Interesting ….

Sometimes I enjoy attending an event where I don’t know what to expect. I decided to try the ‘This is Tuesday‘ experimental music evening at King’s Place: link. The performance from the Melissa Phelps ensemble was a revelation. The ensemble consists of eight cellos creating a truly wonderful, warm, human and sensual sound. I was also impressed by how open the audience is. One of the other pieces, the composer enthusiastically explained, was based on sampling the note that you get from holding down a string on a guitar and plucking the string on the left fret side of the held down chord as oppose to plucking over the more usual sound hole. This was then processed & edited according to a mathematical formula involving prime numbers.The live guitarist then responds to the sample according to another mathematical formula. It sounded like some one eating with chopsticks and a few random chords played on electric guitar (of course, it isn’t random because of all the elaborate sums involved!). I’m ashamed to admit this. Believe me, I tried everything: mediation, self-hypnosis, counting the audience, pretending the music was from another planet but I was bored! The audience, however, kept with it. I don’t know if they actually enjoyed it but I didn’t see anyone giggling or yawning. Quite refreshing when we are supposed to be living in an age where no one can focus their attention on anything for longer than three minutes. Perhaps contemporary music is the Way. I too can become a little Zen Buddha instead of the fidgety five year old that I usually am by not judging everything that I hear! Anyway, I do recommend these evenings,it’s a treat to hear live music in such an informal atmosphere even if some of the music is not what I would usually choose to listen to :) Lots of love, Tanita