Review: 30 Years Under the Grylls

University of Auckland Chamber Choir, Accord, Collegium Musicum Auckland

Cond. Karen Grylls, Robert Wiremu, James Tibbles

Sunday 7 June, St Mary’s Church, Parnell, Auckland

Review by Jonathan Mandeno

A tribute concert celebrating the 30 years of Dr Karen Grylls’ service to the choirs of the University of Auckland would never have been a mean affair.  St Mary’s Church was soon packed with colleagues and students, from both past and present, as both audience and chorister.  The Church itself was a fitting enough backdrop for the occasion, but sadly its rather dry acoustic did not compliment the singers nearly as well as the Cathedral next door would have.  The programme reflected Karen’s decades of service with a formidably diverse and lengthy set of works, from early music to old choir favourites to a brand new piece.

Karen herself opened the evening leading a massed choir made up of the Chamber Choir and numerous alumni.  The group’s diversity lead to a few unsure moments in entries and intonation in David Hamilton’s Didn’t It Rain.  Tenor Lachlan Craig’s tone was on-point in its tenderness for the solo of Vaughan Williams’ The Turtle Dove, but he sometimes appeared to struggle with the peaks and valleys of the melody. However it was Karen’s sheer conducting charisma that brought the group together beautifully at other times.  She led the fanned-out singers through the antiphony of Antonio Lotti’s Crucifixus with absolute confidence.  The American folksong Shenandoah was lavishly executed with its rich harmonies and unisons, and Douglas Mews’ arrangement of Come All You Tonguers had all the salt and stridency of a proper rollicking shanty.

Robert Wiremu led the recently formed womens’ group Accord in two much lighter offerings.  Good News! was a playful nod to the spiritual as a staple in choral repertoire.  But the motor-mouthed lyrics of Stephen Sondheim’s Everybody Says Don’t sometimes got the better of the small group’s intonation and diction.

To finish the first half Collegium Musicum Auckland and director James Tibbles presented Monteverdi’s Beatus vir, after tuning the ensemble with some florid (and rather unnecessary) showboating on the harpsichord.  Here the more exposed voices revealed the occasional weakness in the ensemble, and many of the middle registers were sadly lost to the acoustic.  However the strong instrumental accompaniment and general energy brought some life back to the motet. 

The most arresting moment of the evening was the premiere of Eve de Castro-Robinson’s host.  As alluded to in the title, the singers approached the stage in dribs and drabs, convening as a host of birds would and gradually building up a thick sustained chord.  Dense layers of circulating phonetics were based on Robert Wiremu’s Vowel-Clock teaching tool, and the effect was an enormously sensual texture of rippling vowels within the harmonic framework.  The resulting vocal overtones were a scintillating cherry on top of the soundscape, leading the way into a vivid section of swooping glissandi and hisses.  This grew with a wild sense of joie de vivre, rewarded fittingly, with a drawn-out breath to the end.

In between the music, the accolades to Karen from various colleagues flowed freely, as tribute concerts are wont to do.  Warm and heartfelt as they were however, they did little to ease the passing of the already long programme, or the hardness of the church pews.  But the greatest affirmation came when Karen herself took to the stage with her own Auckland Chamber Choir.  Under Karen’s direction, the choir proved itself easily the strongest group of the night, tight and disciplined in their intonation and ensemble work.

Grete Pedersen’s arrangements of Norwegian folk hymns Jesus gjør meg stille and Kven kan seia ut den gleda were wonderfully imaginative.  Female voices layered tiny fragments into a micropolyphonic texture over which sailed a lyrical baritone melody.  Then guttural drones with vocal overtones alluded to the sound of throat-singing, all of which was strongly evoking of a dark, Nordic soundscape.

Choir favourite Through Coiled Stillness by Leonie Holmes proved its enduring place in the repertoire.  Tightly coiled clusters slowly unwinding into expressive solos from soprano Morag Atchison and countertenor Stephen Diaz, rainsticks and bells completing the haunting atmosphere of dark and damp bushlands.   The choir pulled off the richly thick harmonies of Morten Lauridsen’s Soneto de la noche with confidence.  The Canadian song Frobisher Bay provided a beautifully sombre showcase of male voices, and the Finnish song Emoni Ennen mixed stark open intervals with joyfully vibrant full voices.

Representative of Karen’s commitment to Maori and Pasifika music, the concert ended simply and warmly with Samoan and Maori songs, the jubilant Si manu la’ititi contrasting with the more pensive Aio.  A final standing ovation was a fitting salute to Karen’s priceless contributions to the University, and to New Zealand Choral music.

Review: Karlheinz Company, from Dylan to Xenakis

Music Director: Eve de Castro-Robinson

Performers: Michael Murray, vocals; Edith Salzmann, cello; Kent Isomura, piano; Stella Kim, April Ju, violins; Caroline Norman, viola; Jennifer Maybee, soprano; John Coulter, manuka branch and live electronics; Liam Wooding, toy piano; Sam Rich, percussion; Callum Blackmore, voice

Chief technician: Irazema H Vera

Bob Dylan: Masters of War

Iannis Xenakis: Paille in the wind

David Grahame Taylor: Obłoki nad Ferrarą

John Coulter: Green

John Cage: Suite for Toy Piano

Eve de Castro-Robinson: ConunDRUMS

Lyell Cresswell: Das Lied von dem Fisch

Cathy Berberian: Stripsody

Auckland University Music Theatre, Sunday 10 May 2015

Review by Nelson Lam

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With the departure of John Elmsly from Auckland University in 2014, Karlheinz Company director Eve de Castro-Robinson had the formidable task of carrying Elmsly’s three-decade legacy and success with the Company forward today. Aligning well to de Castro-Robinson’s character, the new directorship brought along a refreshing burst of energy, evident long before the concert day with her tantalising and hilariously internet-meme-appropriate Facebook marketing – an investment well rewarded with one of the biggest turnouts I have seen for a Karlheinz concert.

Before the first note was sounded, it was evident that de Castro-Robinson’s curatorship extended well beyond the programme itself – a homely rug, warm hues from the effusive lava lamp and pot plants imbued an unpretentious and intimate atmosphere, certainly inviting us concertgoers into what almost felt like an informal jam session. This was certainly the case with Michael Murray’s poignant cover of Bob Dylan’s Masters of War; a wrenching opener well matched by his throaty attack, made more bittersweet by a carefully controlled and sensitive vibrato as his voice trailed off.

Iannis Xenakis’ Paille in the wind felt like a non sequitur to Bob Dylan, but this hostile soundscape was cushioned in part by the informal atmosphere so well established. Edith Salzmann masterfully negotiated the deceptively simple cello line with impeccable precision, without sacrificing its yearning lyricism. Salzmann was an effective foil to pianist Kent Isomura, whose controlled navigation through Xenakis’ crystalline and ultra-condensed clusters gave each chord enough space to let its unique sonorities ring.

While the Karlheinz Company has always been at the forefront of championing works by modern (local and international) masters, it was heartening to see fledgling talented New Zealand composers have their works given their time in the spotlight. Perhaps the emotional highlight of the concert, David Grahame Taylor’s Obłoki nad Ferrarą from Podróż was a sensitive treatment of Zbigniew Herbert’s wistful text, autumnal in temperament with beautifully shaped lines floating over deft strings. The instrumentation was well-balanced – Jennifer Maybee’s engaging lyricism was able to co-exist with the delicate string textures, without overwhelming them. The quartet’s cohesive performance added sheen to Taylor’s immaculately voiced chords; it was just a shame that such a suspended mood was dropped with some hesitancy from the quartet towards the end.

John Coulter’s Green was an arresting work that beguiled from the first breath from silence, right up until the final decay. Coulter himself performed solo on a giant fallen manuka branch through a series of mouthpieces, forging a haunting soundscape devoid of familiar instrumental timbres. The electronic modulations (dictated in real time by wind pressure and direction) were subtle, symbiotic and extremely clever. It disseminated what was previously heard into its spectral constituents, recombined and refocused. Visually striking, aurally organic, the work succeeded to be bold in intent and evocative in effect.

Conversely, John Cage’s Suite for Toy Piano was whimsical in character and ridiculous in effect – Liam Wooding’s larger than life silhouette, against a comically small piano, with music that was almost an order larger than the piano itself was frivolous to look at. It was a piece of contradictions, with figures haphazardly introduced, dismissed and reintroduced. Such an innocent sounding instrument was amusing at first, but the novelty did wear off and the incessant, one-dimensional tinkle of the piano became testing. That being said, I never really understood Cage’s compositions; as a figurehead of the 20^th century, I’ve always felt that I ought to pay respect to him, but often the sheer stochasticity in his compositions made it difficult for me to truly appreciate his works.

Eve de Castro-Robinson’s ConunDRUMS was a sonic and visual tour de force, made all the more poignant by the dedication of the performance to the memory of iconic New Zealand composer Jack Body. In this primal piece bold in gesture, Sam Rich’s poised playing flew brazenly through the virtuosic percussion score, not to mention the impassioned brush strokes Rich painted on the blank canvas behind him. As the work unfolded, it became an intriguing three-part counterpoint between the timbrally kaleidoscopic sonic world, the drama of Rich’s kinetic gestures, and the bold visual paint strokes left behind. In particular, the sonic emergence and submergence of various rhythmic patterns and timbres echoed a similar sort of visual emergence and disappearance of suggestive shapes and figures on the canvas, all of which was brought to life by Rich’s playing, filled with austere intent.

A wryly humourous Das Lied von dem Fisch followed – Lyell Cresswell’s economical writing was reflective of his similarly stark orchestral work ‘The Clock Stops’. The work consisted of seven pithy miniatures on a rightly bizarre and ridiculous subject of a (constipated) goldfish. Perhaps the piece itself nods to Mahler’s gargantuan ‘Das Lied von der Erde’, but its laconic setting could not be further away from the overly romantic soundscape a Mahlerian piece might imply – even though there were some direct and intended quotations from Mahler himself. In a few of the movements, the inherent sternness of the German text against the absurdity of the subject matter was all that was required to create the humour. Here Jennifer Maybee demonstrated her dramatic prowess, conjuring a cheeky, clown-like demeanor that was worlds away from her nostalgic character in Taylor’s Podróż. This was equally matched by Kent Isomura’s pointed playing, to succinctly capture a piece I felt was better at being whimsical and ridiculous than Cage’s Suite for Toy Piano.

Cathy Berberian’s Stripsody closed the concert. Indeed the piece itself was a microcosm of the smorgasbord of sonic delights we heard throughout the evening with its drama, comedy and intriguing combination of onomatopoeic sounds. This was impeccably performed – Callum Blackmore’s stunning drag outfit, his larger-than-life embodiment of each ‘character’, a facile vocal prowess and simply a natural flair for drama turned this into a performance that would have rivaled Berberian herself. With a work that could easily sound random and fragmented, Blackmore crispy demarcated each vignette visually to subtly enforce structural clarity without impeding the overall flow. Even with sections of seemingly nonsensical sounds, Blackmore’s fluid interpretation of the visual score wove a compelling narrative that was exceedingly natural and effortlessly hilarious.

Musically, from the programming to the performance, the concert itself was masterfully executed. But the real icing on the cake was de Castro-Robinson’s astute eye for detail in setting up the concert space. The simple inclusion of a rug, a coffee table, a lava lamp and a few pot plants transformed what might otherwise be just another concert, to now an intimate, almost a convivial living room dialogue for modern music. It effectively shattered the formality so often seen in concert halls with a space that was down-to-earth and inviting, without at all detracting from the performances.

Outside of the concert setting, it is not often that we see composers or directors of these events to be so active in engaging with their audiences – the beauty of social media is that they can do just that. Forging a more immediate connection with the event not only allows sustained audience engagement, but also injects life and hype in a way print media could never do. Our hyper-connectivity in the digital age makes this strategy extremely effective – one that de Castro-Robinson has harnessed so well.

If Sunday’s concert is anything to go by, Eve de Castro-Robinson’s directorship of the Karlheinz Company will redefine how we approach concerts, all while continuing to deliver the refreshing sonic experiences the Company is already well known for.

  

Review: Blackbird Ensemble, Dreams

Music Director, Claire Cowan
Director, Renee Lyons

The Basement Theatre, Lower Greys Ave

Review by Catherine Hamilton

DREAMS is the Blackbird Ensemble’s latest reincarnation, and its smallest one yet. But what it lacks in breadth it definitely makes up for in depth, this show being more intimate and physically stylised than previous endeavours. Entering the performance space is like stepping into a bohemian bedchamber. Each band member sleepwalks onto the set, dressed in charming vintage-style pyjamas. It’s the characterisation element that sets DREAMS apart from previous Blackbird shows, the handiwork of visionary director Renee Lyons. The evening feels like an extended hallucination. There is an equal amount of frenzied rocking out, nightmarish twitching and lilting lullabies on offer, subtly shepherded by musical director Claire Cowan as she flits between cello, banjo, keys and vocals at one end of The Basement Theatre. Near her is the supremely talented Jonathan Burgess on bass and double bass, and the masterfully rhythmic Tristan Deck on drums and percussion. Sleepwalking down at the other end of this extended bedroom is the zen Jonnie Barnard on guitar, the mystical Kevin Keys on trombone and the spirited Callum Passells on saxophones. Centre stage is Charmian Keay on violin, perched atop one of the several unmade beds that make up the set. DREAMS’ two lead vocalists, Jessie Cassin and Mikey Brown are free to wander and roam as much of the set as they can manage; Cassin makes a particularly enchanting entrance by descending from the clouds via glittering golden ladder.

It wouldn’t be a Blackbird Ensemble production without Cowan’s expertly crafted and defiantly complex arrangements that tie together some of the most unlikely musical bedfellows. After opening with Radiohead, Calexico and Iron & Wine covers, we witness a jarring mashup of Loudon Wainwright III and The Smiths. Before we’ve had enough time to wrap our heads around that, we’re up, up and away tumbling over covers and mash-ups that boldly defy genre and the expectations of a “mini-orchestra”. Highlights include that ever-mystical Kevin Keys scaring us all a little with his rendition of Lullaby by The Cure and then Mikey Brown really showing us what he’s made of in I Had A Dream Joe by Nick Cave. Once again, Blackbird leaves me with an interesting and varied list of artists to mull over, rediscover or introduce my ears to.

The reduced size format is refreshing and, though it doesn’t break down the fourth wall entirely, the more intimate environment enables a different kind of connection between the musicians and audience. The audience whoops, cheers and laughs with the band and the evening feels more like being at a gig than at a concert. This borderline-claustrophobic proximity did have its challenging moments when it came to sound design; there were entire chunks of the more boisterous songs where I couldn’t make out what was being sung. It was simply getting lost in the noise. There were other times where players were drowned out by their neighbouring instrumentalists, despite microphones or amplification. This too may have affected the players’ ability to interact with each other; Cowan and Barnard seemed relatively isolated from the core of the band. I’d be interested to see how DREAMS interacts with other environments, in a still-intimate-but-not-SO-small venue.

DREAMS is an inspired aural trip into the world of musical sleepstates and the magnificent set, lighting and costume design combine to create a gorgeously stylised and captivating fantasy to hang out in for the evening.