reviews
HARMONIUM IN THE RAIN
The Translucent Spaces workshop, led by composer and organist Klaus Lang, gave a slightly different take on contemporary music in new spaces. Site-specific compositions and performances took place in locations throughout the city. The participants in this workshop (Luciano Azzigotti, Oliver Thurley, Daniel Wilson, Antonia Barnett-McIntosh, Jeff Weston, and Seongmin Ji) created works separately and together, with performer participants from impuls (Julie Delisle, Sophie Fetokaki, Johannes Feuchter, Elliot Harrison, Jonathan Heilbron, Klaus Lang, Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka, Rob Mattessi, Joan Jordi Oliver Arcos, João Carlos Pacheco, Chiara Percivati, Tom Poulson, Hugo Queirós, Damaris Richerts, Christian Smith).
Unlike the minute concerts, there was no map. Unforeseen rain resulted in day-of location changes, which the team handled with grace and goodwill.
We began at the Palais Meran, part of the impuls campus. The participants moved through the lobby, playing wine glasses and a vacuum, joined by Klaus Lang at the harmonium. The music’s meditative slow pulse could have been trying in concert, but was charming and engaging in this context. This group effort set the tone for the journey to follow.
We moved as a group — participants, some performers, and audience. As the afternoon went on and the rain got heavier, the group dwindled in numbers, though camaraderie was strong. Sites included a graffitti filled double-spiral staircase, a hidden courtyard, a busy intersection with cars, trams, and pedestrians, an outdoor arcade, archways, a second-floor church, a bus stop, the schlossberg cave tunnel, and the streets of Graz in between.
In some works, time stopped. In others, I felt so aware of the pace of our lives. Confrontations with the world contrasted with active-still dioramas, with prayers and rituals along the way. Instead of a presentation of music in a different context, as in the minute concerts, each translucent spaces work melted into its space. Site-specific music is more than the sum of its parts, and the locus of the work is even more intangible than in concert music. The music and site create a new context in which we can exist for a little while. It is this moment, in this place, with these people and these sounds.
The specificity of the moment (and all that makes up that moment) is what is valuable about site-specific music. If during a performance trams stop in front of the site, or church bells strike time, or rain falls loudly and relentlessly, all the better. That exact moment will never happen again, nor should it. Unlike concert performances, site-specific music cannot chase uniform perfection and purity. What might be an external flaw in a concert performance is essential in a site-specific performance.
Victoria Cheah I CARE IF YOU LISTEN Mazagine - Issue 12, May-June 2015