This is the first Living Music festival that I (or indeed most people) have ever been to, as its concerts were located in the city centre and they had a superstar guest as the focus for the event’s proceedings. Yes, reader, this music festival was centred on the music of Steve Reich, a man the programme described as an icon of American music. Because I am a very busy man, I could not go to all the concerts, but I made it to many of the ones taking place on the Saturday in the theatre of my old school, where numerous pieces by Steve Reich and others were being performed, some with the assistance of contemporary outfit the Crash Ensemble. I was particularly interested in seeing some of their stuff as I had met one of them over the summer at a wedding and wanted to see if the whole outfit was as kewl as she was.
The great rumour I heard about the festival, incidentally, was that Reich agreed to show up on condition that nothing by Philip Glass appeared on the programme. Whether the proximity of several lapdancing clubs (including String-Fell-Ow’s) to the venue influenced his decision is unknown. There were unconfirmed rumours of a baseball-capped man appearing in several of these places during the day, asking if the dancers could perform to some music he’d brought with him.
Anyway, the music. I couldn’t make it to Part One, so my first was Part Two: some pieces by Reich preceded by other musics from when he kicked off and a new piece by a local composer. All of these were performed by the Crash Ensemble. The first piece was called ‘Workers Union’, and written by Louis Andriessen in 1975. It was very rhythmic – in fact there was almost nothing to it but rhythm, with every musician playing the same staccato notes on their instruments simultanaeously, producing a very odd effect. It did seem to feature a lot of false climaxes, but I wonder was that more in the way of being like an ocean’s series of breaking waves than the teasing annoyance that false endings typically present. I also found myself thinking that what the piece really needed was a guy in a tracksuit doing interpretative dance at the front of the stage.
Next up was James Tenney’s 1971 piece. ‘Never Having Written A Note For Percussion’. There was an element of When Gamelan Attacks to this piece, with the trio of musicians on stage playing instruments reminiscent of that crazy music. However, the piece’s style was rather different and most unusual. Whereas the previous piece featured separate, discrete punches of noise, this featured a continuous wall of music with no punctuation whatsoever. All that happened was the music went from being very quiet to very loud and then back to very quiet, with the sound being so seamless that it was like something you would get from a tone generator. This has to be one of the most extreme pieces of music I’ve ever heard, lacking almost everything one would associate with the form (no melody, no rhythm, almost no variation). The symphony of coughs emanating from the audience suggested that maybe the majority opinion was indeed that this was not music, but noise.
Simon O’Connor of The Jimmy Cake wrote the next piece, ‘The Paradise – Part III’, being premiered on this occasion. It was a plinky plinky piece for one pianist, far more obviously musical than anything that had gone before. It was definitely easy on the ear, but lacking the extreme features of what had gone before it is hard for a talentless bozo like me to write about. Also, it is the third part of a series. I hate sequels, especially when I have missed previous episodes.
And then two pieces by Steve Reich. ‘Vermont Counterpoint’ (1983) saw a flautist play over samples of herself playing. It was nice enough, which sounds like damning with faint praise. Maybe I am saying that that whole people sampling themselves endlessly has been done to death now, or that Fursaxa does it better. But of course, back in 1983 this would all have seemed relatively exciting. And then there was ‘Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ’ (1973), whose title largely describes it, unless like me you found yourself imagining something like that Monty Python sketch where the deranged musician batters trained mice with a mallet. It was not like that, but rather like Western music reverse engineering Gamelan. So you know, lots of people hitting xylophones and drums and stuff (with mallets) in a manner that both looked and sounded great. There might have been some electronic stuff in among all this. Top buzz, whatever it was.
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