From a musical theater Stabat Mater to refined electronics, from a minimalist string quartet with harmonica to video art with a touch of classical music. There you have the extremes that musicians and performers explored last Saturday evening at the Utrecht Gaudeamus festival for new music. Two keywords: boundless interdisciplinarity.
Mees Vervuurt (©2000) surprised with a restrained musical theater dance about the search for the child within ourselves. Four singers and a dancer built an expressive and balanced exposition ("where are you? I am waiting") in which the singers, both in solo and in tutti, were completely immersed in the narrative. The dance is a dance of despair over the loss of innocence but also one of hope for the return of childhood when the dancer involves the belly of the two female soloists in her dance. Dance, music and message are ingeniously attuned to each other. In his composition—a graduation project from the Utrecht Conservatory—Vervuurt does not shy away from alternative singing techniques. He lets the male voices sink hoarsely or squeak helplessly at the word "triste" only to end in guttural sounds. The performers (Cyprien Crabbé, Femke Hulsman, Pleuni Veen, Veronika Akhmetchina and Wessel van der Ham) convinced by the natural way in which they were especially focused on each other. The costumes (Floren Bloch) stood out for the power of their studied simplicity. In short: it worked.
© Robin P. Gould
The Canadian string ensemble Quatuor Bozzini explored in Colliding Bubbles by Danish composer Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard (©1979) the boundaries of minimalism and microtonality. The musicians played a harmonica alongside their string instruments, a combination of which register and timbre added a wonderful lightness to the long lines drawn by the strings. In the absence of building blocks such as melody, rhythm, dynamics, harmonic development or the unrest of atonality, the question naturally arises where the music remains. Does only sound remain here? The listening experience was comparable to the sight of a salt lake, a white expanse that, due to the absence of a visible horizon, seemed to merge with the grayish-blue sky. But if you looked carefully, or rather listened, you saw the splendor of crystals or the beginning of a small plant. Thus the rare change in the texture of the music corresponded with that lonely cactus in that endless plain.
Hi hats nu shotta
The radical composer Klein brings together jazz, classical, drone, noise, rap and avant-garde in a raw, characterful video spectacle. Klein has released music on both advanced dance labels and established European classical labels, with unpredictability and continuous innovation as his trademark. Especially for Gaudeamus Festival 2023, the London-based multidisciplinary outsider created an entirely new performance: hi hats nu shotta, a collection of drum samples, beats with here and there a touch of classical.
The first sounds you hear are the clattering club rhythms of pounding pistons, followed by bouncing and crackling objects, lightning bolts, fragments of electronic organ, distorted solo singing. Klein's travel plan becomes somewhat clearer when a dancer behind a video screen seems to perform a solo of a drummer, guitarist and pianist. Alongside extremes such as the spectacular flashlights (sunglasses would have come in handy) combined with the mystical smoke machines, Klein has also incorporated strikingly quiet moments. The video fragment with the vague contours of a guitarist, against an orange background (fire?) is ominous and intimate, as is the murmuring solo singing of a woman who seems to be occupied with something else. The performance ends with a heartfelt Happy Birthday.
© Kasia Zacharko
One hundred percent electronics could be found on Saturday with sound artist and musician Felisha Ledesma. In her latest set,Fading father from mefor AM-synthesizer, she bases herself on sounds from daily life such as a (prolonged) passing train, wind gusts and murmuring elderly people. Her work is supported by meditative samples from the worlds of relaxation and unwinding. Over the years she has gathered a loyal group of (CD) listeners. But for a DJ who does not use light engineeringdance and video it is less easy to build an audience. The ability to surrender to deep listening as performance art is not given to everyone, as it turned out.
Reviewed at: Gaudeamus Festival, Utrecht
Date: Saturday, September 9th
