It’s been too hot to take writing seriously and I’ve been busy working on a piece of my own music for a change. Haven’t been out to a gig for a while so did three last weekend. Friday was the start of this summer’s Music We’d Like To Hear series, full of new and revived music that falls into that category “Essential But Overlooked”. So much of the time we pay lip service to the idea that music is art, only to get cold feet and start second-guessing at an ill-defined understanding of Accessibility and Bums on Seats. I should be writing at greater length about this year’s set of concerts for publication later in Tempo.
I’d skipped a few recent gigs by 840 so on Saturday I spent another summer evening in church, listening to new pieces for viola and cello duo (with some Orlando Gibbons mixed in). There’s a pleasant trend amongst some current composers for achieving a kind of blankness of expression in music, of the sort that Cage admired in Satie. As with painting, there is music that exists by referring to something outside of itself and music that exists for itself. Gibbons’ music from the Jacobean age shares a similar foundation in aesthetic rules instead of individualised subjective taste; it sat very well amidst pieces by Garrett Sholdice’s Gymel and Alex Nikiporenko’s Carré, adapting simple methods to create something clean and new. It’s always nice to hear pieces by Eva-Maria Houben and Marc Sabat played live.
On Sunday Silver Road and Café Oto staged a nine-hour performance by Farmers Manual. It must be fifteen years since I last saw them play live; not that they gig very often these days. The venue was the shaft to Brunel’s tunnel under the Thames at Rotherhithe. There’s a nice garden on top, with a bar selling beer and Italian wines. At this type of gig it seems inevitable that more time will be spent outside enjoying the interesting surroundings, the weather, chatting with acquaintances and drinking than in the space itself paying attention to the music. The group seemed pretty laid back too, taking time out for food or drinks, sometimes en masse while the music continued below. There was still that fine attention to combining sounds in a way that seemed natural and surprising without being too slick or contrived, but the generous pacing left everything a little too flat. It felt more like they were trying out various ideas and less on building a sonic environment that rewarded both close and distant attention.
