Televiper

My second afternoon concert for the Open Ears festival.  Red Chamber is a collective from Vancouver, BC that plays traditional Chinese instruments.  The set included their own compositions, traditional Chinese compositions (including a piece from 930AD), and a mix of African and Persian pieces arrange for the quartet.  The 930AD piece was gorgeous.  As I closed my eyes I could imagine the churning of ocean waves very vividly and thought about how the variations between instruments represented the many ebbs and flows within the waves.  The highlight of the show was a performance of John Cage’s “Three Dances.”   A piece which originally required a piano altered by John Cage, and so begot Chinese instruments altered with strategically positioned crocodile (I know aligator, but crocodile sounds better) clips.  It had the same flow as the 930AD piece, but was covered in layers of grit and dissonance.

There something about the PSQ.  Everytime they show up at Open Ears they demonstrate their ability to produce extremely unnatural sounds from their instruments.  Tonight was no exception.  The second piece was called “Teatro Dell’udito VI” a terror inducing vortex of deep long violin screeches and cello groans.  I am in awe of what violins, violas, and cellos can do.

The second set was an interpretive dance of Homer’s the Odyssey.  I found myself really fascinated by this.  It took me awhile to figure out who was who, and I forgot about The Son and Death which only complicated it.  As I watched I really began to think about the various motions and what they communicated.   Particularly the meaning of eye contact, and that a lack of eye contact may be symbolic of the two characters not sharing the same physical plane.  Or The Heros encounter with the Three Fates where sliding under their seats seemed to represnt a challenge,  the Heros weakened posture represented the strain of the challenge, and Wisdom’s presence represents her importance in his quest.  These are of course my own interpretations.

…and that’s my favourite part about Open Ears.  There’s always something that really makes me think about something I’ve never considered.

I had no idea what to expect from Hard Rubber Orchestra.  I’ve really been into Raymond Scott’s Pushbutton Parfait so my mind casually drifted into expecting something more Swing oriented.  They did say Big Band, and I took the “like no other” with a grain of salt.  I shouldn’t do that with Open Ears performances, but I’ve got too many years of cynicism to quash before I accomplish that.  So after the first song the names Lalo Scifrin, and Gert Wilden Orchestra came to mind.  Certainly not funky like Gert Wilden or as lush as say the Peas compilations on Crippled Dick.  This does fall into the arena of soundtrack to Diry Harry though.  They’re much more in your face, and far more advanced than a film music orchestra.  Evidently they’ve done film music and several other flavours of collaboration.  They are worth seeing, and the old theatre in Waterloo was a perfect venue.