Tag Archives: cage

A most unusual cello recital

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Anyone familiar with the work of cellist Peter Eom, who performed on Wednesday in the RBA, would not have been expecting a collection of Bach and Britten pieces.  They might have been surprised though by the floor layout, which featured six “cello stations”.  Peter’s introduction stated that his recital was titled Primordial because he wanted to suggest rituals, dreams and surrealism and he wanted us to take the recital on whatever terms we, or our subconsciousnesses, chose but to experience it as a single whole played end to end.

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Babes in Toyland

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babesintoylandThe Happenstancers ended their 2023/24 season last night at 918 Bathurst with a concert called Babes in Toyland.  It consisted of mainly late 20th and 21st century chamber works with one unusual Mozart piece (K617 for glass harmonica (Kevin Ahfat), viola (Hee-Soo Yoon( ,cello (Peter Eom), oboe (Aleh Remezau) and flute (Tristan Durie) to spice things up.

The main interest for me was that there was plenty of vocal music featuring soprano Reilly Nelson who not only sang some highly technical music but played bells, scattered playing cards and carried a boom box.  The first substantial vocal work was Unsuk Chin’s acrostic-wordplay which is in seven movements with texts created from fragments from Michael Ende’s The Never Ending Story and Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. (Chin seems to have a bit of an Alice fixation).  It’s a complex piece for soprano and a fairly large chamber ensemble with no clear musical structure.  The textures vary from spooky and ethereal to aggressively loud and dissonant.  Great work here from Reilly and the ensemble conducted by Simon Rivard. Continue reading →

We’re Late!

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werelateThe Happenstancers latest concert We’re Late! happenstanced on Saturday evening at Redeemer Lutheran.  It was a typical Happenstancers sort of event with chamber music works for various forces split up into their movements with the components then rearranged to make an interesting line up.

Lukas Foss’ Time Cycle provided the opening piece which also provided the title for the concert as a whole.  It’s a setting of Auden for soprano and chamber ensemble and begins “Clocks cannot tell our time of day”.  Which was pretty much the theme for the evening.  This was followed by Toshi Ichiyangi’s Music for Electric Metronomes which had the whole ensemble banging things rhythmically and making stylsed gestures.  Then came the first of three parts of rather a good musical joke; John Cage’s 4’33” arranged into three movements for different forces. which as might be expected cropped up at intervals during the show.  For the record the movements were scored for piano and percussion, conductor and oboe and percussion.

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Darknet

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Great idea.  Create a sort of spooky, short opera program in a funky location and use it as a fundraiser for your next major project.  That was Darknet at Mây last night.  Jennifer Krabbe, singing Berlioz, rounded us up in the bar and ushered us downstairs into an installation created by Alessia Naccarato and Noah Grove.  It was dark.  It was eerie.  We were offered masks.  Cairan Ryan sang The Cold Song from Purcell’s King Arthur while writhing on the floor.  Jonathan MacArthur sort of emerged from some sort of primeval goo singing Aria by John Cage and Beth Hagerman gave us one of Lulu’s arias.  Then we were rounded up and ejected into the light again.  Loved it.

jma