A short post on a trip to the Kaleidoscope club

Kaleidoscope is a monthly contemporary classical event which takes place on the night I work late, so I do not get to it much. When I am there I always end up stuck on the duff seats at the back and say to myself "I really will come along early next time".

The last time I was there was back in June, which is ages ago. There were a number of things on that night, details of which you can see on the Kaleidoscope website here.

For me the event had two highlights. One of these was the performance by two visiting New Zealanders, Rob Cunningham and Horomona Hora. They began by doing a version of the Haka, that camp yet threatening dance the NZ rugger buggers do to intimidate their opponents. I was intimidated but also excited at getting to see it done in real life, something I had never expected to happen as wild horses could not get me near a game of rugby. Then they played music that seemed to draw heavily from Maori traditional stuff, with Mr Hora in fetching ethnic garb.

The other great thing was a piece called Strange Country, in which Kimberly Campanello read poetry about Sheelagh-na-Gigs (grotesque carvings of women exposing their lady parts often found on very old Christian churches in Ireland and elsewhere) to uilleann pipe music composed by Benjamin Dwyer and performed by Donnacha Dwyer. I am famous for my dislike of poetry, but something of this really clicked for me. I think it was Campanello's steady tone of voice and the intriguing and allusive nature of her content that made it work so well with the music.

Sheelagh na Gig image source (and Wikipedia article on this subject)

Strange Country image source

Guest Star Irene talks about Kaleidoscope

Kaleidoscope Night, Dublin, 2nd November

And now we have a special treat for all readers – a guest post from the mysterious lady who goes only by the name "Irene", talking about an event back in November that I also attended but failed to write about.

"Transformation, musical alchemy – this is my theme, as Kaleidoscope dips in and out of time commemorating and celebrating all the living and the dead, the new and the old, old-new and new-old-invoked, empowered, charged: a kind of sonorous hexing. Yes, hex: to bewitch. German and Swiss immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania in the late 17th century spoke a dialect of German known as Pennsylvania Dutch. In this dialect hexe was the equivalent of the German verb hexen, "to practice sorcery." The English verb hex, first recorded in the sense "to practice witchcraft" is borrowed from Pennsylvania Dutch, as is the noun…."

Thus spake Bernard Clarke, presenter of Nova on RTE Lyric FM and general modern music guru. Yes, he does go off on one occasionally, God bless him. But we let him rattle on, knowing that eventually he'd shut his yap and let the musicians do their thing. 2nd of November is All Souls' Day and has spooky pre-Christian roots, hence Bernard's shiteing on about witchery.

Kaleidoscope Night has been going for nearly two years, and seems to be based more or less on the old salon idea where people gather in a small, informal group to dig some live performances of new music. It also echoes a sort of 1960s beatnik "happening", only with classically-trained musicians. The people involved are from the classical avant-gardey end of Dublin's music scene – there's a big overlap with the Crash Ensemble (Ireland's Bang On A Can or Kronos) and the Ergodos lot. We went along with our friend Tim, who plays some music but is more from the trad/bluegrass end of things. The venue is a rather plush upstairs room with bar, low lights, groovy 70s décor etc. Nice.

First up was guitarist/composer Enda Bates and his hexaphonic guitar, or as I like to call it his Fucking Hexaphonic Guitar. I don't know why I'm so exasperated by the idea – it might just be that for me it is indistinguishable in appearance and sound from any ordinary electric guitar. So I don't see why the "hexaphonic" element merits any mention. Enda Bates would probably differ. In his own words, the hexaphonic guitar "provides six discrete audio outputs, one for each string. This multi-channel output can then be processed and spatialised to a loudspeaker array, transforming a standard electric guitar into a new instrument for the performance of spatial music." Which sounds great, but srsly, it sounded just like a normal guitar to me. He did two pieces, one of which was slightly ambient and pedaltastic and the other of which was picky and John Faheyesque. Maybe he needs to do a double-header with some guitarist with a normal guitar so we can tell the difference.

Next we had clarinettist Paul Roe, performing Stravinsky's Three Pieces for Solo Clarinet, which were composed in 1919 (i.e. post-Rite of Spring). They were all quite short and varied, two out of three using a low clarinet (one slow and haunting, one a bit more improvvy and jazzy) and the last one pitched higher and sounding a lot more up for it and vivacious and complicated. I don't know if Stravinsky was listening to jazz at this time – I think Paul Roe said one of the pieces was a follow-up to his Russian Songs), but there was a lot of jazz there to my ears. I liked these.

Then the Ergodos Musicians, largely composed of familiar faces from various modern music collectives (boy, do these fellows love to collaborate), did some rather beautiful and appropriate-for-the-encroaching-winter vocal liturgical music. The first selection was from Léonin, called Viderunt Omnes Part 1, from 12th-century Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The second was the "Kyrie" from the Messe de Nostre Dame by 14th-century composer Guillaume de Machaut, which is apparently very famous if you know about such things. The two lady singers Michelle O'Rourke and Nora Ryan did that glacial medieval counterpoint thing, and the cello and clarinet accompaniment was suitably understated. The pieces were in some way arranged by Garrett Sholdice, another composer who pops up a lot on this scene. Why don't I listen to more of this kind of music?

After the interval, the beatnik-happening quotient was upped by a performance by poet Dave Lordan. I approve of this mixing up of artistic endeavours and didn't find the poetry completely fatuous or annoying. This is surely a result. Matters were helped by the fact that I know Dave slightly from my political-activism days, and he's a top fellow.

Finally, well almost finally, we had the Quiet Music Ensemble. As their name suggests, they specialise in … quiet stuff. There is probably a very elastic definition of what constitutes "quiet", because surely you can't just play Morton Feldman all day. Or maybe you can. Anyway, they did two pieces, one an improvisation and the other by Susan Geaney called Vacuum. I found both pieces quite similar in that they both reminded me of Salt Marie Celeste by Nurse With Wound. Maybe amplified creaky cello noises and minimalist electric guitar and saxophone will do that. Anyway, a nice spooky finish …. Except that then all the various musicians (or those that weren't occupied at the bar) got up on stage for a bit of a jam. It pretty much followed the template of all jams, in that the musicians probably got much more out of it than the audience.

And that was it. Not bad for a dank, dark Wednesday night in November.

bye bye Irene

An inuit panda production

flyer image source (which is actually the Kaleidoscope website... watch as they trace the link back and then send Enda Bates to get hexaphonic on my ass)

Bernard Clarke image source

A Trip to Cork, Part 2: Kaleidoscope

After the show we drifted off to Callanans, a nice pub on the quays that has become one or our haunts in that city. One thing Cork is famous for is having two different mass produced local stouts, Beamish and Murphy's*. I started off with a pint of Beamish, the inferior of the two. While quaffing away I noticed an older gentleman in a baseball cap leaving, and realised that he was none other than Steve Reich. Now, why was Mr Reich down in Cork? For the simple reason that the Reich Effect, a festival devoted to music by, inspired by, or vaguely related to him, was taking place in that proud city. And indeed, even though he had taken his leave, the pub still had various members of the Crash Ensemble and the Dublin avant-garde classical music scene knocking around in it. I overheard a bit of barman chitchat about the composer, which went something like this:

Barman A: So that fella's well known?

Barman B: Oh yeah, he's a famous composer.

Barman A: Jaysus. And did he drink his Murphy's?

Barman B: He gave it a go.

The Reich Effect taking place while we were on our brief visit to Cork was convenient, and we arranged to attend the Kaleidoscope Caravan club night on the following evening. I may have mentioned this before – it is a Dublin club night run by Cliodhna Ryan and Kate Ellis (both of the Crash Ensemble and other things) where chamber music old and new is played in the intimate setting of the upstairs club space of the Odessa restaurant, where people can drink cocktails or more normal drinks in a relaxed fashion while listening to delightful music.

This kind of thing is self-evidently a good idea and so much the kind of thing I like that it is amazing that my attending their visit to Cork represented the first time I have ever made it to a Kaleidoscope event. My failure to make it to their Dublin events tends to stem from a combination of my own disorganisation, their nights clashing with nights I have to work late, and the small venue always being full of the Kaleidoscope performers' friends and relations by the time I try to get a ticket. But in Cork I had my beloved on the case, and she picked up tickets for us online.

Five pieces were played. First of all, we had a Bach sonata in G minor. This was introduced as being one of Bach's less performed pieces, which was odd as it sounded very Bach-like to me. But it did make me think that I really must further explore Bach's music, as there is an astonishing beauty to it and he does seem to deserve his reputation as one of the three greatest composers of all time.

After that we had a famous piece of Javan Gamelan arranged for western instruments by Ergodos superstar Garret Sholdice, which made for an intellectually interesting juxtaposition of styles. That was followed by a beautiful performance of Igor Stravinsky scored Russian peasant songs, sung unaccompanied by Michelle O'Rourke and other singers whose faces I recognise from this kind of event. A John Zorn piece saw cellist Jeffrey Ziegler of the Kronos Quartet joining the Irish performers, which led to excitable screaming from the young ladies in the crowd. My notes on this piece, however, contain the cryptic phrase "Fiddler on the roof?". The concert finished with White Man Sleeps, a Kevin Volans piece for sting quartet, for which my notes say "Pan-Pipes?".

After that we could have stayed for music DJed by Donal Dineen, but it had been a long evening and I was feeling a bit *tired*, so we slunk off back to bad. And that, pretty much, was that. It was an enjoyable evening, though there was the slight sense that all the other performers and audience members were on the most intimate terms.

*Dublin only has one.

Panda Caravan

An inuit panda production