"Apollo: For All Mankind" Icebreaker with guest B J Cole live review

Link to Opera North blog version

Apollo: For All Mankind

Icebreaker with guest B J Cole

Howard Assembly Room Friday 20^th January 2012

Formed by James Poke and John Godfrey in 1989, Icebreaker have grown to be one of the country’s leading exponents of contemporary music, performing and recording works by artists such as Michael Nyman, Gavin Bryars, Philip Glass and Brian Eno. The unique array of instrumentation that Icebreaker employ assure them of their distinctive character in the field of contemporary music interpretation. B J Cole is a familiar name to anyone interested in music in general and may be considered as the pedal steel players’ pedal steel player. He can be heard on recordings from artists as disparate as Sting, Elton John on “Tiny Dancer”, Scott Walker, Joan Armatrading on “Down to Zero” and David Sylvian. After the interval at this evening’s performance, Cole explained how, through hearing the pedal steel playing by Daniel Lanois on the original album and soundtrack version of “Apollo: For All Mankind” he was inspired to release the instrument from the domain of country and western music and encompass the field of ambient and experimental avant garde music. Collaborations with artists such as Luke Vibert, Harold Budd and John Cale have proved his credentials in this arena.

This evening’s performance at the Howard Assembly Room in Leeds, rapidly becoming one of the crucial spaces in the city for left field and experimental projects, began with Terry Riley’s “In C”. Anyone familiar with the history and development of minimalist music will be aware of the importance of this piece, which in many ways could be argued to be the template for the development of this type of approach to music. Essentially, “In C” is a series of 53 short musical phrases which are repeated by each individual player as often as they like, at any tempo or in any particular order. The piece itself develops organically allowing each participant the freedom to improvise within the given margins. The performance this evening which was built up of flute, pan pipe, keyboards, saxophones, clarinet, electric violin and cello, percussion, guitar, bass guitar and pedal steel guitar, perfectly illustrated how, through an almost telepathic sense of the occasion, Riley’s piece could simultaneously hold onto the attention of the audience whilst transporting them on a journey through the network of developing phrases.

2009 was the 40^th anniversary of the first moon landing, and to help recognise this occasion Tim Boon, Head of Research and Public History at the Science Museum in London, suggested the idea of producing a live version of Al Reinert’s film “For All Mankind”. The film in essence is compiled from archive footage of the Apollo missions, and was originally sound tracked by Brian Eno, his brother Roger and guitarist Daniel Lanois. The subtle blend of ambient sound scapes and pedal steel guitar was inspired by the knowledge that many of the astronauts took recordings of country music with them for recreation on the space missions. Woojun Lee was, apparently, personally selected by Brian Eno to transcribe the original soundtrack for live performance. This project was premiered in 2009 at the IMAX Cinema at the Science Museum by Icebreaker. The performance this evening, which made up the second part of the programme, by Icebreaker and B J Cole, synchronised with an edited version of the original film, proved just how perfectly the two media can come together to produce an experience of such sublime beauty. The take off sequences in particular were at once tense and heart warming, whilst the images of the astronauts walking on the moon’s surface and repeatedly falling, gave the piece a sense of humanity. The music perfectly reflected the sense of occasion and poignancy of the film and its narrative, and should be regarded as a template itself for how multimedia performances can achieve success. The Howard Assembly Room itself is a space which has both intimacy and a sense of grandeur and is the perfect location for this and, hopefully, future projects of this nature.

Opera North at The Yorkshire Sculpture Park: Autumn

http://howardassemblyroom.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/john-toolen-four-seasons/


Four Seasons Autumn Concert at The Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Saturday 1^st October 2011 19.30 performance

On an unseasonably warm Saturday evening, as the sun was fading and the magnificent sculptures of Jaume Plensa were coming to light, the Opera North’s programme of seasonal concerts at The Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield continued with their autumn offering. The walk down from the Visitors Centre towards St. Bartholomew’s Chapel, now converted into an exhibition space, as the light faded, was assisted by a series of lanterns which helped bring about a sense of expectancy, particularly as we discovered the chapel itself was illuminated on the outer surface by a projection of moving flames. Inside the chapel itself the mood was further enhanced by a series of well placed branches and leaves, which, under the subdued candle light, left audience members mesmerized for what was to be tonight’s performance. Due to the intimate surroundings, and the relatively small audience space available, the mood was one of being engaged with the performers, to the extent that both the audience and musicians were integral to the occasion.

Under the direction of Matthew Sharp, David La Page (violin), Nicola Sweeney (violin), Lisanne Melchior (viola), Oliver Wilson (viola) and Clare O’Connell (cello) performed a series of pieces, interspersed with readings that did nothing to dispel the ambience created. The theme for the evening was clearly “autumn” and the first piece, “Autumn” by Argentinean composer Astor Piazzolla was the ideal soundtrack to set the pace. Sometimes unfairly compared to Vivaldi’s “Le Quattro Stagioni”, Piazzolla’s piece is part of his “The Four “Buenos Aires” Seasons” and proved tonight to be lively, but with a bleakness that reflects the season perfectly. Mathew Sharp’s reading of a recipe for pumpkin and Claire Lilley’s interpretation of Pablo Neruda’s poem “Ode to Wine” bridged the gap between Piazzolla’s “Autumn” and Vivaldi’s familiar “Autumn-2^nd Movement, Adagio Molto”. A remarkable inclusion to the programme were Sharp’s poignant versions of Kurt Weill’s “September Song” and Jacques Brel’s “Chanson des Vieux Amants”, sung with fervour and sentiment, they shone clearly and showed Sharp’s effusiveness and passion for the pieces. Tchaikovsky’s “November-Troika”, part of the composers selection “The Seasons”, is often seen as the most demanding due it’s swiftly moving flow and strident outbursts, and tonight appeared mischievous, amongst it’s multitude of emotions.

The centre piece for the evening could be argued to have been Schoenberg’s “Transfigured Night” and the poem by Richard Dehmel of the same name. Dehmel’s poem describes a man and a woman walking through a dark forest at night, and the woman’s revelation to her lover that she is carrying another man’s child. Schoenberg’s score equates closely to the poems narrative and discourse, and is comprised of an assortment of musical phrases, which in this performance were executed elegantly, and led us into the final two pieces of the evening, a reading of “Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves” from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and Sharp again in regal voice on Freidrich Ruckert and Gustav Mahler’s “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” (I am Lost to the World) from their Ruckert-Lieder song cycle.

The long march back up the slope to the Visitors Centre was scattered with lanterns, a fire and a more intensely lit Plensa sculpture to help illuminate the way. Despite the stumbling and muttered protestations over the uneven ground, Opera North at The Yorkshire Sculpture Park again proved to the participants that art in unusual places is to be celebrated. 

Four Seasons Summer Concert at The Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Friday 15th July 2011 19.30 performance
In what threatened to be a rain soaked Yorkshire Sculpture Park on an otherwise agreeable Friday evening, the second Four Seasons concert, Summer, began in James Turrell’s Skyspace situated within the parks 18th century grade II listed deer shelter. Manasamitra presented Venkatesh Chandirasekharan on mridangam, Kamaljeet Ajimal on santoor and Supriya Nagarajan on vocals, to bring to life the Skyspace with a selection of Indian music, affording those present the opportunity to experience this art form intimately, and with the benefit of the panorama of the sky through the cut out window in the roof of the shelter. Manasamitra, a Yorkshire based artist led collective who, having performed at the Sculpture Park previously, in equally inspiring locations, were well placed on this occasion to engage those present.
After twenty or thirty minutes in the company of Manasamitra, the audience were led out of the deer shelter and across the park to St. Bartholomew’s Chapel for the remainder of the programme. Built in 1744 and converted into an exhibition space in 2009, the chapel, illuminated by candles, both amongst the performers and surrounding the outer walls, provided an entirely mesmerising environment for the players from Opera North to perform. The programme itself consisted of works, some well known, some not so, interspersed with readings from classical and contemporary verse ranging from Shakespeare, Carol Ann Duffy, Philip Levine to the Irish poet Paul Durcan, read by the musical director and cellist Matthew Sharp. Durcan’s “My Beloved Compares Herself to a Pint of Stout” was without doubt a brave and ultimately rewarding way to open the readings. With Sharp this evening were Aisha Orazbayeva on violin, Mark Wilde voice and Joby Burgess on percussion. Some of the more obvious seasonal pieces, Vivaldi’s “Summer-3rd Movement, Presto”, Vaughan Williams “The Lark Ascending” and Ives “In Summerfields” provided familiar surroundings from which to engage with the lesser known works. Particularly striking (literally) and well received was the Greek Iannis Xenakis’s “Rebonds b” a muscular, percussive piece, made all the more meaningful due to the close proximity to the instruments themselves, performed by Burgess, to a stunned audience. The atmosphere created within the chapel by the performances themselves and the sense of occasion created by the intimate space, would have been especially difficult to replicate within a conventional auditorium.Concluding the evening with Ravel’s “Duo-2nd Movement” and Strauss/Mackay’s “Morgen!” it was left to the audience to pick themselves back home, out of the chapel, and up through the sheep and the magnificent Juame Plensa sculptures. Only at this point did the rain appear, but it was to the credit of all those concerned that this rather damp end to the evening did not wash away any of the enchantment brought about by the performances on offer.