21C Music Festival
★★1/2 (out of 4)
Kronos Quartet with Tanya Tagaq at Koerner Hall. Wednesday, May 26. 21C Music Festival continues through May 29. Details here.
Wednesday night was a tough ticket for entertainment in Toronto. There were Beyoncé and Selena Gomez all on the same night, and even a Raptors game. That didn’t stop a diverse crowd coming out for the official kick-off of the Royal Conservatory’s 21C Music Festival with the Kronos Quartet and Tanya Tagaq at the drill.
But before I discuss the particulars, I have a confession to make. As a youngster, the Kronos Quartet were my gateway drug to contemporary music. I would play them endlessly on an indestructible yellow Sony Walkman. The composers they performed sounded as eye-popping as the neon Walkman looked.
Now after 40-years of pioneering a stream of consciousness style of repertoire that once served as a revelation for those looking to hear what the classical music of the 21st-century sounded like, the Kronos Quartet are still at it. A tall order for certain, but last night, as part of the opening night of RCM’s 21C Music Festival, the Quartet materialised with an arm full of new music, but seemed off their game with lacklustre playing and a dull demeanour.
The latest esoteric finds included ten short works that explored novelty, genres, technology, concepts, and even throat singing.
The highlight was a larger than life performance by contemporary chanteuse Tanya Tagaq, who performed two premieres Snow Angel and Sivunittinni, arranged by Jacob Garchick. It is easy to task Tagaq as a cultural ambassador for Inuit culture, but these works show a musician of great consequence moving beyond a performer, and transforming into a composer. I’m still not sure if Tagaq became a fifth member of the quartet, or if the quartet became a member of Tanya Tagaq.
Nicole Lizée’s The Golden Age of the Radiophonic Workshop [Fibre-Optic Flowers] (how’s that for a title) was an intrepid expedition through analogue experimentation. Lizée armed the quartet with speak-and-spells, manual typewriters, and analogue tape machines, but the real trick was making it all seem sincere. The piece was fertile with compelling gestures and textures, but the quartet seemed ambivalent. David Harrington, in particular, the quartet’s only original member, sounded gruff and slightly indecisive.
Mark Applebaum’s Darmstadt Kindergarten won the audience award with a charming introduction that included teaching a few of the accompanying physical gestures such as the Superman, rowboat, lightbulb, lotus position, sleep and silence. As Applebaum explained, the piece begins with sound, which for those who enjoy pre-21st-century music will appreciate. However, Applebaum moved away from audible sound towards a more Cagean “post-sound” that had the performers miming gestures that were given meaning through the music that responded to them. It ended with no sound at all, leaving one to imagine it.
After Laurie Anderson’s Flow — which spilt across the stage over a brief two minutes — was Bombs of Beirut by Mary Kouyoumdjian. The piece fused pre-recorded reportage including text and sounds of bombs and bullets with a well-put score. Unfortunately, the piece struggled to move beyond an imitation of Steve Reich’s Different Trains — and while the idea was worthwhile — it skirted the opportunities to say anything beyond “war is bad,” and “we moved to the U.S. to get away from it”.
The knack for unearthing exciting new repertoire has always been a secret to the Kronos’ success, as was last night’s focus. Unfortunately, it takes more than novelty to impress these days.
#LUDWIGVAN
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