Concerts and events reviews.
The University Chamber Choir began its performance series last Friday, with a sequence of music and readings for Advent at the church of St Damian & St Cosmus, in Blean.
Our thanks to the team at Blean church for making us so welcome, and helping us to launch the beginning of the Advent season. Next stop for the Choir: the University Carol Service in Canterbury Cathedral…
Images © Matt Wilson / University of Kent
Photos from the first Watch This Space gig last month, with Dan Harding (piano), Gordon Wood (bass), Cory Adams (drums), Tim Pickering (sax) and special guest, the funky Chris Gray (tuba).
Images: © Matt Wilson / University of Kent
Last week saw the (delayed) première of Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels; Drama graduate and former member of Chamber Choir, Steve Graney, was in the audience…
BBC Concert Orchestra, Southbank Sinfonia, London Voices Conductor: Jurjen Hempel, Soprano: Claron McFadden Royal Festival Hall, Tuesday 29th October, 2013
“Touring can make you crazy, Ladies and Gentlemen.”
In the case of Frank Zappa, touring can make you so crazy that you write a musical film in which you are played by Ringo Starr, Ringo’s chauffeur plays your ex-bassist and your former-saxophonist plays a Newt Rancher who falls in love with an Industrial Vacuum Cleaner.
Welcome to 200 Motels, a ‘surrealistic documentary’ of life on the road for Zappa and his band The Mothers of Invention; a musical satire of the tensions, groupies, chemical experimentations and absurdities that come with a rock & roll tour.
The orchestral concert version, forty-two years after its performance at the Royal Albert Hall was cancelled on grounds of obscenity, was finally unveiled to the UK in the Southbank’s ‘The Rest is Noise’ festival of twentieth-century music. It was a joyous spectacle (witnessing the London Voices wave light-up, rubber – how can I put this? – ‘recreational aids’ during a suite entitled ‘Penis Dimension’ is surely a once-in-a-lifetime experience). It also cemented Zappa’s status as a key twentieth-century composer.
Zappa’s versatility spans achingly beautiful string lines, challenging free jazz-reminiscent choral arrangements and even a majestic Bolero. The influence of Frank’s idols Stravinsky and Varèse is evident in the piece’s suspenseful harmonic dissonance and polyrhythmic, percussive atonality, but this in no way detracts from his individuality and unique approach to composition; I for one would pay good money just to glimpse a score that orders the horn players to jump on the spot.
The onstage rock band played second fiddle to the orchestra on this ‘Strictly Genteel’ classical occasion, although guitarist Leo Abrahams did treat us to a few tasty electric licks and there were some impressive Don Preston-style synth-keyboard skills to be heard.
Vocals and dialogue from the film also featured. These were stronger in some areas than others. Ian Shaw and Brendan Reilly, while vocally solid, didn’t recapture the raucous showmanship of Mothers frontmen and former-Turtles Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan. However, Tony Guilfoyle, in FZ wig and moustache, brought Zappa’s surreal, self-parodying sense of humour to the fore magnificently. His accompaniment of the ‘I Have Seen the Pleated Gazelle’ segment (concerning the Girl-Newt Rancher-Industrial Vacuum Cleaner love triangle) with its composer’s justification that this was “a love story people could relate to” was dry, bizarre and hilarious.
I have nothing but admiration for soprano Claron McFadden’s breath-taking melodic and lyrical clarity. Any trained soprano who can sing, unfazed, lines like “If there’s one thing I really get off on it’s a nun suit painted on some old boxes” has my undying respect.
As the packed Royal Festival Hall leapt into standing ovation, we half-hoped our cries of “More!” might prompt an encore of ‘Peaches En Regalia’ or similar. But we were content with Jurjen Hempel lifting the mammoth conductor’s score triumphantly aloft, finally performed in full.
Would Frank’s words have been words of pride? “About f***ing time” might be nearer the mark.
Who knows. He was Only In It For The Money anyway.
Steve Graney
Sad to learn of the death of Lou Reed, who has died at the age of 71.
Reed was the frontman for the Velvet Underground, a group famed less for their success at the time than for their subsequent influence; as Brian Eno famously said, whilst their debut album only sold 30,000 copies and reached 197 on the Billboard chart before disappearing, “everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band.” Reed’s instantly-recognisable gravelly tones on the opening Vicious are a slap in the face to the contemporaneous trippy, psychedelic rock of The Doors and Jefferson Airplane. The group took part in multi-media events with Andy Warhol between 1966-67, Exploding Plastic Inevitable, which took place in cities throughout America (Warhol himself having part-financed the band’s debut album).
After the group disbanded in 1970, Reed continued as a solo artist, achieving critical breakthrough with Transformer (co-produced with David Bowie and Mick Ronson), which included Walk on the Wild Side in 1973.
Listen to ‘Hangin’ Round’ at just after ten minutes. Terrific.
No more walks on the wild side…
This year’s lunchtime concert series burst into ecstatic life with a visit from the ebullient Marici Saxes, launching the year-long monthly series at the Colyer-Fergusson Hall.
The set opened with Michael Nymans’s Chasing Sheep Is Best Left To Shepherds, with the group in rhythmic, robust form. The tour of Britain continued with music by the late Richard Rodney Bennett, three sections from Travel Notes; the lyrical, arcing melody in ‘Helicopter’ effortlessly played by Sally McTaggart on soprano saxophone (a late stand-in for the indisposed Sarah Field, whom we wish well). There was a lively, jocular air to the final ‘Car Chase’ that showed to the full the wonderfully liquid grace of the group’s ensemble-playing, and demonstrated they have a real affinity for this repertoire.
Michael Torke’s July is a tour de force for a sax ensemble, and was here delivered with assurance and a firm grasp of its rhythmic drive, coupled with contrasting, elegaic melodies. There was a punchy, vibrant swagger to the piece which was bursting with vigour, as the group ducked and dived in terrific unison through Torke’s no-holds-barred minimalism.
A change of mood next in Piazzolla’s ‘Cafe 1930’ from his Histoire de Tango, originally written for flute and guitar but here rendered for ensemble that had gently weaving lines spiralling up through the group.
Baritone saxophonist Josie Simmons turned composer for First Moon which followed, and showed a keen ear for dissonance in the opening chords, turning into a rhapsodic melody before springing to life in some mischievious post-minimalist textural writing, including some fiercly-skirling arabesques for the soprano sax.
The group ended its recital with the show-stopping Hoe Down by Will Gregory, in a performance that was truly hair-raisingly exciting, with some blistering agility displayed by Josie on baritone, who demonstrated that the instrument can be just as mobile as its smaller counterparts.
The piece, and the concert itself, was greeted with a roof-raising ovation from an enthralled audience, including a group of schoolchildren who were clearly held spellbound throughout the gig. A top-notch performance, delivered by an ensemble in fighting form. Catch them when you can…
From the opening, hypnotic circling of Atlas to the final, concise and vibrant rendition of Master & Margarita, jazz afficionados should grab the chance to hear Trish Clowes’ recent gig at King’s Place, broadcast on Jazz Line Up on BBC Radio 3 on Sunday. Regular readers (yes, both of you…) will have seen I’ve written about Trish before here, and a couple of features over on the Big Band blog here, since hearing her burst onto the scene at the ‘BBC Presents’ stage at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival back in 2011.
Trish is currently enjoying the status of this year’s Radio 3 New Generation Jazz Artist, and the gig showcases both familiar tracks and some new pieces. Her ear for sinuous, lyrical improvisation is always apparent, whilst the new Chorale is an understated exploration of the ballad form.
The quintet features the superlative drumming of James Maddren, and the dextrous pianistic skills of Gwilym Simcock (himself a former Radio 3 New Generation Jazz Artist), who delivers a scintillating solo-for-the-age in the final piece.
Here’s a live version of Atlas from last year:
Catch the King’s Place gig on iPlayer until next Monday online here.
The strange behaviour of neighbours leads to an unforgettable evening of music at the Deal Festival for postgraduate student and soprano, Hannah Perrin.
—-
This was entirely by accident. I bumped into my upstairs neighbours on the driveway and wondered where they were heading out to at twenty to ten at night. With the explanation, and having sung Britten earlier this year with the University Cecilian Choir, I thought it would be interesting to hear a different presentation of his work, so along I went, notebook in hand, to (as it turned out) Britten on the Beach.
At 9.45pm it was half-dark, with the lights of the pier visible from the beach and the shops along the Strand lit up, the chip shop doing a very brisk trade! We walked along the prom to be directed onto the beach between two of the fishing huts, with the instruction “keep the glow sticks to your right”. The scene was amazing – lit by a “sea” of multicoloured glow sticks and storm lanterns were two traditional wooden fishing boats, either side of a smallish open-sided shelter for the musicians, and a large, sun-bleached tree trunk acting as a seat. In the semi-darkness, the effect was very atmospheric.
Spilling out of the sides of the shelter were Chroma, a chamber ensemble based in London and known for their dynamic performances of contemporary works. This evening’s septet included a large percussion section along with flute/piccolo, violin, oboe, cello, horn and harp (kudos to whoever lugged everything across the shingle). They warmed up as the audience arrived crunchily across the beach, exclaiming over the set and asking “is this patch of pebbles taken?”, and making conversation with their neighbours in the way that the English doing something unusual with strangers tend to do. The more seasoned festival-goers had brought folding chairs, but I was quite happy sitting by the front. One of the most noticeable things was the smell – an evocative mixture of beach, sea, and the faint waft of barbecue from further up the beach.
The music began with a solo flute, joined by the violin in a melancholy, sea shanty-like introduction. The narrator came to sit on his tree trunk and read from Crabbe’s poem The Borough, on which Britten’s Peter Grimes was based. Verses were interspersed with sections of the sea interludes from the opera, brilliantly dissonant crashing waves from the strings and percussion, screeching gulls and sea spray on the cymbals, the harp depicting shimmering sunlight on calm water. The poetry moved to a piece written by a local author telling the story of a shipwreck and rescue on the Goodwin Sands, interspersed with a haunting tenor solo from Mark LeBrocq.
The music continued to embody the changing emotions of the sea – beautiful swelling scales starting in the cello and going all the way to the top of a very agile piccolo and back depicting receding waves, and ominously long notes from the cello and horn foretelling bad news from the rescue effort as the narrator told of “horrors in the night”. As the story developed, the crew did actually return over the crest of the beach with flaming torches, along with the young apprentice, the old skipper and the cynical mate. It was a very effective use of few actors to tell a very evocative tale – the sights and smells of the beach itself along with Britten’s brilliant evocations of the sea in all its moods combining into an unforgettable evening.
Text and images: Hannah Perrin.
Hannah is a PhD student in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research at the University of Kent. Follow Hannah on Twitter.
Second-year Matt Bamford reviews last week’s choral concert during Summer Music Week.
The Church of St Paul’s Without was the setting for Music for a Summer’s Evening, where the University of Kent Chamber and Cecilian Choirs, conducted by Dan Harding and Emma Murton, joined forces to provide an evening of fantastic entertainment.
With proceeds in aid of Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association (SSAFA) Forces Help, the audience quickly filled the church and eagerly awaited A Ceremony of Carols composed by Benjamin Britten. Whilst the audience entered, they were treated to a selection of pieces by a string quartet consisting of pieces from Queen to Vivaldi.
A Ceremony of Carols begins with a solemn plainchant before going into ‘Wolcum Yole!’ where Emma Murton began to accompany the Cecilian Choir on the harp. The audience were then treated to a solo by Hannah Johns which was very well executed. Another solo from Aisha Bové followed and the balance between Aisha and the supporting choir was perfect. Ann-Kathrin Kirschbaum and Montana Slattery both excelled in solos in ‘In Freezing Winter Night.’
My highlight from the work, however, was ‘Deo Gracias’ which was sung with enthusiasm and fantastic diction. It was very easy to understand the words of the 15th Century Text ‘Adam Lay Ybounden’. Carina Evans then cleverly accompanied the Cecilian choir in two modern pieces which were a real contrast to Britten work.
After the interval, the University of Kent Chamber Choir took to the stage and opened the second half of the concert with Dawn by Eric Barnum. This is a personal favourite of mine and it really created a very peaceful atmosphere. Tanzen und Springen then gave a fantastic contrast as it is a jolly madrigal by Hans Leo Hassler.
Credit is due to Emma Murton, who after playing the harp and singing in the Chamber Choir then conducted the choir in a brilliant rendition of A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square. It was brilliant to see the audience enjoying Nice Work If You Can Get It by Gershwin, I don’t think that there was a single foot that wasn’t tapping in the whole church!
The choir then sang Forgotten Children’s Songs composed by Dan Harding, a very clever set of pieces that was very well sung by the choir. I couldn’t help but think of Schumann’s Kinderszenen whilst listening to these pieces.
We were treated to an encore of My Spirit Sang All Day which was a fitting end to a very professional and enjoyable concert. Thanks must go to members of SSAFA who kindly provided the musicians with refreshments after the concert.
Overall, a very enjoyable evening which was well received by the audience.
Matt Bamford
Photos: Matt Wilson
