In his too-short life, perhaps Arthur
Russell's greatest proclivity was for pulling together apparently
unreconcilable musical genres. In the almost tribal New York scene of
the Eighties he worked as music director for experimental venue the
Kitchen, but also frequented disco clubs like the Gallery or punk
places such as CBGBs. Perfectionist and somewhat fractious, forever
starting new projects and rarely finishing old ones, little of his
music was released during his life. And he was still almost entirely
unknown when becoming a victim to AIDS in 1992, when only Forty.
'Tower of Meaning' was one of those few releases,
but in an edition of 320 copies.
Happily, our times are less hamstrung
by genre and things seem to be changing, with not only the UK
premiere of this piece but a Guardian retrospective written to accompany the concert.
If Russell is known for one thing, it's
finding common ground between minimalist music and disco. Ironic then
that, not using the repetitive phrases of Reich or Glass, 'Tower
of Meaning' seems less related to disco than minimalism in
general! Brass-dominated and composed of long, slow melodic lines,
instruments dropping out and re-joining give it a sense of momentum,
even though there's nothing you could call musical progression. In a
way it's more installation piece than composition. (It was originally
conceived of as a soundtrack.)
There's an almost stately feel to it
that makes it strangely calming, like a kind of second cousin to Bryan's 'Sinking of The Titanic', making for ideal Sunday night
fare, arriving after the business of the week was done. (The tempo on
the original recording was achieved by artificially slowing the
session tape, meaning for live versions it needed to be
re-transcribed.) There's an underlying assumption that it doesn't
need to travel anywhere, that it's precisely where it wants to be,
and so can just trace elegant circles – regatta rather than
journey.
Slightly eccentrically, the running
order of the supporting programme wasn't written up anywhere. I just
about guessed that none was by Russell himself, and that the opening
solo cello piece was yer actual classical. (It turned out to be Bach.)
A string quartet was later revealed to be by Mica Levi (of whom the record shows Lucid Frenzy to be a fan), 'You Belong To
Me'. the violins constantly pulling ahead while the cello
acts as a brake.
But my favourite from the first half
was 'Wolff Tone E-Tude' by Mary Jane Leach, a
composer previously unknown to me. Her work, it says here, “reveals a
fascination with the physicality of sound, its acoustic properties
and how they interact with space”. A description which, perhaps
against the odds, her piece lived up to. It built up steadily from a
drone, with each instrument slowly and steadily finding it's own
voice, yet rather than breaking away still contributing to the whole.
Certainly a name to look out for.
Two longstanding collaborators of
Russell's, Bill Ruye and Peter Zummo, stood out against the much
younger London Contemporary Orchestra and Oliver Coates of the recent Deep Minimalism mini-festival. The audience alike were
overwhelmingly young, plus plentiful, despite this being an overspill
from a sold out Saturday night. In fact, performed in the round while
punters sat or laid casually around, it had a much similar feel to
Deep Minimalism. Further evidence a thriving scene is building around
this music.
No comments:
Post a Comment