BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
Those of us who work in the music industry keep doing our best. But unfortunately, that best keeps getting disrupted by external forces — concert cancellations, self-isolation, and other restrictive but necessary measures designed to keep us all safe and healthy.
What if we took a new approach to music, and continued to experience live performance that accepts — no, that is designed around — the unpredictable nature of our performing arts landscape?
Sally Whitwell’s new piece Toward can be described as a “modular” work. The composer, who speaks out about the difficulties the pandemic brings to musicians, confronts the idea that live music can’t go on the way it always has. Through Toward, Sally invents a new performance style that’s based on a hybrid approach: a quartet is divided into four solos, one for each member, and they’re able to play no matter where they are — in a large space or small, in a concert hall or a bedroom. They don’t even need to be in the same place all at once.
In this candid and bold interview, Sally talks about Toward, which will have its world premiere this month. Phoenix Collective (pictured below) will send this live recital series to Sydney, Central Coast, and Canberra — and it’s pretty much guaranteed that through Sally’s creative and modular piece, the show will go on.
Sally, you wrote in your composer’s note for Toward about one year ago, “the COVID-19 pandemic is showing no signs of going away”. Now that we’ve hit 2022, how has the pandemic affected you personally?
The pandemic continues to be a very difficult time for me. I have developed anxiety and depression disorders due to various factors; the loss of gigs that every musician in the industry has endured, of course; and on top of that, caring for my partner who is immunocompromised. To protect her from COVID, I need to be more careful than most of my colleagues when it comes to returning to playing live concerts. I’m taking some small steps in that direction, but the very thought of crowded rooms of unmasked people sharing aerosols still fills me with anxiety.
The positive that came out of the pandemic is that, after a spell of debilitating creative block, I’ve been able to really develop my creative practice as a composer. I’ve been leaning into writing one piano miniature every day since October 2020 and as a result, I have about 500 of those now. A treasure trove of compositional ideas.
It seems that in writing Toward, you have chosen to give musicians a creative and safe way to perform music. How does Toward accommodate for the ambiguous and ever-changing pandemic measures in musicians’ lives?
Toward is a modular work borne of narrow parameters. It takes the form of four separate solos for each member of the quartet, utilising only four pitches, representing the four sides of the digital windows through which we lived our lives for so much of the pandemic.
The solos are performed in time with an old fashioned Maelzel metronome set at 60 beats per minute, representing the ticking of a clock, the passing of time. In live performances, they may be played together all at once, each player starting whenever they like, as long as they’re in time with the metronome, and from anywhere in the room. It’s designed to allow the players to explore the physical space of the concert hall by literally walking through it as they play, if they wish to.
If a player is for some reason unable to be there, due to COVID isolation rules or more extreme lockdowns or border closures, they may still appear in the performance in some form of digital projection. But basically, I leave all those creative details up to the performers: I’ve provided them with these modular units that they can assemble as they see fit according to their performance situation, the size of the room, the technology they have, the availability of personnel.
The short second movement of the work entitled Breathe can only be performed live, and acts as a kind of celebration of the return to live concerts. The metronome is turned off, allowing the rhythmic pulse to become very flexible. The musicians need to breathe together, to interact with each other in a way that allows the music to ebb and flow rather more organically, to do what chamber musicians love doing — have those intimate, wordless, musical conversations.
When all this is put into practice, how do you imagine the audience will interact with it? Surely it’ll be different every time!
It’ll be different every time, so it’s all pretty hard to predict. My hope is that, by being up close to the musicians as they play and move through the space, audiences will be able to share in the musicians’ relationship to the space and to each other.
For me though, it’s as much about the musicians as it is about the audience. Musicians are having to cancel gigs all over the place at the moment, and it’s so disappointing for them after such a long break from live performance.
I just want to provide the option for musicians to be there digitally — to still be a part of it from afar, as it were. If I could afford it, I’d be making holograms of them all for that purpose!
If we take a step back, how do you see the practice and output of Australian composers changing to adapt to our new performing arts landscape?
The classical industry has been very practically adaptable during this ongoing pandemic, but I feel that very few have been creatively so.
Take our relationship with digital technology as an example. Live streamed concerts are hailed as being very ‘innovative’, but are they really? Don’t get me wrong — live streams are definitely a great thing to have available to us whilst the pandemic continues to stop people from attending live concerts. They are logistically innovative, but not really creatively so. In the same way as virtual gallery tours served to remind us that we were not at the gallery, streamed concerts remind us that we’re not in a concert hall.
I think it’s probably going to take some serious investment in imagining what classical music could actually be in the digital realm.
The digital seasons produced by Phoenix Central Park in last couple of years are a glorious exception, in terms of exploring what art music can be on screen.
The classical music sector is also quite good at awareness-raising campaigns, and creating works in response to our sociopolitical situation, but less good at committing to real action to match it. For instance, what’s the point of singing a song with words by Greta Thunberg if your jetsetting musical career has a massive carbon footprint?
No prizes for guessing what Greta would prefer.
Although Toward is composed in response to – and as a way for musicians to navigate – pandemic restrictions, it still seems an optimistic look at how music can continue. Despite being candid about your view that the industry can come up with more creative solutions, do you feel any optimism for the future?
I’d be lying if I said I was particularly optimistic. Thinking back to 2020, I was party to many conversations where creatives talked about what a great opportunity the lockdowns were, a chance for us to stop and reassess, to rebuild the sector to be kinder and more equitable, more open and adventurous. I don’t feel that has really materialised in classical music. We’ve largely gone back to safe bums-on-seats programming, whilst audiences trickle back in to concert halls.
With Toward, I’m seeking both to respond to the situation, and to act decisively on creating something that can exist in a sector which continues to actively deny the existence of the pandemic. I’d like to see more work like that from the sector. All I’m seeing at the moment is colleagues scrambling around for replacements when they have to cancel performances. Surely we can think a little more creatively about it? Maybe we can’t.
Before we go, what message would you like to send to audiences of Toward?
Phoenix Collective is that rare breed of classical music ensemble, the sort who will actually take a creative risk. They’ve embraced my little musical experiment with a real sense of adventure, and I’m so grateful for it. So I ask you to support them, not just by coming to this concert but by exploring their work online. Once you see the depth and breadth of musical activity, you’ll be a fan for life, I promise.
Hear the world premiere of Sally Whitwell’s Toward performed by Phoenix Collective String Quartet, alongside a program featuring Mendelssohn and Shostakovich, from 10-12 June. Visit the Phoenix Collective website for full details and bookings in your city.
Images supplied.
