Recording: U of T Chainsaw Ensemble

Artist: University of Toronto Chainsaw Ensemble

Composition: Poème symphonique [excerpt] [composer: György Ligeti]

Recorded at the U of T Faculty of Music (Lobby), January 17, 2018.

University of Toronto Chainsaw Ensemble - Poème symphonique [excerpt]

Unlike its percussion and saxophone counterparts, so far as I know this student ensemble does not wield any actual chainsaws. (Prove me wrong, kids. Prove me wrong.) But under the guidance of Greg Oh they are exploring "Experimental Contemporary Techno-rhythms", including this notorious Ligeti piece written under the influence of (or possibly as a satire of) the fluxus movement. It directs the ensemble to set up no less than one hundred mechanical metronomes, start them up as close to simultaneously as possible, and then wait for the whole thing to wind down.

Like any live performance, this execution was subject to variation and the inspiring possibility of error, so this took a turn for the amusing/transcendent in the endgame when, after ninety-nine metronomes had wound down, the final one kept on tickin', forestalling the end of the piece until its twenty-plus minute solo had ended. (Closer examination after the fact seemed to point to that metronome being double-wound.) The quietly-percussive textures were similar to the sound of a rock tumbler or microwave popcorn, becoming strangely-compelling as that last wand kept ticking and ticking, drawing in some of the more committed witnesses and earning bemused reactions from passers-by — and revealing a playful, social layer underlying the piece's musical conception. This excerpt (trailing off on the approach to that long finish) is very much a field recording, meaning there's plenty of background conversational murmurations and other general to-ing and fro-ing in the cavernous music building lobby.

Recording: Soundstreams

Artist: Soundstreams

Songs: Music for 18 Musicians (two excerpts) [composer: Steve Reich]

Recorded at Massey Hall (Steve Reich at 80), April 14, 2016.

Soundstreams - Music for 18 Musicians [excerpt 1]

Soundstreams - Music for 18 Musicians [excerpt 2]

The centrepiece of Soundscapes' season (with a series of spin-off concerts and other associated events) saw the new music ensemble upsize to a nearly sold-out Massey Hall for this celebration of American composer Steve Reich. Reich lead the evening off himself in a performance of Clapping Music (1972) with Russell Hartenberger — a most minimal act of minimalism from the sound of two sets of hands each clapping out a simple rhythm which slowly shifts for one of the players through a series of repetitions. That elemental percussive act was elaborated upon in the expansive Tehillim (1981) with a quartet of voices and further percussion adding layers of abstracted praise song.

The night's second half was given over to the epic Music for 18 Musicians (1976), a sustained rhythmic exercise in subtly-shifting textures. This performance came out at the longer end of the spectrum of performances of the piece at seventy-two minutes, which is a lot of time for the Reich Curve to rise and fall, rise and fall. Seeing this live involved grooving to the piece on two different (and sometimes contradictory) levels: the trance-inducing rhythms of the gloriously phasing pulses encouraging zone-out bliss while the fact of the performance itself constantly engaging one's attention. To the latter, it was fascinating to see how the eighteen musicians¹, playing without a conductor, handled the heroic regularity that the piece demanded, through musical and physical cues as well as an elaborately-choreographed rotation system that saw musicians trade off spots (and musical duties) as the piece progressed. Fascinating and absorbing — and the piece sounded pretty good in the old house on Shuter, which can sometimes be an acoustically-underwhelming boomy room.

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¹ There was a fascinating mix of musicians in the ensemble, drawing from from the local New Music scene and beyond. For the record, the eighteen musicians were:

• Lesley Bouza, voice
• Michelle DeBoer, voice
• Carla Huhtanen, voice
• Laura Pudwell, voice
• Anthony Thompson, clarinet/bass clarinet
• Lori Freedman, clarinet/bass clarinet
• Jesse Zubot, violin
• David Hetherington, cello
• Simon Docking, piano
• Gregory Oh, piano
• Tania Gill, piano
• Stephanie Chua, piano
• Ryan Scott, percussion
• Russell Hartenberger, percussion
• Garry Kvistad, percussion
• Bob Becker, percussion
• Michelle Colton, percussion
• Haruka Fujii, percussion

Recording: The Melancholiac Ensemble

Artist: The Melancholiac Ensemble

Songs: It's Raining Today (feat. Alex Samaras, arr. Adam Scime) + Such a Small Love (feat. Patricia O'Callaghan) + Brando (Dwellers on the Bluff) (feat. John Millard)

Recorded at Pia Bouman School for Ballet and Creative Movement (SummerWorks Music Series: Melancholiac: The Music of Scott Walker), August 9, 2015.

The Melancholiac Ensemble feat. Alex Samaras - It's Raining Today

The Melancholiac Ensemble feat. Patricia O'Callaghan - Such a Small Love

The Melancholiac Ensemble feat. John Millard - Brando (Dwellers on the Bluff)

The SummerWorks Music series, evolving since its inception in 2008, feels to have really and truly settled into its identity both as another way for SummerWorks to celebrate its growing foregrounding of interdisciplinary art and as a unique feature of the city's live music scene. After a couple years of just stuffing some bands down in the basement to provide an après-play gathering space, 2010's Hidden Cameras spectacular (featuring a "dramatic retelling" their Origin: Orphan album) pointed the way forward — but it wasn't really until 2012 that the festival started to ramp up the practice of pairing musicians with artists from other disciplines to create unique, one-off events.

It was finally in 2013 that the "mature" music series fully emerged, with stand-out events from Maylee Todd, Snowblink, and The Bicycles. Since then, collaboration has moved to the centre. Last year saw the series' first visit to the Pia Bouman School at the edge of Parkdale, which became their home this year, giving the Series its own space (and a cool pop-up venue). Adam Bradley and the returning Andrew Pulsifer have played to the series' strengths with their musical curation, and all of the works this year felt like good additions to a series whose legacy includes the future memories of these one-of-a-kind shows.

This show featured something of a different vibe (and crowd) than the others in the Music Series, something more akin to a night out at the Music Gallery. Traipsing through the scope of Walker's career (though not chronologically, as that would just get increasingly weird and confusingly difficult) might have reduced the show to a sort of highbrow equivalent to one of those "jukebox musicals" which are apparently quite popular. But — probably for the best — there was no attempt to impose any sort of throughline or narrative sense on the material, save, perhaps for a point-of-view that privileged none of Walker's career phases.

The songs were presented by a Greg Oh-assembled big-band with many noteworthy members from the city's pop, improvised and new music scenes¹. The music was enhanced by an ensemble that acted as choir and dance troupe as required, adding dramatic flourishes and hinting at Walker's more outré musical practices. For example, the notorious meat-punching in "Clara" (from 2006's The Drift) was amended onstage to some vigourous, albeit more genteel, dough-punching. The spectacle and effort put into that particular slab of uneasy listening made it one of the night's centrepieces — showy but kinda not what one might want to sit down and listen to. (That, in fact, might be an apt description for latter-period Walker to many.)

Those "difficult" moments were balanced with ample selections from Walker's better known avant-crooning days and other youthful pop exercises. All told, it took no fewer than five vocalists to reflect all the facets the show examined. On the whole, the night was a most pleasing confluence of multiplicities — different fanbases, different singers, different Scott Walkers.

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¹ I'm not sure if this is precisely correct, but combining the programme notes and my own notes, the ensemble included: Gregory Oh (music director, keyboards), Friendly Rich (vox), John Millard (vox), Patricia O’Callaghan (vox), Alex Samaras (vox), Zorana Sadiq (vox), Bram. Gielen (bass), Lina Allemano (trumpet), Amahl Arulanandam (cello), Anna Atkinson (violin), Shaun Mallinen (saxophone), Dan Morphy (percussion), David Quackenbush (french horn), Nichol Robertson (guitar), Laurence Schaufele (viola), Leslie Ting (violin), Dean Wales (drums)

Preview: SummerWorks 2015

SummerWorks Performance Festival

August 7-17, 2014

The SummerWorks Festival is increasingly becoming a music destination because there's nothing else like it. Continuing its focus on constructing cross-disciplinary one-off events (rather than just plain ol' gigs), there's a chance here for local musicians to work with artists from other media to create the sort of immersive experience that is hard to assemble on the usual DIY shoestring.

Each of the seven shows in the Music Series would be worth going to just on musical merit alone; but with the special enhancements on offer, they're not to be missed. The thing that makes these compelling is that the tantalizingly vague descriptions are signposts beckoning the audience to one-time only events. Here's what's going down in the Music Series, with a few live recordings from my own archives as a hint of what you might hear:

• What Happens to JOOJ in 24 Hours: According to Bojana & Alex: Sook-Yin Lee and Adam Litovitz are undertaking a site-specific and time-specific challenge, sequestering themselves in the theatre for an entire day with the show acting as culmination. How directors Bojana Stancic and Alex Wolfson will interpret that day to the audience is a mystery, but do expect some of JOOJ's Suicide-meets-Dietrich cabaret tunes. [Friday August 7th, 10 p.m. @ S--------- Studio Theatre]
  Listen! Jooj - Crushed
• To Cast a Stone: this sees solo electronic musician Jill Krasnicki (a.k.a. Animalia) attempting "to create a sacred and otherworldly space to weave her songs through a spell casting ritual." Once again, that description is evocatively vague, but given that the show is being presented over five timeslots throughout the evening instead of one big show, you should expect the ritual to be a close-up and intimate experience. [Saturday August 8th, 6:00 PM/7:30 PM/9:00 PM/10:30 PM/midnight @ S--------- Studio Theatre]
• What Fate Awaits Them?: I didn't make Most People's EP release a couple months back, but its mix of music and large-scale puppetry was described as a knockout. Add alien robot emissaries/entertainment units MATROX and this sounds like fantastic fun. [Sunday, August 9th, 10:00 PM @ S--------- Studio Theatre]
  Listen! Most People - Release
  Listen! MATROX - Thank You
• Melancholiac: The Music of Scott Walker: Adam Paolozza and Greg Oh combine to try and give shape to an artist whose singular career arc is rather difficult to conceptualize, never mind encapsulate. From teen idol to menacing avant-crooner, this is being billed as "part concert, part spectacle, part existential variety show", mixing "unique sonic and visual interpretations of Walker's music" and including some special guests. [Tuesday August 11th, 6:30 PM/9:30 PM @ S--------- Studio Theatre]
• all you can hold: musicians like longstanding electro-experimentalists lal operate on the sort of terrain that gets swept under the rug a bit in the music scene's continual fetishization of the new. But they've been audaciously pushing boundaries and recombining various pop strains for long enough to deserve a helluva lot of respect. This show sees them performing a full set of new music embellished by "dance, costumes, digital painting and projections", representing their vision of a musical queer/straight alliance and mix of cultures. [Wednesday, August 12th, 10:00 PM @ S--------- Studio Theatre]
• Heat Shuts Off Overnight: As Germaphobes, Paul Erlichman and Neil Rankin have been honing the sophisticated pop sounds they were previously pursuing as members of the now-defunct Gay. This show sees them bring a whole batch of new songs to a show that uses shadow puppets, stop motion, and projections for an exploration of quotidian banality and the digital consciousness. Expect a performance by ANAMAI somewhere in there as well. [Thursday, August 13th, 9:00 PM @ S--------- Studio Theatre]
  Listen! Germaphobes - Everybody Else
  Listen! ANAMAI - Lucia
• 2016 Spring Collection: The unexplainable grinning manifestation that is (are?) Still Boys has been something of a whispered secret for the past while, being shared like a ritual that gladdens the hearts of even the most jaded music fan. Now, with Sasha Van Bon Bon and Jesi the Elder on board, there will be even more to be digested. Possibly even the audience. Don't try to explain, don't try to understand. Just see this. [Friday, August 14th, 10:00 PM @ S--------- Studio Theatre]
  Listen! Still Boys - [popsong]

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Meanwhile, outside the Music Series, there's a lot more for music fans to investigate. Counting Sheep, the festival's "production-in-residence" deploys Balkan party-rockers Lemon Bucket Orkestra into the Maidan for an investigation of Ukraine's social revolution. Also, local music sensation (and visual artist) Lido Pimienta moves to the stage in Ayelen, a magical-realist tale of resistance to the exploitation of international mining companies.

There's also lots going on in the festival's wide-ranging Live Art stream. A lot of it's out of my field, but I can recommend the Listening Choir's Listening Songs, put together by Adam Kinner and the always-intriguing Christopher Willes. The practice of these dérivé-based jaunts is to "propose listening as an endangered practice worth reconsidering". Best of all, this little experiment is free (as long as you book a ticket in advance).

I also don't know a lot about the dance world, but the festival has ramped up their offerings on that side of things this year. The good news is that the Dance Series is curated by Amelia Ehrhardt (who chatted with me about dance before her SummerWorks offering last year), whose DIY spirit and enthusiasm for joyful experimentation parallels what I look for in exploring unfamiliar music. In that regard, the curious could have a go at any of the offerings in the Dance Series, but I would especially point people to Aimée Dawn Robinson's Ramble, which blends improvised and choreographed dance to music and live-mixed video. Currently based in Whitehorse, Robinson was a frequent collaborator with the city's creative musicians in her time in Toronto, and this one comes hotly-tipped from friends who know about these things.

The fine print: single-performance tickets are $15, and there are various pass options available. You can find all the ticket information here. Remember (especially for those music events!) that the festival runs on theatre time, so do not be fashionably late!

Recording: TorQ Percussion Quartet

Artist: TorQ Percussion Quartet feat. Greg Oh and Wesley Shen

Song: Workers Union [excerpt] [composer: Louis Andriessen]

Recorded at The Music Gallery, March 6, 2015.

TorQ Percussion Quartet - Workers Union [excerpt]

One of my favourite parts about this 1975 Louis Andriessen "symphonic movement for any loud sounding of instruments" is the instructions contained in its score. Besides setting the mood ("make the piece sound dissonant, chromatic and often: aggressive") is this instruction, which ties its title into a concrete political statement: "only in the case of every player playing with such an intention that their part is an essential one, the work will succeed; just as in the political work."

The members of TorQ brought the right even-handed sense of solidarity to the piece, alongside Greg Oh and Wesley Shen, their evening's collaborators joining in on duelling grand pianos. Tackled by Thin Edge at their recent gig, it was a somewhat unusual scheduling quirk that saw two different groups present the Andriessen piece at the Music Gallery within weeks of each other — a rare chance to compare and contrast the differing approaches each ensemble brought. A new-found familiarity might have helped, but I found TorQ's take to be a bit more engaging.

Meanwhile, the remainder of this gig was equally interesting. The first half was given over to Steve Reich's large-scale "Sextet", which was quite captivating for most of its length; "Urban Wildlife", a new piece from TorQ's Jamie Drake, was also a success with its sounds evoking bird feeder-sabotaging squirrels, sunbeam-seeking cats and garbage-bin conquering raccoons.