Things got started last night with Klang! an event in which all the bells in downtown Kitchener get rung at once. I was eating sushi at the time, but ran out to hear them at the appointed time. There were bells! It wasn’t quite the glorious cacophony I was expecting, but at least there were bells ringing at 7 PM on a Wednesday in an urban city.
The opening concert featured Members of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony (essentially principal winds + bonus horn & trumpet + piano and 2 percussion) playing the Mauricio Kagel Ten Marches to Miss the Victory, 2 and 3 at a time, interspersed between pieces like John Adams’ American Standard (arranged beautifully by Mr. Jascha Narveson, A++, and also “damn you John Adams, damn you and your effective communication”), Philip Glass’ Changing Opinion (Ann-Marie Donovan’s singing sounded amazing), a WORLD PREMIERE by Nicole Lizée called Simulakra (I really liked the careful colours of the brass and the samples chosen for the keyboard – I feel like it would have worked even better in a different space, though), and an arrangement of David Lang’s Born to Be Wild. For those of you not familiar with that piece, the lyrics are spoken, deadpan. Greg Oh KILLED it, holy crap, it was hilarious.
Following the MotKWS show, we went to the Registry Theatre to see John Oswald and Susanna Hood perform Spinvolver. I think this is the future of art, you guys – you couldn’t look away from the screen and the dancing, there was constant sound, there was laugh-out-loud humour, and it was constantly changing. There is no way anyone could be bored by that. Brilliant, brilliant. I loved it.
People Like Us is also Incredible, Straight Up. Essentially, Vicki Bennett (who flew in from England the day before yesterday, I think), creates collages of music and sounds and clips from iconic films. Things like combining The Hills Are Alive from The Sound of Music with The Doors’ The End and footage from Apocalypse Now, many clips of eyes and faces from old films with a tattered version of “I Can Sing a Rainbow”…the compelling thing for me about this kind of art is how it’s so strongly female. In the same way that a straight man wouldn’t write this, in the same way that a white woman wouldn’t make this,* the elements of People Like Us’ genre collages fit together intuitively and inexplicably – or rather, in a way that explanation would defeat the purpose. And secondly – it’s very much women’s art in that it’s subversive. I love this stuff so much.
So quickly, since I have missed the bus to get to Maryem Tollar‘s performance on time: I have been reading about Morning Music since I’ve been subscribed to the Soundlist – i.e. a seemingly long time (although probably not actually that long) and wanting to go. Imagine my delight when we bring them here, to Kitchen-town, to Café Pyrus for coffee and weird vegan muffins and music! I enjoyed listening to it as an atmosphere: trombone and saxophone and percussion all making “avant garde” improvised music (i.e. extended techniques to the exclusion of all else), but with the hum of refrigerators and coffee machines, the clink of spoons and mugs and coins, regular customers coming in and placing orders, and all together it was tremendously interesting to listen to, and even beautiful in the contrast.
It’s also surreal for me, because look, there’s John Oswald, sitting next to an old armchair, playing the saxophone – and I, having learned about this gentleman in high school as a “prominent current composer” and then throughout university in various classes and even in my textbooks, find this terrifying and wonderful.*
Amanda and Nick are all "It's BREAKFAST time!" (but with less enthusiasm)
Hooray!
*principally because I’m one of those people who hold in awe the people who have been a part of my education in the same way most people hold in awe the people who have been a part of their entertainment, hm hoom.
Noon: Went to see Maryem Tollar & co. who were quite good – I sat under the church balcony, which was a less-than-great idea, but did get some really strange frequencies bouncing around in there. Regardless, Tollar and her company are excellent news, highly recommended. I particularly enjoyed the piece she wrote, from which the following clip was recorded:
2 PM: Symposium on “Appropriation 2.0: The Pop-Politic”
Here is a picture! (More on the symposiums in the Day 3 post.)
8 PM: This is a combined NUMUS/Open Ears show, and while I think NUMUS is great, all their concerts start with a lot of talking. To be fair, tonight was the launch of their 11/12 season*, but it is hard to listen to chat when there is a tantalizing circle of laptops on the ground.
The concert opened with D. Andrew Stewart - an artist who works primarily with the “T-stick” – a brand new kind of instrument which is an electronic stick that must be manipulated physically to make all different sounds. And the range of sounds is everything you’d hope and dream from a “synthesizer” instrument – lightsaber sounds and engines and multi-pitched bells and beeps and slap tongue articulation sounds and so much more – but far more organic, due to the mode of sound creation. There were two extended pieces, and they both are the kind of atmospheric pure-noise which can be extremely satisfying. Combine electronic sounds with organic production and the incredible choreography of using one of these amazing T-sticks** – it makes for a great show.
The second half of the performance was the Princeton Laptop Orchestra (PLOrk) Sideband – 6 composers from Princeton who make music with laptops. But it wasn’t computer music in the traditional^ sense of the word, it was far more active; it was playing in ensemble, and truly playing, not just watching tracks roll by. They made use of peripherals – joysticks and this crazy contraption with strings which is apparently intended for virtual golf practice and so on – but also used the laptops physically, tilting them and hitting them. It was really interesting to watch without even going into the music.
A little on the music and stuff: Jascha Narveson is a sort of Wilfrid Laurier University Legend – to alumni he’s “that guy”, to my classmates he’s “the guy whose first year Skills section showed up until most of the way through fourth year on our online course resource, even if you hadn’t been in that class” (there was much mourning when it was finally removed). Anyway, every piece on the program was good - several were great (especially the final piece they played by Dan Trueman based on Clapping Music, SO GOOD). I am very impressed and intimidated by Princeton composers.
We all trekked over to see the PSQ and DJ P-Love at The Wax following PLOrk: Sideband – the PSQ played a piece by Kotoka Suzuki which was okay, and then Different Trains by Steve Reich (the first contemporary classical recording of any kind that I ever owned – and it was the first time I’ve heard it played live. Happy!). They were joined by a bassist, a couple of percussionists, and P-Love himself for a performance of Nicky Lizée’s This Will Not Be Televised which is an awesome piece! P-Love ended the night with some solo sets and I made it on the last bus home and crashed into bed.
*Very Glenn Buhr – old “new music” (Schoenberg, Mahler, Philip Glass) and like, the Beatles. There is one concert in the season I would go see, and that is because I am a huge Peter Maxwell Davies fan. Sorry NUMUS dudes! I guess it is good I am moving away from KW. On the other hand! Go check it out for yourselves.
**”Andrew Stewart’s T-stick”: hilarity ensues
^the people in front of me were like, “heh, traditional laptop music?” and: fair point. We live in the future!
Apparently there was Morning Music again today, but I had a rehearsal with my quintet this morning (hooray!) instead, so my Open Ears Experience began at noon for “Electroacoustics in the Rotunda” which featured a bunch of chairs with people in them, a large quantity of hanging quilts, and 8 speakers in a circle around the chairs. And there were also some pieces by Scott Smallwood (“Casimo’s Stars” delicate clicking, recommend*), Freida Abtan (“She Swings the Hammer” if I say standard issue electroacoustic eight-channel do I sound facetious? I certainly can’t make any such thing, but you probably know what I mean. I’ve heard some of Freida’s other work and this is not her Best), Natasha Barrett’s “Kernel Expansion” (ditto), a piece by Mark Applebaum called “Pre-Composition” which was hysterically funny (and a vivid use of the 8 channels), and a piece by Jascha called “Doors” which! I definitely heard in performance in my second year of university. I was all “I’m so cool”, like “oh, of course, this piece”.
And then, and then: a second symposium, this time about Garage Band versus MAX. It was interesting just to listen to the language the panelists (considerably varied in their interaction with both platforms) used to talk about it. Paolo (DJ P-Love) and Matt Rogalsky were the best – Matt read a brief essay on the subject of the relation of the tool to the art over an old electronic piece of his, and Paolo told us stories about turntables and their evolution.
What I’m finding is the most revealing about these symposiums is how resistant the younger participants are to engaging with the older participants (and older audience members asking questions) in the ‘old chestnut’ discussions: high art vs low art, the value of mastery, is ____ dead, these kind of things. There’s an attitude of “serrrrriously?” with those panelists that I find encouraging – I fight the pointless button-pushing, fear-mongering, “back in the old days” too, and thank goodness I’m not alone. I actually almost threw up in my mouth when someone (not naming names) was like, “Is traditional music notation dying?”
Please, homies.
Anyway! Went home, ate soup (it is so cold in KW this week, why), had a nap, was dealt an ego-crushing blow via email, and went back to the festival to see Tanya Tagaq. She is adorable and personable and hilarious! Some quotes:
“I’m a – what’s that term – idiot savant. It means I don’t know my multiplication tables, but I can sing.”
“I just had all-you-can-eat sushi and now I have to hyperventilate for an hour.”
“Thank you for being weird enough to like things.”
I think she and Dan Deacon should collaborate. Anyway, not only does she have the best banter, but she’s incredibly talented. She begins with a monologue; rhythmic, gutteral vocalizations which are frankly hypnotizing, and after a while Jesse Zubot (who has the best last name) enters on violin with high pitched patterns which he processes and loops and Tanya imitates…and Jean Martin plays kit with bass drum mallets which sounds amazing – and it’s all improvised. I was blown away with how integrated the three of them are, how they’ve figured out ways to imitate eachother’s timbres, how transitions are seamless and many, how it is beautiful and it communicates something unspeakable.
Next up: TONY CONRAD, the legend
His performance is drone music; it doesn’t go anywhere. (I kept thinking “Music is not a train or a bus – it does not have to go” thanks, Linda.) Regardless of the motion or lack thereof in this music, it isn’t still or stagnant it isn’t something that ought to be moving which isn’t. It’s sort of a…sound-solid, a stable thing. It fills space, but without the pretension of function – like a monument, like a mountain. This is the scientific constant, the cogito ergo sum – quite a contrast from the rapid evolutions of Tanya Tagaq’s set. I like that there is no pretension and no excuses in Mr. Conrad’s music, that he knows just exactly what concept he is putting into the world. It’s making me reconsider my “art is communication” thing a little. Maybe it can be a constant, too?
Anyway, the best moment of the show for me was wandering around the Museum space while Tony was playing. It’s open, and there are stairs to a second level. We were encouraged to move around and listen to the music within the space, and I happened upon a hallway with a bunch of pipes in the low ceiling, sympathetic frequencies all over the place, in harmonies, encroyable.
*Witness: a few dozen people
sitting neatly in rows surrounded
by speakers from which
emit clicks and hums, lows
and highs
All around, about their business, others go
Pausing only to wonder:
ritual? spectacle? punishment?
Apparently there are a lot of oboes in Korean music - this is a piri, which sounds a bit like an english horn with a wild reed. They also played the taepyongso, another double reeded beastie which sounded like a shawm. I would like to own and play these instruments.
The day started with Noreum Machi – a mindbogglingly talented ensemble from South Korea who play “New Wave” traditional Korean music. My friend Narim (who is Korean) was telling me he wasn’t sure what to expect, but A) they are actually very, very skilled, from the teacher to the four ‘apprentice’ types; B) they perform two disparate genres of music simultaneously (a singing and a drumming), and despite being reeeally hard it works astonishingly well; and C) he was surprised. It takes a lot to surprise Narim, so A++ Job Well Done Noreum Machi. As for me and my opinion: I found they had the energy of a traditional percussion ensemble, but with the artistry and in-ensemble communication found in chamber music. The dancing was incredible, and had an improvised quality (although there’s no way they could be that coordinated and be making it up). They did a spoken demonstration, a different syllable for each of their instruments, which began as a tutorial and turned into a great sounding piece. It was Capital-E Engaging, a Talking With.
Turn down your speakers; this was loud and my camera’s mic is awful.
In between performances I visited a few of the installations. Matt Rogalsky’s was called Discipline, a set up of 12 Fender Strats wired to pick up frequencies from a radio station, resulting in a flickering shadow of the broadcast.
Is it creepy to take photos of photos of art featuring naked people? I on-purpose blurred this and took the side with the most clothing involved, but this is a question I have never faced before.
Stillnessence and Whisperfield were a binary installation – the former a projection of photographs of people, clothed and unclothed, fading between states and then into other people. If that makes sense. It was startling and continued to be so (effective communication, flrrr); we were asked by the artist (John Oswald) to be a part of it – a number of Open Ears people were taking part. I said, “No thanks, I’m a coward, it is amazing though” to which he replied, “I’m a coward too” at which point I probably smiled awkwardly and shrugged. Socially awkward composers, hooray!
Snow Drift was a piece made up of old TVs, their screens displaying static and dead black in different configurations – walking through them was interesting, the sound changed. I heard a rumour that Paul Walde (the artist) can’t hear the high pitched sound that old TVs make? I don’t know if that’s true or not, but was pretty overpowering.
Jascha curated a set of electroacoustic works for an installation in the Kitchener City Hall Rotunda. There were three playing at different schedule times, so I only caught a bit of a piece by Seth Cluett called Moraine Shoal which imitated the progress of a fast-moving glacier. The note said:
Sustained tones move forward mimicking the speed of this glaciers movement picking up speed slowly and stopping to build again from a place of stasis over this three-hour installation. The sound scrapes slowly across architecture, repeat visits expose new sounds where listening at any one moment presents stillness.
…and I am willing to testify that this is a True Fact.
PA sat in the window; a second exhibit.
Hearing Eve Egoyan’s perform Anne Southam’s Simple Lines of Enquiry in a church is to experience briefly what it is to be old. Pews creak and pop like brittle bones; every cough and sniff, exhale and shift is amplified; there is a sighing Doppler of traffic outside, occasionally punctuated by air brakes or a siren or a few rhythmic beats with a melisma from a pop tune on a radio cranked. All these things are fleeting, are a part of the passage of time; a solo performance of quiet music is never truly solo. And then there’s the piano – again, like an old woman, careful and cautious, every note chosen and necessary and slow and backed by dozens of harmonics: a history in the architecture of sound, every phrase making the organ pipes sympathetic and leaving my fingertips resonating.
We then saw The Rent (a band dedicated to playing the music of Steve Lacy) perform at The Registry. I was hesitant about this (I am not a jazz girl), but it was okay! There were lots of interesting moments and colours, and I appreciated the containment of solos. Also, Susanna Hood is the greatest; her singing and dancing completely made the performance.
Had some great curry and pad thai at Northern Thai, and then bombed back to the Conrad Centre for Toca Loca! These guys are so great. I caught the entire performance of Sean Griffin’s Pattycake on camera. Virtuosic and memorized, nostalgic and humourous, 100% brilliant, check it out:
Greg Oh is definitely one of the stars of this year’s Open Ears (the other two being Nicole Lizée and Jascha Narveson) – involved in everything.
I really loved Toca Loca’s performances of Nicky’s Promises, Promises and Andrew Staniland’s Adventuremusic.
Halorinas get assistance from Roger "Superstar" Psutka
The Halo Ballet (which is exactly what it sounds like, video gamers – a bunch of people using Halo to perform a ballet rather than to shoot eachother) was almost as good the second time through – I really liked getting a chance to listen more closely to Aaron Gervais’ score.
The climax of Open Ears is always a giant art party called Blue Dot. It is held in an abandoned local space, there are DJ sets and installations (most of which glow), projections and so much dancing. Valody (the Portuguese street band of all your dreams) played a set (after briefly going missing).
A picture is worth three hundred words:
This is Laura and Pete and me in what I am referring to as The Mirror That Shows Things As They Truly Are, i.e. not mirror image - so weird.
DANCE PARTY
Black light forever!
My friend Matty plays a chillwave set in this room (which was also an installation, je pense) with lights and hanging things and pillows.
The awesome spherical glowing installation, projections behind, a pretty good illustration of what the event feels like
Valody call themselves “the vagabond of our imagination, a wanderer with extraordinary stories, and a chanting soul.” They played at The Wax on Sunday, early afternoon (which definitely still felt like morning), and can I just say that it was one of the best concerts of the weekend? I want to be in a street band so badly. The show was a premiere of an extended work called The Book of Disquiet. The instrumentation: Portuguese street band, a mix of Klezmer and folk and other things, a true Quebecois pastiche knit together with a text as romantically spectral and abstract as you can imagine.
There was a rock / country band that started playing halfway through the show in the pub downstairs ( at 1 PM on a Sunday? what is this?) but Valody kept going, and at one moment in their set they all grabbed whistles and their clarinet mouthpieces and made as much noise as they could; it was a truly triumphant moment, and I couldn’t stop smiling.
I got a lot of neat pictures; the lighting and ambience at The Wax midday is awesome:
I then ventured over to the Walper Terrace Hotel Gallery to see Veronika Krausas’ Player Piano Project which was pretty neat. See: video above. I know an appalling amount about many of the installations and artists because I wrote large portion of the festival program, but until I got to this installation and someone was asking questions of someone who did not know the answers did this learnin’ come pouring out of me. I love player pianos, though, because it’s a very obvious reading of something that you wouldn’t regularly think of as music. I think you can hear me talking in the video, but I say something like, “Imagine if you took great pointillistic art and turned it into Player Piano rolls?” Probably someone has already done this, but wouldn’t it be cool?
I also bombed up to Centre In The Square to see Althea Thauberger’s piece, but it wasn’t working! Weird! Here is a picture of the frozen demo screen to PROVE I WAS THERE:
Anyway, after that disappointing experience, I walked through the ridiculously freezing wind and rain to get to the church where Da Capo Chamber Choir were singing the Open Ears’ closing concert. I used to be a huge choir fan (like I used to be a huge jazz fan, and played the saxophone, oh-those-crazy-youthful-phases), but it just doesn’t do too much for me anymore. I’m a tone colour freak, and choral music so often seems limited in that way. Da Capo is great in that they perform almost exclusively contemporary choral music, and in this concert there were occasional additions of other tone colours (piano, brass percussive pots, overtone singing heck yes), so that was something.
Also, the WORLD PREMIERE of Gerard Yun’s The Silence
And just like that, Open Ears is over for another two years. It was a great festival, though, I loved almost every show, piece, installation and had some pretty radical ideology shifts. I hope I’m around next time, and hey, you should come out, we can be friends!
The opening concert featured Members of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony (essentially principal winds + bonus horn & trumpet + piano and 2 percussion) playing the Mauricio Kagel Ten Marches to Miss the Victory, 2 and 3 at a time, interspersed between pieces like John Adams’ American Standard (arranged beautifully by Mr. Jascha Narveson, A++, and also “damn you John Adams, damn you and your effective communication”), 
Philip Glass’ Changing Opinion (Ann-Marie Donovan’s singing sounded amazing), a WORLD PREMIERE by Nicole Lizée called Simulakra (I really liked the careful colours of the brass and the samples chosen for the keyboard – I feel like it would have worked even better in a different space, though), and an arrangement of David Lang’s Born to Be Wild. For those of you not familiar with that piece, the lyrics are spoken, deadpan. Greg Oh KILLED it, holy crap, it was hilarious.
Following the MotKWS show, we went to the Registry Theatre to see John Oswald and Susanna Hood perform Spinvolver. I think this is the future of art, you guys – you couldn’t look away from the screen and the dancing, there was constant sound, there was laugh-out-loud humour, and it was constantly changing. There is no way anyone could be bored by that. Brilliant, brilliant. I loved it.
On the other hand! 
