Excellent in parts
Jul. 2nd, 2011 11:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustLast night we were at the Town Hall for the opening concert of the annual Brass Festival. It was billed as "Winter North Atlantic premiere new commission 'Drifts and Panels' featuring Emily Portman - and here's the pitch for the event (from the brochure, but no longer online):
Well, that could be anything, but exposure to something new is good for us, I enjoy brass bands and I'm a big Emily Portman fan, so it could be good, and - since the seats were unassigned, we made the effort to get ourselves out of the house and down to the Town Hall for the 7.30 start. In the lobby we handed over our tickets and were told "Starts at eight o' clock." (no "sorry," no "change of plan..." just "starts at eight o' clock.").
We went to the bar, we had a drink, eventually we drifted into the hall, and at eight o' clock someone whose name I have forgotten from the County Council's Arts Team came out and told us how great the Brass Festival was going to be, and then Emily Portman came on with a group of brass players and performed three new songs - so new that it took her three goes to get the first one right, and to start with the first verse. But it was worth it, because it was terrific: based, I think, on an Italian lullaby, called something like 'The Scorching Sun', the brass and the voice and the looping imagery all working together to make something rich and powerful. Next came 'A Song about nothing at all', a reworking of a song from a songbook called Marrowbones found in a charity shop (an EFDSS publication, says Google), a fun and lively arrangement, and finally Jack, about a sailor abandoned by a mermaid and left stranded on the shore with only a compass and his memories. Then they thanked us nicely and left the stage, and the recorded music came back on the speakers (I always hate that; and does it have to be louder than the live music?). After sitting in the dark listening to this for five music, we went out to the lobby and asked the staff there, was that it? And they said no, the support act were coming on now, and then at nine it would be Winter North Atlantic and more from Emily Portman.
ETA:
The support act - as advertised on the posters - were called Rae (this might be them): laid-back lounge bar jazz, all of which are things I run screaming to avoid. So it's no reflection on the band that we retreated once again to the bar and discussed how we wished this was over and how foolish we had been not to bring the crossword. Finally at nine they stopped, and the recorded music came on again, while photographers darted about being important and setting up their flash units, and the hall got hotter and stuffier and the band waited in the doorway.
Eventually - about 9.20 - Winter North Atlantic came on, preceded by a video explaining how they worked, which I found it quite hard to pay attention to: it must be clear that by now I'd gone past the point of being receptive to experimental new music. From what I took in of the video, WNA work by recording samples and rearranging them afterwards - but this seemed to generate something which they then reproduced live. I also never managed to work out whether the brass section (who had also appeared with Emily Portman in her first slot) were part of the band or not: they are listed separately in the brochure (Brass Players: Jim Hayes, Graham Tindal, Martin Armstrong, Chris Bentham, Jeremy Belton, Clive Parker, Steve Malcolm, Phil Rosier) and they were very good.
It was perfectly agreeable to sit back and let the brass wash over you and drift off with the patterns projected onto the big video screen - a sort of lightshow, I suppose, but one deliberately designed not to be interesting, rather like flicking through a file of animated wallpaper samples ("Benzine rings!", said![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
durham_rambler and, a little later "parquet." He also said "screensaver", but my screensaver is more interesting than that). Only when Emily Portman came on for the two collaborative pieces did I start to find the images distracting (a sign, I think, that I'd been finding that duvet snugness comfortable, soothing and rather boring) and wish that the photographers who appeared to be videoing the entire proceedings could be connected up to a feed so that we could see the band on the screen (it isn't a big hall, but it doesn't have raked seating and the platform is quite low; you don't see much).
Anyway, the two collaborative pieces: cut-up of The Collier's Rant really worked, the brass and broken phrases drawing you in and making you work to hear what the music was doing, the second, a mix of fairytale elements that didn't seem to have much to say to the brass, less so. After this, Emily Portman left, WNA resumed, we listened to the first few bars of the next piece and decided that no, we'd rather go home.
So it was an evening with some really good music in it, but it wasn't a really good evening. Some of that is because the mix of musical styles gave us something we really liked, something we were prepared to give a hearing and something we really didn't like. Someone else might have enjoyed all of it, and found the sheer variety an added pleasure. But the sheer disorganisation - the amount of time we spent just waiting for something to happen, and the absence of any information about who we were hearing and who we would hear next - lost a lot of our goodwill.
As far as I'm concerned, that first song made the evening worthwhile. But it'll take more than 'could be good' to get me to a Brass Festival concert in the future.
Following on from last year's superb performance with Pittington Brass, WNA have joined forces with some of the North East's leading brass musicians in a collaboration that draws on a beautiful range of traditional and contemporary influences.WNA's 'duvet-snug, elegaic melodies' (The Wire) will be enhanced by the contributions of incredible folk songstress Emily Portman, who features on two of the new compositions created during the project.
The performance will also include WNA songs from their forthcoming album, with specially written brass arrangements. This work highlights the spirit of experimentation that BRASS supports. Supported by Culture Lab and Northern Regional Brass Band Trust.
Well, that could be anything, but exposure to something new is good for us, I enjoy brass bands and I'm a big Emily Portman fan, so it could be good, and - since the seats were unassigned, we made the effort to get ourselves out of the house and down to the Town Hall for the 7.30 start. In the lobby we handed over our tickets and were told "Starts at eight o' clock." (no "sorry," no "change of plan..." just "starts at eight o' clock.").
We went to the bar, we had a drink, eventually we drifted into the hall, and at eight o' clock someone whose name I have forgotten from the County Council's Arts Team came out and told us how great the Brass Festival was going to be, and then Emily Portman came on with a group of brass players and performed three new songs - so new that it took her three goes to get the first one right, and to start with the first verse. But it was worth it, because it was terrific: based, I think, on an Italian lullaby, called something like 'The Scorching Sun', the brass and the voice and the looping imagery all working together to make something rich and powerful. Next came 'A Song about nothing at all', a reworking of a song from a songbook called Marrowbones found in a charity shop (an EFDSS publication, says Google), a fun and lively arrangement, and finally Jack, about a sailor abandoned by a mermaid and left stranded on the shore with only a compass and his memories. Then they thanked us nicely and left the stage, and the recorded music came back on the speakers (I always hate that; and does it have to be louder than the live music?). After sitting in the dark listening to this for five music, we went out to the lobby and asked the staff there, was that it? And they said no, the support act were coming on now, and then at nine it would be Winter North Atlantic and more from Emily Portman.
ETA:
The support act - as advertised on the posters - were called Rae (this might be them): laid-back lounge bar jazz, all of which are things I run screaming to avoid. So it's no reflection on the band that we retreated once again to the bar and discussed how we wished this was over and how foolish we had been not to bring the crossword. Finally at nine they stopped, and the recorded music came on again, while photographers darted about being important and setting up their flash units, and the hall got hotter and stuffier and the band waited in the doorway.
Eventually - about 9.20 - Winter North Atlantic came on, preceded by a video explaining how they worked, which I found it quite hard to pay attention to: it must be clear that by now I'd gone past the point of being receptive to experimental new music. From what I took in of the video, WNA work by recording samples and rearranging them afterwards - but this seemed to generate something which they then reproduced live. I also never managed to work out whether the brass section (who had also appeared with Emily Portman in her first slot) were part of the band or not: they are listed separately in the brochure (Brass Players: Jim Hayes, Graham Tindal, Martin Armstrong, Chris Bentham, Jeremy Belton, Clive Parker, Steve Malcolm, Phil Rosier) and they were very good.
It was perfectly agreeable to sit back and let the brass wash over you and drift off with the patterns projected onto the big video screen - a sort of lightshow, I suppose, but one deliberately designed not to be interesting, rather like flicking through a file of animated wallpaper samples ("Benzine rings!", said
durham_rambler and, a little later "parquet." He also said "screensaver", but my screensaver is more interesting than that). Only when Emily Portman came on for the two collaborative pieces did I start to find the images distracting (a sign, I think, that I'd been finding that duvet snugness comfortable, soothing and rather boring) and wish that the photographers who appeared to be videoing the entire proceedings could be connected up to a feed so that we could see the band on the screen (it isn't a big hall, but it doesn't have raked seating and the platform is quite low; you don't see much).Anyway, the two collaborative pieces: cut-up of The Collier's Rant really worked, the brass and broken phrases drawing you in and making you work to hear what the music was doing, the second, a mix of fairytale elements that didn't seem to have much to say to the brass, less so. After this, Emily Portman left, WNA resumed, we listened to the first few bars of the next piece and decided that no, we'd rather go home.
So it was an evening with some really good music in it, but it wasn't a really good evening. Some of that is because the mix of musical styles gave us something we really liked, something we were prepared to give a hearing and something we really didn't like. Someone else might have enjoyed all of it, and found the sheer variety an added pleasure. But the sheer disorganisation - the amount of time we spent just waiting for something to happen, and the absence of any information about who we were hearing and who we would hear next - lost a lot of our goodwill.
As far as I'm concerned, that first song made the evening worthwhile. But it'll take more than 'could be good' to get me to a Brass Festival concert in the future.
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Date: 2011-07-03 03:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-03 07:23 pm (UTC)Thanks for your e-mail, btw - sooner or later I will answer it, but right now I'm still blushing...
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