Wyrd Sisters
Nov. 2nd, 2005 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustFinally lost our Sage virginity last night. We've been to the Sage before, but only to the restaurant, meeting friends for lunch (which doesn't really count as losing your virginity - more like heavy petting). Now, at last, we've been to a concert there: yes, we went all the way with Kate and Anna McGarrigle.
It's an impressive venue. At first I was disappointed to learn that that great bulging silver tube does not derive from the space inside: I'd pictured great organic curves of roofing. It seemed to be cheating, to wrap this extrordinary shape around a more conventional building. But from inside - well, from inside you realise that you are not inside at all, the silver carapace is just a canopy over a series of separate buildings, and an indoor outdoor terrace that runs along between them and the river. Sitting in the café, you don't feel that you are within a concert hall; you are in a pavement café, watching the lights of the cars moving along the Quayside across the river, but sheltered from the weather.
We were in Hall 2 (catchy names they give them); quite small, seating in the round, on three levels stacked quite vertically, so that there was a very strong sense of being inside a vertical tube. Anna McGarrigle said that it was like being in ine of those funfair rides that start to spin and the floor falls away, leaving you pinned to the wall. Kate asked who was the architect? Norma who? Norma Waterson? Oh, Norman... And "in the round" means in the round, too, much to the band's amusement, as they gradually realised that there were people sitting above and behind them.
Katie Docherty - billed as The Katie Docherty Trio, but very much a showcase for the young singer-songwriter - was pleasant enough. She started with a very confident version of the song I know, from the Peggy Seeger recording, as Butcher Boy, but which she had reset to her own tune to allow her to put in plenty of vocal flourishes. Her own songs were not quite the sort of thing you would hear on Radio 2, the traditional flavour was too strong for that, but in skill, assurance and style they came close. I suspect, in other words, that the things I liked least about her performance were the things she was doing best. And once this warm-up act had us nicely warmed up, there was a twenty minute interval in which we were sent out to buy ice-creams. Which gave the evening an odd sort of shape.
But then the McGarrigles came on, and all was well. Tamsin from the Sage, who was doing the introductions, described them as "the High Priestesses of Québecois music", which distracted me by the oblique and subtle nature of its wrongness: here on stage were two women, sleek iron-grey hair streaked with silver, sensible jackets, denim jeans and then - but only below ankle level - a sudden bejewelled frivolity, Anna in sparkling slippers and Kate in strappy harem sandals. Plus Joel Zifkin on violin, Chaim Tannenbaum on mandolin, harmonica, vocals... and a rythm section consisting of two brothers, a bassist and drummer who laid down percussion of unusual delicacy, and I'm sorry that I can't remember their names (and that the McGarrigles website isn't anxious to remind me). This was very much a band, rather than stars plus accompaniment, and I was pleasantly surprised at how well the extra voices worked on new arrangements of familiar material.
There was a mixture of new and old material, and since the most recent record - and I had missed this one, so this was good news - is in French (title: La Vache Qui Pleure - nice one!), there were plenty of songs in French, starting with Petite annonce amoureuse, and carrying on through to a rousing finale of Complainte pour Sainte Catherine.
Lots of backchat, but an atmosphere of general contentment and enjoyment,and lots of music. Kate's preamble to Matapedia, when she had explained that the name was the name of a river, and that she had been there with a boyfriend and - and, oh, she had nearly forgotten, "and it's about my daughter Martha. Has she been here? Is she coming here?" as the family travel the world on tour buses that pass in the night... They sang Heart Like a Wheel, and Green Rocky Road and Goin' Back to Harlan and...
...and I'm too tired to remember, and too tired to type straight, so I'm off to bed. One of the best McGarrigles gigs I've heard.
It's an impressive venue. At first I was disappointed to learn that that great bulging silver tube does not derive from the space inside: I'd pictured great organic curves of roofing. It seemed to be cheating, to wrap this extrordinary shape around a more conventional building. But from inside - well, from inside you realise that you are not inside at all, the silver carapace is just a canopy over a series of separate buildings, and an indoor outdoor terrace that runs along between them and the river. Sitting in the café, you don't feel that you are within a concert hall; you are in a pavement café, watching the lights of the cars moving along the Quayside across the river, but sheltered from the weather.
We were in Hall 2 (catchy names they give them); quite small, seating in the round, on three levels stacked quite vertically, so that there was a very strong sense of being inside a vertical tube. Anna McGarrigle said that it was like being in ine of those funfair rides that start to spin and the floor falls away, leaving you pinned to the wall. Kate asked who was the architect? Norma who? Norma Waterson? Oh, Norman... And "in the round" means in the round, too, much to the band's amusement, as they gradually realised that there were people sitting above and behind them.
Katie Docherty - billed as The Katie Docherty Trio, but very much a showcase for the young singer-songwriter - was pleasant enough. She started with a very confident version of the song I know, from the Peggy Seeger recording, as Butcher Boy, but which she had reset to her own tune to allow her to put in plenty of vocal flourishes. Her own songs were not quite the sort of thing you would hear on Radio 2, the traditional flavour was too strong for that, but in skill, assurance and style they came close. I suspect, in other words, that the things I liked least about her performance were the things she was doing best. And once this warm-up act had us nicely warmed up, there was a twenty minute interval in which we were sent out to buy ice-creams. Which gave the evening an odd sort of shape.
But then the McGarrigles came on, and all was well. Tamsin from the Sage, who was doing the introductions, described them as "the High Priestesses of Québecois music", which distracted me by the oblique and subtle nature of its wrongness: here on stage were two women, sleek iron-grey hair streaked with silver, sensible jackets, denim jeans and then - but only below ankle level - a sudden bejewelled frivolity, Anna in sparkling slippers and Kate in strappy harem sandals. Plus Joel Zifkin on violin, Chaim Tannenbaum on mandolin, harmonica, vocals... and a rythm section consisting of two brothers, a bassist and drummer who laid down percussion of unusual delicacy, and I'm sorry that I can't remember their names (and that the McGarrigles website isn't anxious to remind me). This was very much a band, rather than stars plus accompaniment, and I was pleasantly surprised at how well the extra voices worked on new arrangements of familiar material.
There was a mixture of new and old material, and since the most recent record - and I had missed this one, so this was good news - is in French (title: La Vache Qui Pleure - nice one!), there were plenty of songs in French, starting with Petite annonce amoureuse, and carrying on through to a rousing finale of Complainte pour Sainte Catherine.
Lots of backchat, but an atmosphere of general contentment and enjoyment,and lots of music. Kate's preamble to Matapedia, when she had explained that the name was the name of a river, and that she had been there with a boyfriend and - and, oh, she had nearly forgotten, "and it's about my daughter Martha. Has she been here? Is she coming here?" as the family travel the world on tour buses that pass in the night... They sang Heart Like a Wheel, and Green Rocky Road and Goin' Back to Harlan and...
...and I'm too tired to remember, and too tired to type straight, so I'm off to bed. One of the best McGarrigles gigs I've heard.
