Stockhausen's Kontakte with the Ensemble Offpsring

Last night I attended the 9th Totally Huge New Music Festival for the Western Australian premier performance of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Kontakte by members of Ensemble Offspring.
The program began with some forgettable works by Pimmon (Paul Gough) and other members of Ensemble Offspring, but the actual Stockhausen piece was fan-bloody-tastic. The pre-recorded electronic work was piped into the room in four corners, while Bernadette Balkus on piano and percussion pieces and Claire Edwardes on everything percussive (and some strange uses of those at that!)played live - and energetically too! They'll never get fat and unfit, I can tell you.

Old fashioned music man that I am, I enjoyed the cohesiveness of it and the connectivity of disparate sounds from a multitude of instruments, building a musical narrative framework - in direct contrast to Stockhausen's stated intention. Maybe his theory came to life in pieces after this. The programme notes, by Damien Ricketson (co-artistic director of Ensemble Offspring), say 'Kontakte is also noted as an example of Stockhausen's "moment form": a concept of structuring time that largely negates a narrative reading of music. Moment form focuses on the present moment and rejects music as a sequence of linear cause and effect relationships.'

In what time I have in the next couple of days, I will listen to other Stockhausen works (on CD) with this in mind.

Thanks to Tos Mahoney and Tura New Music for organising this festival - in a strange place for a New Music Fest - the WA Museum!

Singing the Praises - of Stimmung and The Five Peace Band

I've had a full week, the highlights of which have been music.

First, there was John McLaughlin (gtr), Chick Corea (keyboards), Kenny Jarrett (sax), Christian MacBride (bass) and Brian Blade (drums) electrifying the night air at the Pioneer Women's Memorial Gardens within our beautiful Kings Park (1 thousand acres on the crest of the city of Perth). My friend Perry mused as we walked the long distance from our parking spot, I wonder what they're going to play. Fair question: it could have been mainstream jazz, Indian-tinged pyrotechnics, night club fusion or any number of things in between.

They sauntered out on to stage - a blue lit giant music shell before the lake - and swung right into a fast electronic contemporary jazz piece, influenced mainly by McLaughlin's guitar. The compering, such as it was, was shared between John and Chick. Very little chatter, but relaxed announcements. In John's humility, he always introduced all the rest of the band, perhaps thinking or knowing that a lot of people were not essentially from the jazz world but the rock-end of fusion - Mahavishnu Orchestra et al. John introduced the second piece, which was a composition by Chick Corea. The solos were always exciting, and built to a point just after when I expected them to release, if you catch my drift. You would expect the world of John and Chick, and you'd be right. Kenny played a more restrained role, like he was a second-stringer - but nothing could have been further from my mind. Kenny was one of the main reasons I went. It wasn't he went into his shell or anything so dramatic, just he wasn't as front-line as I had hoped. The drummer's name was stated a lot during the performance, but I am only guessing at Brian Blade. He was a fiercesome storm behind each number, and even when he switched to brushes for a quieter segment, he was still as busy as Elvin Jones. At times I miss the subtle playing style of people like Max Roach or Connie Kay, but perhaps I'm an old fuddy-duddy.

The eye-opener, or ear-opener more accurately, was the masterful and melodic playing of Christian MacBride. A beautiful bass player in anybody's book, be it electric or bull-fiddle. He was a revelation to me - memories of Jaco Pestorius and Charlie Mingus flew through my intoxicated head.

A stand out piece was the Hymn to Andromeda, a new piece composed by Chich Corea and about to be released on a new CD. It started with synthesizer and electric piano, and permutated through sections to a frenetic jazz crescendo as endo. I would have liked a return to the original theme and instrumentation as denouement, but that's my mind, tidying up. Another piece worth mentioning was the surprise inclusion of Dr Jackyl, a track first released by Miles Davis 50 years ago.

The evening was perfect weather, funky coffee, huge and appreciative crowd, kookaburras laughing on cue, and over two hours of music (I didn't keep a watch on it). Parking was the only drag, but that's average for this kind of event, isn't it.

An American friend has described a recent night out at a Cassandra Wilson show - and I think ours, slightly different in that it was a concert in the outdoors, was a far superior event. But it did cost $80.

Secondly, there was Stockhausen's Stimmung, performed by the Theatre of Voices at University of Western Australia's Hackett Hall. I went in ignorance of this work, even though friends had offered to let me borrow their CDs of it. I wanted to be surprised and to take the creative journey as freely as possible. This meant not researching the piece. It was an amazing journey - incredibly beautiful music sung by six voices, and wit and improvisation all combined. I didn't understand a word of the German songs and poems embedded in the work, but that didn't matter one iota. When it finished - about an hour and forty minutes - I wanted them to start again. When I arrived home, I immediately researched it and read the program notes, etc. & then was even more amazed. Absolutely beautiful piece of music, but very difficult to pigeon-hole. Somewhere it has been said that Stimmung is a perfect doorway in to Stockhausen's work for the uninitiated, and I would agree with that. I have heard lots of Stockhausen's works, but this is the most lyrical and witty.