RUTH MORLEY: Flutes
LAURA BOWLER: Voice and composer
ABERDEEN ARTS CENTRE
Sunday 25th October 12 midday
In Greek mythology, Gaia is one of the primordial deities, a personification of the Earth. That name was picked up by James Lovelock in his book Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. It has become a word that immediately steers people to the ecological concerns of the modern world. That was its meaning as the title of this final concert in the 2020 soundfestival.
Flautist Ruth Morley and vocalist Laura Bowler first met at a composition project for sound. They became friends and as today, musical collaborators. There were five very different pieces and their composers in today’s programme.
The first piece entitled wicked problems, receiving its world première performance today, was composed by singer Laura Bowler. It used voice along with bass flute. It began with the words ‘wicked problems’ repeated by the vocalist while the flute sent her little whiffles, like blown kisses. The vocal part contained a number of advanced techniques such as the ‘th’ sound in the word earth being repeated as a special sound quality in the music. The words were delivered in a fractured way with the flute acting as a binding force. There were melodic passages blending flute and voice attractively together and towards the end high screamed notes from the singer backed by whiffles on the flute leading to a recorded voice blaming capitalism for looming ecological disaster.
In the piece by Carmel Smickersgill, a composer based in Manchester, entitled simply More, the text, or part of it, was shown on a screen behind the performers. Softly sung sections were replied to by gentle flute. The singer gave us descending patterns of vowel sounds and then she began to perform choreographed movements with hands feet and whole body crouching down while the voice became slightly breathless. The singing and flute took on a pleading tone while the words on the screen said “Look at me”.
Glacier was a solo piece for bass flute composed by Japanese-born composer Dai Fujikura, he has also composed a flute concerto. He described today’s work, as Ruth Morley said, as being like a plume of cold air through an icy mountain landscape. It was played very softly and gently on the upper tones of the bass flute. It had the beautifully manicured shaping of a Japanese painting.
POSTCARDS from a fragile planet by Deirdre McKay was in two distinct sections, the first using the words on wind power and ecology by what we were told was a famous American personality. Could his first name be Donald by any chance? The words, at first spoken by Laura, were taken up musically by both voice and flute whose music was quite ornate. Ruth opened the second section by just blowing softly into the separated mouth part of the bass flute. The second part was the voice of science, cautioning, yes, but peaceable too, at times almost like a lullaby for voice and flute not at all like the usual hectoring voices you hear from scientists on television news programmes.
The final piece HAPPY/boomf/fat was by far the most unusual. There were some very different responses to it from the chat section at the side of the screen. Some called it a warning on our styles of consumption and wrote that it was sad in response to that. However there was also a comment from Orkney composer Dr Gemma McGregor who wrote, “This work does not ‘celebrate the natural world’ and it does not display musicianship. What a depressing way to end a music festival”. So, what was all that about?
This final piece was a solo performance for the vocalist without flute. She had to come onstage with a plate of quite large marshmallows which had the words of the piece written on them. She had to eat these within a time limit while vocalising with her mouth full. I never knew before that a marshmallow is a ‘voice mute’. Do I agree with Gemma? Well no, not really. This piece had its funny moments although I remembered the film La Grande Bouffe in which the characters decide to gorge themselves to death on fine cuisine. The point of the film was to criticise the West for its overconsumption. Some of the chat commentators had picked up on that but I’m afraid that for me it was the funny side that hit home. After all, most, if not all concert recitals, end with a much lighter hearted piece. So that was fine with me!
This was undoubtedly one of this year’s most varied and unusual performances at the soundfestival.
