review: Joby Burgess, Powerplant & Apollo Saxophone Quartet
Followed by the Apollo Saxophone Quartet
The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen
Friday, 01 November 2013
Alan Cooper writes...
Wow, what an evening I’ve just had at Aberdeen’s Lemon Tree. It started with a mind-blowing performance by Powerplant, a collective of inspired performers including ace percussionist Joby Burgess, sound designer Matthew Fairclough and visual artist Kathy Hinde. The setup in the upstairs theatre at the Lemon Tree was already intriguing even before the performance started. The backdrop screen showed a pattern of revolving heads while on the stage were several curiosity-provoking items including a large oil drum and a wooden pallet on which rested a collection of blue plastic bags. Had the stage crew fallen down on the job and forgotten to remove some of the packing. Of course not, this was sound where the most surprising musical magic can sometimes happen – and so it did. Percussion wizard Joby Burgess took the stage and first of all headed straight for the array of drums at the side where he began beating out an exciting series of galloping rhythms. On the screen behind him there appeared rows of pictures of horses like those found on Muybridge’s zoopraxiscope and as Joby Burgess began to play, the rows of horses began to gallop in time. This was Conlon Nancarrow’s Piece for Tape recast for live percussion by Dominic Murcott.
The second piece in the performance was another recasting, this time of an early work again for tape by Steve Reich entitled My Name Is… Joby Burgess took a microphone into the audience and enlisted several people to add their first name to the phrase “My name is”. The magic of computer processing did the rest creating a crisscross series of multirhythmic patterns out of the simple statements – both fascinating and amusing.
Only then were we transported in a sense over the rainbow and into a kind of percussion Land of Oz with Import/Export – suite for global junk by Gabriel Prokofiev, grandson of the celebrated Russian composer. Enhanced by electronic looping and phasing Joby Burgess drew an astonishing orchestral extravaganza of sounds first from the oil drum which seemed to have as many different sound textures within it as any cathedral organ. Bottles of soda, plastic bags and the wooden pallet played as if it were a xylophone provided a vast percussion orchestra of sounds that would have been unbelievable if we had not heard it for ourselves.
The Boom and the Bap by Matthew Fairclough after the interval though still enhanced by electronics was closer to a traditional drum solo before Joby Burgess and composer Graham Fitkin took us to a world of percussion even more strange and astonishing than that created by Gabriel Prokofiev. Here via the xylosynth, a cross between a xylophone and a synthesiser, the percussion sounds were actually voices of George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld in this piece dealing with the misdeeds of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. This was a macabre yet somehow also humorous piece that required and received an astonishing level of concentration and virtuosity from Joby Burgess. Even then though there was more to come when in Temazcal a piece for maracas by Javier Alvarez, Joby Burgess fairly shook up a storm against Kathy Hinde’s video background of white ink clouds.
The final work in this mind-blowing and inspiring performance was Max de Wardener’s Im Dorfe which took Schubert’s original piano score for a wild and wonderful percussion ride.
Downstairs in the main part of the Lemon Tree the Apollo Saxophone Quartet were preparing to take us on another mind bending journey through the world of early silent films including several by the early French cinematographer Georges Méliès. All four of the quartet members had contributed new compositions to accompany the films including also Will Gregory the previous baritone sax player. Most of the films were light hearted and comical especially those by Méliès who seemed to have a penchant for including dancing girls in his films including Voyage to the Moon with music by Carl Raven and Jim Fieldhouse. The New York Hat was an extended narrative about a young girl, a minister and the gossiping ladies of the congregation all elements nicely underlined by Rob Buckland’s score. I particularly enjoyed Andy Scott’s ribald accompaniment to The Dancing Pig as well as Jim Fieldhouse’s music for The Infernal Cakewalk which would probably not get past the racism censors these days. This performance was great fun and a refreshing light course to finish a quite astonishing and wonderfully entertaining evening.
© Alan Cooper 2013
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