Ahira's Hangar

Well, I'm recuperating from Folkfest. Glad I took this week off! Saturday, the weather went nuts, assaulting the festival site with wind and rain for nearly the whole day. But Sunday turned out beautiful, and I've got a sunburn/tan to prove it.

Ray Davies sitting comfortably


I only stayed for the first half of Ray Davies's set before having to catch the bus back to the city. I could've waited for another hour for the last bus of the night, but I chickened out. Anyway, Davies kept the festival spirit going - with his music and his wry humour - as sunlight faded on closing night. He started out sedately, sitting by himself; then his guitarist (whose name I don't remember) joined him and they both energized the audience. I'm not familiar with Davies's solo work, but he played a couple of songs off his new album Working Man's Cafe.

What really got me going (yeah, I had to plug in a Kinks line) was Joan Armatrading earlier in the evening. Her music was not known to me, but the "singer-songwriter" label led me to expect a laid-back, introspective sound. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised by the powerful bluesy rock that comprised her set. She rocked harder than anyone else that evening, Davies included! If her studio recordings are anything like her live performance, I'll have to check them out.

Just a few of the acts I managed to catch and enjoy at this year's festival:

Dobet Gnahore on opening night; half the time she was leaping about the stage. Great presence and physicality.


Jacob & Lily - a charming and kickass Manitoba duo. Karla Adolphe has one heckuva singing voice.


The Infamous Stringdusters - call them bluegrass, call them whatever...I just call them awesome.


I love the "workshops" in which two or more musical acts get together on stage and mix it up. Here, members of girl group Chic Gamine jams with worldbeat band Forro In The Dark in Sunday's final workshop. This in my opinion was the single most rousing "concert" of the festival. The energy level was incredible.


Overall, despite Saturday's extreme weather, this was a fabulous Folkfest '08!

Sounds wonderful!

You don't know who Joan Armatrading is? She is the goddess!!!

Right now I'm watching the Police in high def (720p) on my PC - concert from Tokyo this year. Yo!!!

I saw this year's tour on Orlando.
...awesome...

Lucky you. I must content myself with videos of them.

The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra's New Music Festival '09 has begun. The opening concert finished several hours ago, but my ears are still ringing. The piece they played was Olivier Messiaen's Turangalila-Symphonie, a massive work in ten movements, though in actual length it's really only a few minutes longer than Beethoven's Ninth. However, the Turangalila does not have a choral part. But it does feature just about every instrument in the orchestral repertoire and produces a kaleidoscope of sound. It might also be the single loudest piece of classical music I've ever heard. I mean, I'm glad I was there: it was likely my one and only opportunity to hear this work in concert. But once is plenty enough; I don't think I'd want my eardrums blasted like that again. Hopefully, a good night's sleep will take care of the ringing.

I remember when we dissected that work at the Watch. That ominous "Godzilla is coming to trash your town!!!" theme was pretty darned loud.

I think I just sat too close to the stage for my own good.

I've since found a recording of the Turangalila with Riccardo Chailly and the Concertgebouw Orchestra, so I'm looking forward to listening to the piece again, where I control the volume.

Tonight's concert (Day 3 of the festival) was much less deafening for my ears, but musically just as interesting - maybe more so. Michelle Mourre was guest conductor for the evening, and "Inferno" was the theme of the concert. The most exciting piece, and my favorite, was the first one -- Denis Gougeon's Un train pour l'enfer ("Train to Hell"). The drums took center stage in that work, thundering throughout and ending the music with a final emphatic BOOM. The next piece, Linda Bouchard's The Open Life, was a bit more complex and subtle, not as "showy" as Train to Hell. I did find The Open Life harder to enjoy, but then it would be remarkable if every piece in a concert of contemporary classical music became an instant hit with the audience (or with me, at any rate). I mean, the nature of this Festival is that the music performed is often very new - sometimes the ink is literally still wet on the score, having been completed by the composer mere hours before.

That is, of course, one of the special things about a festival like this: that the focus is exclusively on living composers. (The WSO does make exceptions for recently deceased composers, such as Messiaen, who died in 1992.) Anyway, after the two opening pieces by Gougeon and Bouchard, WSO music director Alexander Mickelthwate held an informal "half-time" chat onstage with the two composers. Yes, they even brought out a couch! Also present were the WSO's composer-in-residence, a music journalist for the Winnipeg Free Press and a local novelist.

It was a very engaging, funny and quite candid chat. Mickelthwate is quite the extrovert onstage - a very personable guy. He threw out some surprisingly tough questions to the guests and to the audience: why can't we attract people in mass numbers to new music like we can attract them to Beethoven? (He informed us that the WSO's Beethoven Ninth concert in April is close to being sold out.) What are we doing wrong? What more can we do to promote new music? Is there some basic limitation to the appeal of new classical?

Mickelthwate also asked both the audience and the two composers if music written by men and music written by women were discernably different from each other. Pretty bold question, and a good one! In short, Bouchard and Gougeon said there was no difference - though Bouchard mentioned that she has, from time to time, gotten comments that "it's not right" for a woman to write really aggressive music, which she has done. That made me wonder if Michelle Mourre and other female conductors also received those kinds of comments during their careers, like it's "not right" for a woman to be an orchestra conductor.

The second half of the concert was taken up by one work, Henri Dutilleux's cello concerto Tout un monde lointain, featuring the WSO's principal cellist, Yuri Hooker, as soloist. He did some amazing virtuoso playing, alternately bowing and plucking the cello. This composition seemed a bit overly long to me - I kinda lost the plot midway through - but the cello part was undeniably exciting.

All in all, a worthwhile concert, punctuated by that wonderful onstage chat.

This evening at the Festival was a special screening of the 1928 silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc with live musical accompaniment by the WSO. Carl Theodor Dreyer made the movie, and his original intention had been that it should be watched in total silence with no music at all. However, in 1994 Richard Einhorn composed an oratorio based on the movie, which acted as the "film score" the WSO used. This Wikipedia article sums up the movie pretty well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Passion_of_Joan_of_Arc

As the Wiki article would seem to show, this is a pretty significant movie in the history of cinema, evidenced by its high standing in various "greatest" polls. This was the first time I saw this movie, and I would agree that it is an emotionally powerful work. Einhorn's music no doubt aided in my impression. This was the first time I had ever attended a movie with live musical accompaniment - by orchestra and choir, no less. It all made for a very moving experience. I'm sure there wasn't a dry eye in the concert hall afterward. Well, except maybe for the performers engrossed in the music-making; kind of a shame they couldn't enjoy the experience like the rest of us in the audience. But I guess performing the music was its own reward - and let me say, Einhorn's music is pretty magnificent in its own right.

Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin, who has become a huge fan of Dreyer, introduced the movie. He talked briefly about Dreyer's quirky approach to making this movie. Like how he had built huge sets, but you never really saw them in full, because Dreyer then perversely used tight close-up shots for most of the film! Maddin also talked about the film's troubled history (as also noted in the Wiki article). It's incredible the amount of adversity this movie went through, almost mirroring Joan of Arc herself. It's sad that the original negative was destroyed in a fire. As a movie buff, that kind of thing especially horrifies me. It's even sadder that a second negative that Dreyer slavishly worked to create was also apparently destroyed by fire. The only surviving prints after that time were clumsily edited copies that basically butchered Dreyer's vision of the movie. But then, as if by miracle, an almost complete print of the original cut of the film was found in an Olso mental institution - and in a janitor's closet, for pete's sake! I mean, really, all that's missing was a "Beware of the Leper" sign!

I'm just glad The Passion of Joan of Arc has survived to be appreciated anew, and I'm very glad I went to this screening. A most remarkable night at the movies.

It sounds like you have been having a wonderful time of it the last few days!

I'll have to see if I can track down that Train to Hell music - it sounds like a pretty good piece.

I wish there were mp3's of all this music I could link to, duchess. I suspect that a piece like Train to Hell may be too obscure to have been commercially recorded. I know that CBC Radio has broadcast some (or maybe even all) of the Festival concerts live, but I don't know when they might be re-aired. Trying to find any detailed scheduling info on CBC Radio's website has been an exercise in futility so far.

Anyway, this night's concert (second last of the festival) was another great one. It was all devoted to a percussion ensemble called Scrap Arts Music. This is the WSO blurb on them:

Scrap Arts Music excites the senses with intricate rhythms, raw energy, athletic choreography and the hottest – and most inventive – reuse of materials on stage today. Fashioned from industrial scrap and offbeat materials ranging from accordion parts to artillery shells, Scrap Arts Music’s one-of-a-kind instruments are as visually striking as their music is sonically riveting. Audiences from four continents have welcomed this electrifying quintet with unbridled enthusiasm, embracing their intoxicating mix of music, movement and spectacle. Transcending language, culture and age, Scrap Arts Music offers a highly physical, wildly theatrical and thoroughly entertaining taste of the musical vanguard.

Even better, some of their performances are available on youtube! So instead of me trying to describe this fantastic group with mere words, here's a pretty slick "promo" clip of them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnsiiM-Lnu4

This one is more raw, and gives you a better sense of them live on stage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRyeezRV ... re=related

For sheer crowd-pleasing entertainment, you can't go wrong with them. The energy and physicality of this ensemble is breathtaking! The Festival audience gave them a standing ovation, and they deserved no less. ScrapArtsMusic isn't just about drums: over the course of the show (just over an hour in length), they produced amusing and startling sounds out of all sorts of objects. If they ever come to your city, I hope you get to see them!

Naxos label has been making a huge effort to record at least some of the more obscure modern composers - I know that there is a forthcoming CD from Naxos with the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra playing the work of an obscure living composer. And a lot of Ann Arbor composer Michael Dougherty's stuff has been recorded on Naxos. So if I have time later I will have a look at their website and see...

I ought to pay more attention to Naxos. I've only ever bought one of their CD's (Orchestral works of Penderecki).

Here are some photos I took at the Festival:

The ScrapArtsMusic ensemble:



The Chariot of Choir - a 30 ft long aluminum instrument created by Greg Kozek, the man talking in the bottom pic. (He is also the fellow seen performing with ScrapArtsMusic.) The Chariot looks like a beast, but it actually produces an ethereal, shimmering sound from its strings (I'm guessing piano wire).



Soloists and company in the festival's closing piece, John Tavener's Requiem: