BY MARK BOSCH
Game On
Ensemble Offspring feat. 2018 Hatched Academy Associate Artist Georgina Oakes (clarinet)
BackStage Music
Woodburn Creatives, 19 July
BackStage Music is all about providing “a living space for living music”. Thursday night’s concert Game On was true to the MO, opening with a lively triptych of pieces so well suited to the extroverted style of clarinettist Georgina Oakes. The 2018 Hatched Academy Associate Artist was for the second piece joined by cellist Freya Schack-Arnott, whose commanding presence complemented Oakes’ vivacity so very convincingly. Their performance of Liza Lim’s Inguz (fertility) was prefaced with the lighting and passing around of incense, filling Woodburn Creatives with an aroma that would render the night memorable.
Live performance thrives on simple innovations like these. Live music isn’t just sound — it’s sight as well, and why not smell? Eat your heart out, Wagner — creating gesamtkunstwerk needn’t be so grandiose. It can be as simple and as intimate as a performer reaching out to hand you an incense stick.
Closing with Oakes’ absolutely mesmerising rendition of Franco Donatoni’s Clair I (I sat with mouth agape through its entirety), the first half set up the audience very well for a lengthy second, which would indeed prove best approached as a sort of multisensory salon. From my vantage point sitting on the floor, I was closer than anyone to an array of objects I really hoped were going to be put to use: balloons, blow-up novelty dice, counter bells, lollies, glass bottles, mirrors. My prayers were answered — although the balloons were just window dressing.
Through these objects, Julian Day’s Game On created some highly entertaining situations for performer and audience alike. Acting as MC for much of the performance, Day introduced each new musical game with a trademark self-reflexivity that was amusing if occasionally a little too opaque. Neglecting to describe or hint at the rules for each game meant I found myself preoccupied with figuring them out, detracting from my appreciation of their musical merits. Of course, that these pieces had significant musical merit is a feat in and of itself — one might think that the imposition of hard-and-fast rules would render music unfeeling or algorithmic (or so goes the conventional wisdom of your dime-a-dozen diatribe against contemporary classical music). Not so here. These pieces were engaging on every sensory front, inciting smiles, laughter, cheers, and a convivial warmth that spread throughout the space and held strong through to the end of the night.
In our interview, Day spoke about the “embedded virtuosity” of everyday objects that “‘widen the aperture for [audience] participation”. My one and only regret is that more of the audience didn’t get a chance to share in this virtuosity. In spite of a number of successful instances of participation, the majority of the audience did, at the end of the night, remain strapped to their seats, despite their otherwise cheerful engagement. Are we all still afraid to have fun? I asked myself. Is this all academic after all?
These moments of doubt were beyond brief, however, and it must be said that Day and the members of Ensemble Offspring led the charge with a tremendously strong collective will in frequently gruelling circumstances, such as hammering away at a vibraphone, simultaneously and ceaselessly, for nigh on 12 minutes. The artists of Game On were as exemplary as they have always been, and it was thanks to their poised stage presence that the night never risked sinking into vacuousness. On the contrary, it was replete with ideas, feelings, and sensory experiences — and most importantly, it was fun.
Images supplied, credit Christopher Hayles photography. Featured image by Mark Bosch.
