Recording: Castle If & Music In The Barns

Artist: Castle If & Music In The Barns

Song: Untitled (Theme For a Labyrinth) [composer: Jess Forrest]

Recorded at Allan Gardens (Intersection – Day 4), September 4, 2017.

Castle If & Music In The Barns - Untitled (Theme For a Labyrinth)

In recent years, the Intersection Festival would normally consist of a paid concert, usually the night before the day-long extravaganza in Yonge-Dundas Square. This year, however, under the continued guidance of Burn Down The Capital's Tad Michalak, the festival expanded to four events, including a pair of concerts at The Jam Factory. New this year, and bringing things to a most delightful conclusion, was this free afternoon inside the conservatories at Allan Gardens, mixing a variety of performers into the varied microenvironments — despite the crowds filling the greenhouses to the brim, it was a wonderfully serene occasion.

Castle If's Plant Material album was definitely an inspiration for this whole event, so it was truly satisfying to see her close out the festival with a couple pieces (including this brand-new one) arranged for string trio. The bassline from "Sansevieria Trifasciata" sounded particularly tasty coming from Adam Scime's double bass, and overall, the mix of strings and synth was entirely satisfying. Under the big dome of the Palm House, this worked on so many levels — a chance to hear an accomplished songwriter re-imagine herself as a composer not being the least of them. Hopefully Intersection will be able to find their way back into these environments.

[You can see some footage from this set over at Brandon Caswell Douglas' Intersection playlist.]

Recording: Music in the Barns with #1000Strings

Artist: Music in the Barns with #1000Strings

Song: Spectre [composer: John Oswald]

Recorded at Yonge-Dundas Square (Intersection 2015), September 5, 2015.

Music in the Barns with #1000Strings - Spectre

You can read my general notes on the festival here. This piece for "string quartet and string multitude" was originally composed by John Oswald to be played by the Kronos Quartet and accompanied by a backing track of overdubbed layers upon layers of strings augmenting the live performance. For this "one time only participatory performance", Music in The Barns turned to the community to crowdsource a multitude — there weren't a thousand string players on hand, but all corners of the square felt quite full with groupings of violins, violas, cellos and basses, with a wonderful mix of ages and skill levels playing next to each other. Under the guidance of group leaders and timekeepers, the assembled throng did a couple runthroughs of the piece (which mostly stayed on A, moving from a single note to tremolo and then increasingly-wider glissandi). Standing in the middle of it all created quite a surround-sound experience, which is hard to reproduce here — as is the visual experience of seeing the mass of players slowly lift their bows from the strings to bow the air above them. As with the original performance, this included the use of the backing track, so the large numbers sound even more immense here. The loudest section sounds like a cloud of white noise — and a bit like a more genteel version of what Knurl unveiled in the square earlier in the day.

Recording: Music in the Barns

Artist: Music in the Barns

Song: Schoolhouse Étude [from Hitchcock Études – composer Nicole Lizée]

Recorded at Jam Factory, July 13, 2014.

Music in the Barns - Schoolhouse Étude

Full review to follow. If there were a "star system" for composers in this country, Nicole Lizée would probably be a household name by how. Combining compositional chops, a forward-thinking approach to new ways of making music and a pop-culture referencing ability to tap into the zeitgeist, her works are "serious music" that are still easily accessible outside the cloisters of the "new music" community.

Her Hitchcock Études were originally composed for "piano, glitch and film", and are here essayed by the Music in the Barns ensemble, in a string quartet plus vibes formation. The music feeds off the manipulations of the source material, enfolding little lurches and hiccups in a tribute to the composer's memories of rewatching Hitchcock movies on slowly-wearing-out videotapes. [The original piano version is embedded below for comparison, and should serve to show how the visual element works here. You can check out a couple more clips on her videos page.]