A River, an Exhibition, and a Concert

It’s perhaps one of lifes underrated pleasures to simply sit outside the Royal Festival Hall, overlooking the Thames, sipping a good coffee on a summer Sunday morning with a cloudless sky and a cool breeze, before the crowds arrive and the heat builds. The place and the day are full of potential and we have a simple but interesting agenda, but there is no rush, yet; bliss.

A peaceful morning coffee before the culture and the crowds, Royal Festival Hall (18May14)

 

The perfect cooling-off facility, South Bank (18May14)

 

Loaded and ready for the onslaught, the outside bar at the Royal Festival Hall (18May14)

In the fine weather the Thames looks glorious, despite the tide being out. Folk are down on the “beaches” hunting for history or building sand castles where it’s not mud. Strolling eastwards along the South Bank it’s hard to stop taking pictures like all the foreign tourists, it all looks so damned good. The skyline continues to evolve and to be pecked away at by myriad cranes; it’s accumulating an increasing number of massive oddly shaped buildings all striving to be different. It’s getting a bit like grannies overcluttered mantelpiece full of nick-nacks, with even the splendour of St Pauls looking increasingly marginalised and lesser churches lost long ago in the deep canyons between the big new boys, with just the odd spire or tower top peeking out.

Looking downstream to Blackfriars Bridge and St Pauls (18May14)

 

Assorted new stuff on the skyline, solar-panelled Blackfriars Bridge in the foreground,  River Thames (18May14)

Arriving at the relatively modest Bankside Gallery, we dip inside out of the shadow of the looming monster of Tate Modern next door. An hour of soaking up the Original Prints exhibition by the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers is inspiring and good for the soul, so much diverse good work. Top quality original art doesn’t come much more affordable than this and I have to lock my wallet away and fight multiple temptations; I escape unscathed. The father-in-law’s work looks good and has a sale denoted by a red dot, so some good news to report back on.

On the beach at Gabriel's Wharf (18May14)

Lunch under a tree outside the gallery and the tide is clearly starting to come in, those shores will soon disappear. By 1pm we realise we need to scoot, we have an afternoon concert to get to at the Barbican that starts at 2pm, and we haven’t been there before. Zig-zagging through the crowds on the now non-bouncy (booh) Millenium Bridge, past St Pauls and down narrow streets to the Guildhall we finally reach the huge, confusing yet strangely appealing Barbican. It’s a rather wonderful high and low-rise complex of offices, housing, schools, and concert venues with embedded lakes, fountains and plantlife – but a real struggle to quickly assimilate how to navigate to our desired Milton Court concert hall, which proves to be out the far side of the main set-up. Fortunately we get there with fifteen minutes to spare.

The foyer’s hot and we’re sticky, but it’s now time to chill out again and get ourselves into the right frame of mind for a very novel and varied concert. Fortunately the auditorium is cool and we have prime seats at the front of the circle.

US-based Nonesuch Records are a pretty discerning and eclectic bunch as music labels go, with high-brow signings such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich and the Kronos Quartet, which have not been my natural territory to date; but also the more accessible likes of Emmylou Harris, Natalie Merchant and, most recently and intriguingly, Olivia Chaney (see my first blog of the year). To celebrate 50 years in the business Nonesuch pretty much took over the Barbican last weekend to run a sequence of five concerts where they deliberately mixed up a considerable number of the artists on their books in various experimental collaborations, to force both musicians and audiences to reconsider their musical boundaries. And so to our concert, the fourth out of the five, with an impressive line-up that at least contained some known and partially known quantities, but also plenty of unknowns…
 

First up were the extraordinary Dublin-based Crash Ensemble, a “contemporary music ensemble” who I groundlessly feared might be of an irredeemably  “squeaky bonky” persuasion but who were actually utterly captivating in their 25 minute rendition of the wonderfully novel, varied and creative piece Gra agus Bas, with riveting gaelic singing from Iarla O Lionaird throughout (for whom the piece was originally written). I have previously encountered Iarla’s unique singing style (largely the much maligned traditional Irish sean nos style) from his work with Afro Celt Sound System some years ago but this performance brought home just how versatile and powerful it can be and the whole integrated performance brought a solid much-deserved ovation from the audience.

Then followed the main part of the concert, anchored by the impressive four piece Kronos Quartet who were themselves celebrating their 40th anniversary, and who kicked off with a wonderfully quirky piece where all members simply plucked rather than bowed their instruments – terrific funky stuff. The session then developed with individually capable singers and musicians Rhiannon Giddens, Olivia Chaney, Sam Amidon and finally Natalie Merchant coming on in turn to perform folk songs in conjunction with the Kronos Quartet. These performances had their highs and lows for me with the clear stars being, somewhat surprisingly, the newcomer Chaney and Giddens. Chaney in particular, perhaps because of her classical training, seemed to totally get how to gel with the Kronos Quartet and brought to their joint performances a compelling singing style which writhes and emotes in the most unique and creative manner - hers were performances that resulted in that very special magic you always hope for on these occasions. Giddens almost matched this with her versatile southern US sensibilities and styles and clear powerful voice, and her final gaelic mouth-music piece was particularly impressive, if a little disorientating – having previously heard the song many times but only via Scottish gaelic singers. Apparently North Carolina had the largest immigrant Scottish population in the US at one time and so she legitimately claimed the right to sing this piece.

 

For me young Sam Amidon’s engaging folky singing and guitar/fiddle playing, which I think in its more normal contexts would be a winning combination, appeared to struggle a little at times to fit with the string accompaniments of the Kronos Quartet. On a few occasions his playing seemed to clash directly with the accomplished Kronos sound and his voice sometimes didn’t seem to have quite the heft required to get the desired impact out of the songs. But hey, this was an experiment and success is not always complete or unequivocal in such situations, nothing ventured nothing gained.

And so to Natalie Merchant. Her name on the bill was probably responsible for a fair number of ticket sales and as a long-term devotee it certainly influenced my decision to attend. As such her arrival on stage was keenly awaited and, reflecting this, she was held back until last. Rather surprisingly however, it turned out (for this member of the audience anyway) to be the low point of the afternoon; not only did she do the shortest of cameos with just two rather downbeat songs but she tripped over the words on the first one and had to sheepishly restart it –something you and your audience can recover from if you’re doing a full concert but more tricky within such a brief appearance. And talking of appearances (and I’m not one who normally worries much about such things), Merchants dress sense continues to confound even me, coming on as she did in what can best be described as a Nora Batty influenced combo (non-UK readers may wish to Google this name – a key British sartorial reference point). I was genuinely trying to discern for a while if she had rollers in her crinkled hair!
 

And so we strolled back out into the sunshine, and through the narrow London streets back to the river, with much to cogitate on. It was a brave, adventurous, stimulating concert with many different things to appreciate and contemplate, which is rather more than most performances achieve, …which I think makes it a considerable success.