Photographs of The Smith Quartet and Joby Burgess sourced from the Cheltenham Festivals website http://www.cheltenhamfestivals.com

An Evening at Cheltenham Music Festival, Parabola Arts Centre, Cheltenham 04/07/2014.

Film and Talk ; Moog

The Smith Quartet with Joby Burgess play Reich, Fitkin and Martland.

Cheltenham Music Festival is a predominately classical music festival that takes place over the course of ten days at various venues in Cheltenham and its environs (including concerts at Gloucester Cathedral and Tewkesbury Abbey). The first festival was held immediately after the end of the Second World War and incredibly 2014 represents the seventieth such event.

The early success of the festival led to the creation, in 1949, of Cheltenham Festivals Ltd., the body that still delivers the annual Music Festival in addition to its sister festivals of Jazz, Science and Literature. I’ve attended every edition of the Jazz Festival, which was founded in 1996 and the last couple of years have also found me attending selected events at the Music Festival, particularly those that I feel will be of some interest to the jazz audience. Cheltenham Music Festival has always encouraged the work of contemporary composers and today presents a beguiling mix of the popular and familiar alongside the more experimental and cutting edge (an approach shared by the Jazz Festival). Although essentially classical the Music Festival has readily welcomed other genres into the fold including those of jazz and electronic music.

MOOG; Film & Talk

This evening’s visit to the festival saw me attending two events at the Parabola Arts Centre, a regular Jazz Festival venue.  If 2014 represents a milestone for the Music Festival then it also represents a significant anniversary in the annals of electronic music ? and by extension jazz, rock and pop ? for it was fifty years ago that Dr. Robert Moog commenced building his first synthesiser. Director Hans Fjellestad’s film, simply entitled “Moog” was a celebration of both the instrument and the man who created it, a profile of Robert (or Bob) Moog (1934-2005) and his extraordinarily successful and influential invention. 

The screening was introduced by the musician Bernie Krause, who worked with Moog on the instrument itself and subsequently played it as part of the pioneering electronic duo Beaver and Krause. Krause explained how he had begun his career as a folk musician with the group The Weavers and as a session guitarist,  before entering the realms of electronic music.

In 1964 he met Moog who was then an electronics engineer at Cornell University in Los Angeles and the pair began building a prototype electronic instrument that was initially meant to be used in the world of experimental music or for creating sound effects for film and TV. At first it wasn’t even certain that the device would have a keyboard as other ways of triggering sounds were equally viable.

Moog had been fascinated by electronic methods of music making since the 1950’s and had previously been involved in the construction of theremins. His early experiments with the synthesiser were made with the encouragement of the composer Herbert A. Deutsch, who had previously written for the theremin.

Krause explained something of the mechanics of the synthesiser (oscillators, filters, envelopes etc.) that frankly went over my head and played a couple of extracts including an early example of sequencing. He explained something of his career with the late Paul Beaver (d.1975) which included the albums “The Nonesuch Guide To Electronic Music” (1967) from which the sequenced extract was sourced. Their second album “In A Wild Sanctuary”, which boasted artwork by M.C. Escher (the 1955 lithograph “Three Worlds”)  had an ecological theme and mixed field recordings of wildlife with the duo’s electronic textures. The album “Gandharva” included a live performance recorded at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco in the company of both jazz and classical musicians, the jazz contingent including Gerry Mulligan (baritone sax) and Bud Shank (tenor). Krause played us a tantalising snippet from this work featuring the unmistakable sound of Mulligan.

Krause’s session career was given a fresh lease of life by his synthesiser playing and he worked with George Harrison, Mick Jagger, Van Morrison and The Byrds among many others. He has also contributed to the soundtracks of some 135 feature films, most notably composing the score for Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam epic “Apocalypse Now”. Krause revealed that Coppola wasn’t the easiest of men to work with but was a very generous payer - “every time he fired me I insisted on double the money when he invited me back”. 

Krause will be in Cheltenham for the duration of the festival and some of his field recordings will be used in the premi?re of “The Great Animal Orchestra” by composer Richard Blackford, a twenty five minute composition inspired by the pioneering work of Beaver & Krause. The piece will be performed at Cheltenham Town Hall on Saturday 12th July by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales conducted by Martyn Brabbins. The programme will also feature the Savitri Singers and will include a performance of Gustav Holst’s “The Planets”, the most famous work by one of Cheltenham’s most famous sons. Blackford & Krause will give a spoken introduction prior to the performance.

Following Krause’s interesting and informative introduction attention turned to Fjellestad’s film which was released in 2004, just a year before Moog’s tragic death from a brain tumour. Rather than being a straight musical documentary with a coherent time line and a narrative this was a portrait of Moog, the man, a warm, refreshingly down to earth character with a sense of humour and a love of nature. Moog’s other great passion was gardening and he loved to grow his own organic vegetables, a lifestyle choice that was virtually a philosophy.

Following a quirky and entertaining opening sequence featuring a cartoon Bob Moog the film settled down with an interview with the real Bob conducted at his home in Asheville, North Carolina. From this we learnt something more of the history of the synthesiser and of how Walter/Wendy Carlos’ 1966 “Switched On Bach” recording represented something of a “big break” for Moog. There had been a good deal of opposition towards the synthesiser in its early days with studio musicians in particular fearful that it would put them out of a job as the instrument was used to generate sound effects for films, TV programmes and advertisements. Moog explained that the name “synthesiser” was intended to denote a “synthesis” or coming together of different elements, rather than the pejorative “synthetic”.

Resistance towards the new instrument began to diminish as some of the leading rock musicians of the day adopted the synthesiser and integrated it into their music. Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman were particularly high profile exponents and as promised there was generous footage of both in live performance.  Moog revealed that one of his proudest possessions was a test pressing of the ELP song “Lucky Man” personally given to him by Emerson.

However it was the creation of the “Mini Moog” in 1972 that helped take the synthesiser into the comparative mainstream. Tough, portable and relatively simple compared to their predecessors with their battery of knobs and switches and jungles of wires the Mini Moog was also much more affordable, hell even jazz musicians started buying them!

One sequence showed Moog talking to Wakeman and Bernie Worrell, both of whom extolled the virtues of the Mini Moog in highly amusing fashion. Wakeman revealed how he’d got his first Mini Moog at a knock down price when he bough it second hand and virtually unplayed from the actor Jack Wild (aka The Artful Dodger) who’d blown some of his Oliver! money on an instrument that he didn’t know how to play! For all his musical pomposity Wakeman the man has always remained down to earth and something of a born comedian and Moog found this story hysterically funny. A man who is quick to laugh Moog was equally amused by the risqu? parallels Worrell drew between playing the Mini Moog and sexual technique - “you gotta know what buttons to press!” he chortled. The effervescent Wakeman went on to claim that the Mini Moog had changed the musical landscape and to a degree he was right. Early 80’s synth pop, which largely went unmentioned, probably because it was a mainly UK phenomenon, almost certainly wouldn’t have happened without it. Moog saw himself as a “toolmaker” albeit a creative one but was happy to let musicians like Wakeman, Worrell and Stevie Wonder take the credit for taking that creativity to another level.

Of course Wakeman, Worrell and Emerson weren’t the only musicians to appear in the film. We saw Moog’s one time business partner Walter Sear who initially encouraged Moog to make his instruments more portable and advocated their use in advertisements. Sear also wrote much of the score for “Midnight Cowboy” on an early Moog synth.
A hideously dated US ad for Schaefer Beer featuring the synth playing of Edd Kallehof had the Cheltenham audience laughing out loud. Archive film of synth pioneer Gershon Kingsley saw him playing with his synth quartet and explaining something of the nature of the instrument. His catchy tune “Popcorn” was one of the first ever synthesiser hits with the group Hot Butter taking it into the international charts in 1972.

More contemporary musicians such as Money Mark, Mixmaster Mike and DJ Spooky demonstrated the potential of the synthesiser in the world of dance music and hip hop with all featured in extensive live performance extracts.

Moog’s work with the theremin was not neglected. This film was, after all, a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Moog setting up his own musical instrument manufacturing company R.A. Moog Music, initially specialising in the production of theremins. We thus heard New York based musician Pamelia Kurstin, arguably the world’s leading contemporary theremin player, in both conversation and performance.

The film ended with extended footage of Stereolab playing to a vast audience, evidence of just how widely accepted the Moog synthesiser has become, an instrument that can truly be said to have changed the face of popular music.

Bob Moog continued to refine and develop his creations until his untimely death. This film is an affectionate portrait of a man who retained his passion for electronic music throughout his life. In 1964 he surely could not have conceived how influential and successful his new baby was going to become but seemingly remained unchanged by his success.

Despite the “fly on the wall” approach Fjellestad’s film proved to be highly informative, consistently interesting and at times downright funny (thanks Rick and Bernie) and included some memorable musical footage. There was enough here to please the technophiles (more of those oscillators, filters and envelopes and the revelation that the circuit boards of early models had some 800 parts) but this was also a film that was readily accessible to the mass audience with Fjellestad presenting the high priest of musical technology as a very warm and human figure. In its way this film holds its own with the best music documentaries. Ten years on from its release and fifty years on from the unveiling of the very first Moog Synthesiser it’s surely due a screening on BBC 4. I’d watch it again, what more can I say? 

I should perhaps add that I have something of a love/hate relationships with synthesisers and electronica in music in general. It’s great when it’s used in the right experimental “what if?” spirit, horrible if it’s used as a mere novelty or as a lazy short cut. It’s not the technology, it’s the spirit in which it’s used that really counts ? and at the end of the day that’s down to the human component. 

THE SMITH QUARTET with JOBY BURGESS

Steve Reich - “Different Trains”

Graham Fitkin - “Distil”

Steve Martland - “Starry Night”

The second half of the evening was given over to three performances by the Smith Quartet, with guest percussionist Joby Burgess joining the group for the latter two pieces.

Cheltenham Music festival has regularly featured the work of Steve Reich and his 1988 work “Different Trains” was the main draw for this concert. It’s a piece I’ve always loved and my copy is a 1989 recording on Nonesuch featuring the Kronos Quartet. The CD also includes a recording of Reich’s “Electric Counterpoint” which features guitarist Pat Metheny as guest soloist. Purchased at the height of my personal “Metheny-mania” it also represented something of a gateway into Reich’s music. It’s a piece that has also been recorded by tonight’s artistes, the Smith Quartet, a group who have a particular affinity for the music of minimalist composers such as Reich, Philip Glass and John Adams and who have also worked with jazz composer Django Bates. During their near twenty year existence the Smith Quartet have amassed an impressive back catalogue of recordings with the emphasis very much on the cutting edge contemporary classical repertoire.

Joby Burgess is a young classically trained percussionist who also prefers to concentrate on contemporary works.  A member of the leading percussion group Ensemble Bash he also performs as a member of the duo New Noise with oboist Janey Miller but his main creative outlet appears to be the audio visual collective Powerplant which teams him with sound designer Matthew Gregory and visual artist Kathy Hinde with a number of albums issued under the group name. The genre defying Burgess also works with Will Gregory of the pop/rock duo Goldfrapp. 

At around twenty seven minutes “Different Trains” is a continuous piece of music albeit one that is divided into three sections. Born in 1936 to Jewish parents in New York Reich’s parent separated when he was just one year old. As a child he spent long hours on trains in the company of his governess travelling between New York, where his father remained, and Los Angeles where his mother had moved to. The young Reich found these trips exciting and romantic but later compared his circumstances to those of Jewish children in Europe whose experience of trains during the years 1939-42 was very different, these trains being the mode of transport to the Nazi death camps.

“Different Trains” is a work for string quartet and tape and was commissioned by Betty Freeman for the Kronos Quartet. It takes it’s inspiration from Reich’s earlier experiments with taped speech “It’s Gonna Rain” (1965) and “Come Out” (1966) and involved Reich taping interviews with his retired governess, a retired Pullman porter from the trains Reich used to ride, and three Holocaust survivors then living in the United States. The piece also includes recordings of train sounds collected from America and Europe during the 1930’s and 40’s. Reich takes selected phrases from his interviewees and these repeated and looped phrases still form the basis for live performances of the piece today.

Thus it was that the members of the Smith Quartet, violinists Ian Humphries and Rick Koster, violist Nic Pendlebury and cellist Deirdre Cooper took to the stage and waited for the sound engineer to start the pre recorded tape. As Reich explains the tape consists of carefully chosen speech samples that are more or less clearly pitched which are then notated. The strings then imitate the speech melody and also replicate the train sounds and the tape also includes three separate string quartet performances with the fourth being added in live performance.

The Smith Quartet’s staccato phrases imitated the speech patterns and train sounds, coalescing to create a relentless, compelling hypnotic effect that quickly drew in the audience. Tempos changed from the buoyant rhythms of the first movement “America Before The War” with its train sounds and speech samples of Virginia the Governess and Mr. Davis the Porter to the more sombre “Europe During The War” with its testimony from the Holocaust survivors Rachel, Rachella and Paul. The third movement, “America After The War” featured phrases from all Reich’s interviewees but the optimistic mood of the first movement was balanced here by the pain of loss.

“Different Trains” is a compelling and powerful piece of work, filled with disturbing imagery yet rendered accessible by its sheer dramatic impact. It’s a piece that has clearly acquired something of a cult following -as has Reich himself- and the Parabola was well attended for this event -audience numbers for the Moog film had been comparatively sparse. It was good to see “Different Trains” performed live for the first time after listening to it on disc for many years although I did find the disembodied string sounds on the tape rather disorientating at first as it was difficult to reconcile them with what the Smiths were playing live. Nonetheless this was a rewarding live experience with the power and relevance of Reich’s work remaining undimmed. There was also a neat parallel with the earlier Moog film as the success of Reich’s work is also highly dependent on the electronic technology of the tape recorder, sampling keyboard and computer.

Composer Graham Fitkin (born 1963) took to the stage to introduce the premi?re of his composition “Distil” apiece written for a quintet of four strings plus percussion. The Smiths have worked with Fitkin before, notably on the album recording “Slow” (1992).

Born and based in Cornwall Fitkin explained the inspiration behind his new work thus;
“Sometimes, very occasionally I listen to one sound and imagine the whole world encapsulated in it”.

The forty minute “Distil” owed something to the minimalist methods of Reich and others and proved to be an absorbing listen as from seemingly disparate beginnings the four strings plus guest soloist Burgess coalesced with the string players deploying pizzicato techniques and percussive bowing in this frequently highly rhythmic music.  These rhythmic responsibilities were passed around the string quartet the pizzicato techniques in particular reminiscent of the dripping of water or the patter of raindrops, an allusion perhaps to the water imagery partly implied by the title.

Burgess, meanwhile deployed a percussive set up featuring vibraphone, two aluphones, gong (or tam tam), cymbal and floor toms, often playing the tuned elements with four mallets in the style of jazz vibraphonist. Sticks and brushes were also used plus a large headed soft mallet for use on the gong and cymbal. Burgess’ role was essentially as part of the ensemble, a source of colour and texture as well as rhythm. It certainly wasn’t about “look at me” gratuitous virtuosity.

Overall I was impressed with Fitkin’s piece and with the playing of both Burgess and the Smith Quartet, the latter now heard in real time without the distraction of the tape element of “Different Trains” However Fitkin’s music was as densely knit as Reich’s, a compelling ensemble piece that was well received by the Cheltenham audience.

The final piece of tonight’s performance was composed by Steve Martland, the Liverpool born composer who died tragically in his sleep as the result of a heart attack in May 2013. Born in 1954 the iconoclastic Martland was a controversial figure in classical music circles, a composer of powerful and provocative works and a man with a healthy disrespect for the classical establishment.

The Smith Quartet had also recorded his work (the album “Patrol” 1994) and tonight’s work, “Starry Night” (2007/8) represented something of a continuation of the minimalist methodology heard in the earlier performances of Reich and Fitkin.

Written for marimba and string quartet “Starry Night” derives its title from Van Gogh’s painting but takes its inspiration from, in Martland’s words, “personal memories of Africa, in particular the sound of music and dancing both near and in the distance, all taking place under the vivid starry night sky. So this music is dance music and maybe it tries to emulate the dancing of Van Gogh’s gigantic stars”.

The piece saw the Smith Quartet changing their on stage formation relative to each other, albeit for reasons not readily apparent to this listener. The music was the familiar mix of rhythmic short phrases and interlocking patterns with viola and cello sharing the pizzicato rhythmic function. At the marimba, again deploying four mallets Burgess delivered tightly knit repetitive phrases, locking in with his string quartet colleagues and even indulging in a series of call and response exchanges that suggested the influence of jazz.

Elsewhere the music took even more of a Reichian turn with its hypnotic string patterns and high register marimba and Martland’s comments about this being dance music came into focus as Burgess developed an almost Caribbean calypso feel on an extended passage of solo marimba.
Like “Different Trains” this was a continuous performance, this time clocking in at around twenty minutes but I sensed that it was actually comprised of four distinct sections or movements.

As dense and absorbing as anything that had gone before this was a good introduction to Martland’s music and encouraged me to check out more of the music of this tragically short lived figure.

Overall a fascinating evening of words, film and music that transported me out of my self imposed jazz zone. A stimulating and educational experience all round.

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