To Redeemer Lutheran Church last night for the first of two Friday evening concerts in the West End Micro Music Festival.  This one was an exploration of baroque music and its derivatives though to quote co-curator Brad Cherwin, “What is baroque music?  I don’t even know anymore”.  Amen to that.

The first section of the programme consisted of three pieces for strings and harpsichord conducted by Simon Rivard run together as one.  I found Linda Catlin Smith’s Sinfonia a bit formless and hard to get into especially when contrasted with the “attack” of the Vivaldi pieces (Sinfonia RV 169 and Concerto for Four Violins RV 580).  Excellent playing though and I did like the Vivaldi.

Nahre Sol claims that all her music derives from the baroque; Bach, Vivaldi, Rameau.  Who am I to argue?  I can hear those influences but also others.  Minimalism for sure, but where is that not an influence today?  Also jazz, but not, as perhaps more typical, “the blues”.  It’s more a cool jazz, sort of like John Dankworth.  It flirts with schmaltz but recoils (in horror?) just when you think the saccharometer is going to go off the scale.  It was interesting to hear it come together especially in the pieces scored for keyboards (variously piano, electronics, harpsichord with Sol often playing two at once), bass (both double and electric  played by Ben Finley), with John Lee on Korean percussion.  This section consisted of five pieces; three by Sol, one by Finley, one a collaboration. Tides (Sol) and Unexpected Turn (Finley) set the tone but it was the collab; Leaping Lightly and Sol’s Roundabout Bach that caught my attention most.  They both use percussion in quite a visceral way with echoes of military march and tribal dance spiking the jazz/baroque soundscape to dramatic effect.

For the last set we were back to strings and keyboard for more baroque minimalism in Sol’s Placid Airs and then back to Bach with the Overture BWV212.  Ezra Pound famously said “Music rots when it gets too far from the dance” and dance as the root was most apparent here in a thoroughly satisfying way.   There’s definitely something in having the violins and violas standing rather than sitting.  It brings the body into play somehow.

All in all, an interesting short concert that will be reprised tonight.  Next weekend there’s the festival’s second concert Alchemical Processes that explores music as transformation from the 16th to the 21st centuries.