MUSIC
Cumnock Tryst: Colin Currie & Scottish Ensemble Cumnock Town Hall JJJJ
IT’S good to get the audience involved and that’s exactly what Jonathan Morton, director of the Scottish Ensemble, did in this opening concert of the fourth annual Cumnock Tryst Festival. “There’s a “C” that drones all the way through Purcell’s quirky Fantasia on One Note”, he told us. “Do hum along.” The capacity crowd obliged, embracing it like a ritualistic Zen moment.
It was part of an intended uninterrupted sequence of short pieces filling the majority of the first half: a cocktail of Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Debussy, Tippett, Purcell and Fauré, rolled out like a random ipod shuffle, which could have done with fewer hiatuses between works to have fully achieved the desired effect.
There was plenty sparkle in the Ensemble’s individual performances, from the stabbing venom of Stravinsky Quartet movements to the gallus swagger of Debussy’s Golliwog’s Cakewalk and the parlour charm of Fauré’s Berceuse. But the star of the evening was percussionist Colin Currie, who had already made a background appearance as timpanist in the Ensemble’s opener, an engaging, if strangely mannered, account of Mozart’s Serenata Notturna.
His real mission was to premiere Dave Maric’s tribute to both men’s longstanding friendship, We Made Us, commissioned jointly by the Ensemble and Cumnock Tryst, and comprising six character movements for solo percussion, piano (played by Maric), electronics and string orchestra.
It’s a feisty piece, driven by Maric’s signature jazz style, the pulverising shadow of Steve Martland and the odd dance hall groove. The electronics are of an age. Currie’s performance rocked.
KEN WALTON
man Jónsi Birgisson which hung in the air like a nonseductive siren call.
As a showcase of their back catalogue and a preview of new material, it was soothing but hardly scintillating. Still, the first half passed quickly and the second half promised a more dynamic performance with the band making greater use of their adaptable stage set, firstly ranged around a console of synthesizers behind a gauze screen and then opening out to create their most momentous soundscape yet, accompanied by spectacular cosmic starburst imagery and volcanic red geometric patterns, shifting across screen like CGI tectonic plates.
Jónsi rolled out his party piece, exhibiting a pearl diver’s breath control to hold one note for a dizzyingly long time. Orri Páll Dyrason responded by drumming up a storm on the closing Popplagið, powered along by propulsive fuzz bass from Georg Hólm, the invigorating cacophony replicated on the screens to create a climactic son et lumière extravaganza.