2 June 2010
'Volta Switch'
overcoming the challenges of a conventional concert presentation
Marcus Whale speaks about the production design of new music group Volta's 4th June show 'Switch'.
Volta began mid-2009 in a Facebook dialogue, no less, between
four other composers and performers at the Sydney Conservatorium
of Music, proposing a concert of new pieces for chamber
orchestra. The first Volta concert was the answer to a lack of
opportunity to translate the act of composition to performance, a
fundamental difficulty in being a student composer.
The second Volta event, and first of two for 2010, 'Volta 1.5:
Switch', sees us placing new music in a more
performance-conscious framework, with all pieces linked by
electronic interludes and developed in chronological sequence.
With no breaks for applause, focus isn't broken until the very
end of the concert; the building, deconstruction and rebuilding
that is necessary in regular concert presentation is consciously
avoided.
This approach is in response to some of the issues inherent in
the way the first Volta concert was presented. These issues have
primarily surrounded a dissatisfaction with conventional concert
presentation. Innately built into art music practice is the
in-performance focus so crucial to sustaining a clear
communicative framework between performers and audience. It's a
given that, in this sense, conventional practice will prevail in
representing most works in a stand-alone context. However, I've
found the concert experience far more fulfilling when its
programming extends towards sculpting a larger performative
framework to which all works are subservient - in effect,
producing a wholly contained performance, rather than a set of
musical works fragmented by applause, stage adjustments and
speech.
Theatre has an advantage in this case, since works are generally
of greater length, forcing the performers and production to
manage states and energies which evolve over a longer period of
time. This is further embellished by the need to 'suspend the
disbelief' of the audience, which locks the audience into an
imaginative space, bound to the present moment and the immediate
environment. Music programming, particularly with new music's
greater flexibility for appropriation into new and evolving
performance contexts, could benefit from this approach.
In 2009, I attended The Song Company's Tenebrae III, a
production of Renaissance composer Carlo Gesualdo's setting of
Easter texts, in the foyer of Sydney's Carriageworks. A
collaboration with choreographer Shaun Parker, this was a prime
example of a concert where the music consciously served this
greater performative framework. The performance set the entire,
cavernous space, with several hundred single seats lining the
walls. As a result, the singers moved in amongst the dancers,
communicating another level of narrative over the course of the
full performance. The physical, visual dimension illuminated the
interweaved fragments and short pieces, forming a large-scale
framework that precisely achieved this 'imaginative space'.
Switch is Volta's attempt at capturing this form of large-scale
performative gesture. The intention is to place the music in a
context where it is best positioned to capture the audience,
without the mammoth task of rebuilding these energies over the
course of each piece.
The concert, held in Paddington Uniting Church's stunning Stone
Gallery venue, includes works by Joseph Power, Laura Altman,
Miles Horler, Lachlan Hughes, Melanie Herbert and Russell
Phillips, who have worked collaboratively with the six performers
and each other to form the hour-long performance.
Event details
Volta 1.5: Switch
Stone Gallery, Paddington, Sydney, NSW
8pm, 4 June 2010
Full
event details in the AMC Calendar
© Australian Music Centre (2010) — Permission must be obtained from the AMC if you wish to reproduce this article either online or in print.
Marcus Whale is a Sydney-based composer and co-director of new music group Volta. He has taken the role of production designer in Volta’s latest program, 'Switch'.
Comments
Be the first to share add your thoughts and opinions in response to this article.
You must login to post a comment.