As its overall title – Mix – implied, this varied if uneven programme, curated and conducted by Ilan Volkov, comprised an eclectic selection of experimental contemporary music blending genres from beyond the mainstream, including improvised as well as written-down works. At its centre was a new concerto by the wide-ranging US jazz trombonist and composer George Lewis.
Foregrounded in Lewis’s Tales of the Traveler was Fred Frith, whose solo guitar part was cued but not notated: Frith’s skills as an improviser thus came in handy not only in the cadenza but throughout.
Responding to such instructions as “direct imitation of melodic or harmonic passages is to be avoided – use of noise is encouraged”, Frith conjured up a superabundance of found objects to generate weird and wonderful sounds from his strings – among them a violin bow, brushes, metal chains, and even grains of rice – and did so with panache.
With members of the London Sinfonietta supplying the fully scored accompaniment under Volkov, Lewis’s score displayed highlights, even if at times its trajectory seemed to falter.
Sinfonietta players were involved in the majority of the programme, which also featured Martin Smolka’s half-frenetic, half-static Autumn Thoughts and Christian Marclay’s dense Groove Revisited, a new version of an earlier work, in which the visual artist and composer’s turntable dexterity added layer upon layer of extra sonic complexity.
Mezzo Loré Lixenberg represented the voice of Maria Callas’s legendary Tosca in Cassandra Miller’s Puccini-derived Bel Canto, where discernible elements of the opening bars of Vissi D’Arte gradually melted into unfamiliarity.
Cellist Lionel Handy made virtuosic interventions in Fausto Romitelli’s rock and techno influenced Professor Bad Trip – Lesson II, whose raucous phantasmagoria formed a compelling contrast to the discursive delicacy of two lengthy soundscapes etched by the six members of the improv and sound design collective Common Objects.
