random overtones

Until last night - when Antares Boyle and Janet McKay performed a collection of contemporary flute duos at the Sydney Conservatorium of music - I'd never heard a bass flute played live. Its deep growling tones left me yearning for more.

The work featuring the bass flute was Dominik Karski's Glimmer, where it and the alto flute interweave through a unique sound world of screeching, flutter tonguing, pitch bending, quarter tones and other extended techniques that exploit almost the entire range of both flutes.

This piece is quite typical of Karski's exploration with sound quality. His scores are dense with minute detail for how the performer should approach each note or rhythm, which by challenging the performers brings the actual physicality of the performance into focus. I don't think this is so much about the concept of the virtuoso (although this is certainly a factor) but more that aspects of playing that are generally hidden - breathing, hitting the keys etc. - are brought into focus and become an integral part of the sound world itself.

Perhaps this is why I found Yve Lavine's imagery projected behind the musicians (as amazing as it was) so distracting - I wanted to stay watching the performers but found my eyes kept switching uncomfortably between the two.

It was an interesting idea though and perhaps one way to make it more effective would be to better coordinate the images with the music. Rather than pre-programming the images, someone could flick between them in real time - at a much slower pace.

At the pub after the concert - where we drunk way too much beer and gobbled down cholesterol-dripping chips - we got chatting about what the images brought to the recital. Did they enhance the meaning? Did they project undue meaning onto the listeners ? Did they simply offer one interpretation of the music? Were they just pretty visuals that offered no meaning what-so-ever? Did they create multiple layers of meaning?

It turned out that the whole concept was actually an experiment for all three girls - none of them had done anything like this before. I'm really keen to see how their ideas evolve from this initial concept.

Distractions aside, I found the abstract images the most effective because they still allowed for my own interpretation of the music. When more recognizable images (such as baby's faces) were used I found it started to imply a particular interpretation on the music that I found at odds with my own listening.

Along with Karski's piece, Janet and Antares performed Toru Takemitsu's Masque, Joli Yuasa's Interpenetrations, Helen Fisher's Muriranga-Whenua, Hitomi Kaneko's Miyabi.

I'm not really familiar with Japanese music and I found most of these pieces fascinating. Like Glimmer, the other works on the program focussed on timbre, exploring interesting sound worlds with techniques such as pitch bending, and harmonics - the physicality of playing again seemed to be an integral and prominent feature of these works. New Zealand Helen Fischer evoked techniques from Maori culture - namely singing and pitch bending - and the piece itself was inspired by Maori legends about Grandmothers.

Janet and Antares are clearly passionate about new music - their vibrance, passion, and dedication was deeply inspiring. But it wasn't just their energy that inspired: their talent and execution of the program was brilliant. They showed a finesse in their music that is often lacking in other similar concerts (largely due to works being desperately under rehearsed, which isn't always our performers fault but one of the lacking support from government bodies! ).

I'm not sure when the duo are playing again - hopefully soon! I do know that Janet is playing with the Modern Music Ensemble on Tuesday 25 May at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Copland, Harbison and Druckman are on the program, and Richard Toop will be giving a pre-concert talk!