU School of Music, Yangko, played by Alex with Roland and another on Chinese percussion. Interesting to hear Alex doing something outside the mainstream: no surprise that he did it with ease. The Simon Bolivar String Quartet are visitors from Venezuela. They played Shostakovich String quartet no.8 C min op.110 with satisfying intonation and lovely moving instrumental focuses. Again, very well received. And an end with a composition by ex-Canberra now-Brisbane bassist and composer, Robert Davidson, with renowned didgeridoo player, William Barton, Landscape, played by string quartet, guitar, didj and harpsichord. I'm looking forward to hearing more from Robert later in the programs. Then drinks and a celebration of the opening of the festival. As always, CIMF looks fascinating and cleverly themed, let alone its musical capability and profundity.

The CIMF 2017 opening gala concert featured William Barton (didgeridoo), Clive Birch (bass vocal), Luminescence Chamber singers, Alexandre da Costa (violin), Minh Le Hoang (guitar), Lisa Moore (piano), Roland Peelman (piano, harpsichord, percussion) and the Simon Bolivar String Quartet with members Alejandro Carreno and Boris Suarez (violins), Ismel Campos (viola) and Aimon Mata (cello).

Channelling Joni and ‘Runner

“Make me feel good, rock and roll band / I’m you’re biggest fan / California coming home”. So sang Joni Mitchell. Paul Dresher performed at the Albert Hall and he did some things differently. They say they do things differently in California, the home of hippies and Hollywood and Silicon Valley. It also gave us Ronald Reagan and it’s also broke. Jazz looks to civilisation and lives in its undercurrents, in NYC and Berlin. California channels the fresh and new, at least to our generation. So Paul Dresher presented his Double Duo in concert with compositions relating to our sense of the passage of time and to fuel drag racing. Paul himself performed on electric guitar (Strat) so the R’n’R reference has some validity. He also performed on Quadrachord, a five-stringed instrument of 160-inch scale which he bowed. So here’s the new and the quirky together. I didn’t particularly warm to the use of either instrument. Paul doesn’t attempt Steve Vai although he does solo, but the distorted tones were lacking in overtones and seemed to just fatten the mix and get lost in it. It might work better with studio processing. Similarly, the Quadrachord didn’t seem to provide a whole lot more than repeating sequenced arpeggio-like harmonics, although there was an intervening sound each cycle that was maybe a double stop. I was thinking it must have cost a bomb to transport. So much for the R’n’R and the quirky Californian aspects.

But did I like the music? Immensely. This was minimalism, repeated arpeggios and sequences that mutate over time, square structures of four with melody over, brilliant dissonance and consonance switching back and forth, stubborn contradictory polyrhythms, dense clouds of percussion that regularly float over, dull repetition and deep groove with obtuse melody and clashing harmony and splashes of colour from bell-like percussion. It’s a world of dull repetition and enlivening contrast. I frequently remember a murder and chase street scene from Bladerunner as a picture of a possible future: huge diversity of people and clothes and cultures under constant rain and huge neon signs and police in flying cars descending next to Asian street hawker kiosks. To some degree dystopian; to some degree diverse and exciting. I picture both California and minimalism as somewhat like this. I can doubt the mind-numbing repetition of the fours and triplets and two chords and the rest, but I tap my feet with this music and thrill with the incongruity of it all, the unexpectedness of melody and harmony, and especially the rhythms that clash and contradict but are sustained, wondering all along that it holds together and speaks to me. There’s even a sense of soloing here, from distorted guitar or clarinet or expecially from the violins, but it’s written, not improvised.

It’s not surprising that this was one of the smaller audiences at a CIMF concert. It’s new music, although minimalism is not too new now. I’d picked it. Megan’s normally a listener to Bach and Beethoven but she liked it too, suggesting it’s better live. Maybe. It grows and mutates like a living thing and that probably works better live. This was another concert with a Quiros St connection. Our no.2 billet is Graeme Jennings. He knew these players in SF but had never played with them until he played a solo part in Cage Machine on this date. This was a great gig. I felt satisfied and excited and intellectually requited. There’s great tradition in “fine” music and I love it, but this is music for our time and I’m pleased to see it’s so well grounded. Great gig.

The Double Duo is led by Paul Dresher (electric guitar, quadrachord, composer) with Karen Bentley Pollick (violin), Lisa Moore (keyboard) and Joel Davel (percussion) with guests Graeme Jennings (violin) and Robert Spring (clarinet, bass clarinet).