Artist: Public Recordings
Song: To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of Their Desperation [two excerpts] [composer: Pauline Oliveros]
Recorded at the Gardiner Museum, August 17, 2017.
Toronto's close kinship with Pauline Oliveros continues. Oliveros gave her final concert performance at last year's X Avant Festival, and with permission from The Pauline Oliveros Trust, this large ensemble undertook a new staging of this major work originally performed in 1970. Cellist Anne Bourne is one of the connections here, playing both at last year's concert as well as in this ensemble, which came together under the guidance of Christopher Willes.
Part of Xenia Benivolski and Su-Ying Lee's Feminist Art Museum, this event filled the large upper-floor gallery space with the audience lining the room's walls, surrounding the dozen performers facing each other in a rough circle organized around the exhibition's brick piles.
Devised as "a continuous circulation of power," this piece demands a balance between listening and playing from the performers, but within that constraint, its simple, open concept is an invitation for musicians of varying abilities (and some in this group of artists, choreographers, composers, and dancers were indeed "non-musicians") to participate in a decentred experience. Guided by slowly moving, slowly changing light projections, there weren't many remarkable features of the piece — which is to say the whole was a warmly-undulating dronefield. Word is that this will be remounted later on at The Music Gallery, so there will be another chance to soak in the vibes.
[Meanwhile, for more Pauline Oliveros vibes, Anne Bourne will be hosting a Deep Listening Intensive on October 14th as part of this year's X Avant festival. Meanwhile, Chris Willes has a couple other cool activities going on, including next week's Listening Choir remount as well as a series of Quiet Concerts at the beautiful new Scarborough Town centre library branch.]
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment