The late night, “Afterhours”, concert by the GGS New Music Ensemble in the Temerty Theatre is something of a fixture of the 21C festival and it’s almost always fun. Last night was no exception. There were four contrasting pieces conducted and introduced by Brian Current, with his usual gentle erudition on the theme “all music was new music once”. Which is worth thinking about!
The first two pieces on the programme were acoustic, in the sense that no electronics were involved. Tanya León’s Indigena is a kind of high culture homage to salsa. It’s highly textured and brightly toned with variations on Latin dance rhythms and an extended part for solo trumpet. Skilfully composed, very well played and well within the mainstream of contemporary music.
There was never a chance that Emily D’Angelo’s solo recital at Koerner Hall was going to be a steady procession of German lieder and French chansons with the odd Broadway number thrown in and it wasn’t. It was what D’Angelo fans would expect and (some of us at least) crave; lots of women composers and lots of contemporary music. There were five sets.
Unruly Sun is a song cycle in 19 parts with music by Matthew Ricketts (left) and words by Mark Campbell (below). It’s inspired by Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature and was performed last night in Mazzoleni Hall by tenor Karim Sulayman accompanied by piano and string quintet. I was much more affected by this piece than I expected to be. The text covers a lot of ground; Jarman’s cottage at Dungeness with it’s bleak shingle beach and nuclear power station, AIDS and the loss of friends, a bad porn movie and, of course, Jarman’s garden (which also of course inspired 
operaramblings 