Sunday 21 May 2017

Seraphin Chamber Orchestra : Whilst you're alive, playing to hear live

This reviews the second concert by Seraphin Chamber Orchestra, under Joy Lisney

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

21 May

This is a review of the second concert given by Seraphin Chamber Orchestra, in the chapel of King’s College on Sunday 21 May 2017 at 8.00 p.m., in a programme of works by Vaughan Williams, Mozart and Dvořák, conducted by Joy Lisney



Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) ~ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910)


Ralph Vaughan Williams (RVW) as conductor


There, in the first chord (and at which one could smile contentedly), was established the spirit of Vaughan Williams – and the King’s chapel-bell, a regular at concerts, chimed eight o’clock without one’s having a care in the world. With a well-defined, slower tempo than is much heard, Joy Lisney enhanced the luminosity of tremolo-infused beauteous calm that is part of RVW at his best.




At ebb of tide, think not the sea is faithless ;
It will return with love unto the shore.
‘Love’s Ebb and Flow’ ~ Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy


When we heard a crescendo, it was proportionate to the piece, and, by making us wait for moments that we love well - both by pacing and the use of rallentando - Joy respectfully disrupted¹ our merely expecting to experience what we already knew : in this way, as she had done in Seraphin Chamber Orchestra’s initial concert, she and the orchestra somewhat teased us (almost - if one may - as a sexual partner might ?), to give the familiar back to us, but better.

So, when the four principals² began separating from within the texture of the ensemble and coming to the fore, a tear formed, and there was a full emotional response to appreciating the dimension of two orchestras, which are used so differently from how Michael Tippett does in his lovely Concerto for Double String Orchestra (responding, amongst other things, to English madrigals of the seventeenth century as, in that era, RVW is - inter alia - to Corelli (1653-1713)).



We did not stay in this realm, though, since the composer has the effect of vibrancy drop away, and instead presents us with somewhat mysterious and heavy-laden chords and modulations (though the harmonic language may always been implicit when he presents long, sustained notes at the beginning of the work ?). Even so, the glorious main theme is allowed to re-emerge, with the voice of the leader, alongside soft pizzicato, and Joy here brought out a strong feeling of expectancy.

Then, the lightness and luminosity of the opening returned, with its concords, and a forceful quality to the string-sound. Vaughan Williams concludes with the strains of violin obbligato, superbly brought to us by Paula Muldoon (not, as advertised, Rachel Stroud), before another dropping away, and our due applause. (In this performance, one thought, for the first time, of the Epilogue (marked Moderato) of RVW's Symphony No. 6 in E Minor (and of his audio-preserved remark about Sir Adrian Boult's recording : might we, some day soon, be confidently hearing from Joy, with complete symphonic forces, in such a work ?)




Wolfgang Amadee³ Mozart (1756–1791) ~ Divertimento in D Major, K. 136 (1772)

 1. Allegro

 2. Andante

 3. Presto


Delahaye's portrait of Mozart (1772), i.e. aged 16 years old

The latter part of the eighteenth century is another sound-world, but equally one that a conductor and orchestra co-create. However, in the opening Allegro of a fairly well-known work, there were notable differences : Joy had made sure that Mozart's ornamentation did not sound 'throwaway' (which was also a feature when we came to the Andante), and that the underlying bass-line was both not unheard, and did not seem unimportant in relation to the upper parts.



With a degree in music, and as a working composer, Joy had found other emphases to choose to make in this performance. For example, with the principal theme (and its iterations), she placed a little more stress on the first part of its outline, and then, in the second movement, she continued what we had heard with the Tallis Fantasia, shaping the phrasing to be maximally expressive. Thus, under her conductorship, Seraphin Chamber Orchestra (@SeraphinCO) took in the full grace of the Andante’s main theme, as well as that of its harmonization – Joy seemed to have let the natural measure of the score determine the exact tempo.

As so often with Mozart’s work, its suspensive or reflective qualities – which are at the core of the music – are to be found in the innermost moods of these slower movements. Again, the significance of trills, turns and slurs did not go unheeded, and so of giving effect to them somewhat differently : by not treating them simply as artefacts or conventions of the time when the work was written, Joy avoided the sort of playing that can seem to honour the spirit of Mozart’s compositions, but actually be more like superficial sheen - rather than very good reasons to listen to what he has to say.


Thus, in the concluding Presto, one can all too easily take the impression that the balanced nature of the material is either flippantly glib on the composer’s part, or play it as if it is just foursquare. Here, it was clear that it was neither, and, although the orchestra gave us nice, quick bowing, Joy – unlike with those who seem to view the marking Presto, as at an end-of-speed-limit sign, allowing them to indulge themselves – never made us feel rushed.




Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) ~ Serenade in E Major, Opus 22 (1875)

 1. Moderato

2. Tempo di Valse

3. Scherzo. Vivace

4. Larghetto

5. Finale. Allegro vivace



Dvořák, in 1891 - having received an honorary doctorate from the University of Cambridge

As with Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, performed in Seraphin Chamber Orchestra’s first public performance (in mid-February 2017, and in the same venue), the concluding work, by Dvořák, contains movements that would be familiar just in their own right (such as the Tempo di Valse or the Larghetto, which are the second and fourth movements, respectively), whereas – except to someone who really knows the work as a whole – the opening Moderato will not be.

However, we can perceive how Joy, with assurance, is again shaping the musical material, and how, as she conducts, her fellow string-players respond to give her interpretative control (she also gives recitals as a cellist, and had played / directed a Haydn Concerto in the previous concert). In a way that, perhaps, we might associate more with Igor Stravinsky, or Michael Tippett, when Dvořák gives a reprise of the theme, we hear that he has a counter-melody in the second violins (after the premiere of Joy’s own ‘Thread of the Infinite’, Tippett's Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli had been played next, in the preceding weekend’s concert at West Road Concert Hall).


In the Tempo di Valse, in passages marked forte (or louder), Joy is giving us what has otherwise been carefully kept back in curating and punctuating the initial theme – just as, later, Dvořák himself prominently uses a fortissimo cadence as an emphatic way of marking the end of the first part of the movement. What we may have found - if we were not just hearing the music - is that Joy (to make it more effective) was alternating that full richness with employing restraint elsewhere. When Dvořák effected a transition to legato writing, Joy brought out a honeyed tone from the orchestra, with pizzicato on the cellos, and as a further use of clear and precise demarcations within the scope of the movement. After a rallentando, it concluded with a very definite full close.

The third movement (marked Scherzo. Vivace) has a different aspect altogether, which we felt in how Joy caused the ensemble to express intensity, and onward movement. In the slower sections, there was a feeling of suspense, from which we built back to the initial tempo, then, with some lovely pizzicato playing in the lower lines, and the melody held back (with a slight rallentando), the central section of the Serenade moved to an end. The Larghetto is quieter, and we heard tremolo, sensitively utilized by this versatile group of instrumentalists, as well as adeptly long bow-strokes. There was an attractive melody, written for cello, and then running arpeggios (marked to be played as triplets ?), and all of this conducted and played with charm and poise.


Lastly, as if the Finale's initial (and partly repeated) gesture had been ‘a wake-up call’ from Dvořák, his writing for the lower strings - which came across as lively and yet measured - led us to the loudest music that we had been exposed to all evening. More and more, the Allegro vivace resembled a dance-form (was what it had become a Furiant ?), with, at one point, another counter-melody before the fortissimo dynamic returned (fortississimo ?). After a deft piece of pizzicato playing from Christopher Xuereb, on double-bass, and as if Dvořák were still in a playful mood, he set up the expectation that the chords played were a closing cadence : it proved to be a false end, and, a few bars later, the work came to its proper conclusion.

In one undivided performance, another very agreeable, and highly accomplished, evening of music-making from Seraphin Chamber Orchestra (@SeraphinCO) and Joy Lisney (@JoyLisney) ! If those reading this review have not heard Joy or the orchestra before, make it your aim, with another Seraphin concert (to be announced) due in the autumn.






End-notes :

¹ The modern vogue for talking about disruptive technologies (or our reaction against this jargon, which would seem better applied to computer viruses and other malware) may make us assume that all disruption is (as one may see it) bad - or good. Yet it may depend on viewpoint whether subverting the commonplace (e.g. in art, to ask us what we assume or why), or minority shareholders or outside protestors stopping an AGM to make an ethical point. (With different prefixes, we also have corrupt, erupt, interrupt - a lexical root that gives rise to other words with strong meanings...)

² Paula Muldoon and Anita Monserrat (first and second violins, respectively), Roc Fargas i-Castells (viola), and Laura van der Heijden (cello).



 ³ So (on Radio 3’s The Listening Service) Tom Service (@tomservice) wishes to assert Mozart actually styled himself.

Leopold Mozart, his father, had certainly ensured Wolfgang's exposure to as much as possible of music and culture in Italy, as this map shows (from the Wikipedia® web-page Mozart in Italy) :


Mozart's travels in Italy (December 1769 to May 1771)

Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Saturday 20 May 2017

From a town in western Russia to the north of England... (stalled / incomplete review of Lady Macbeth (2016))

An accreting assortment of Tweets about Lady Macbeth (2016)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

 20 May

An accreting assortment of Tweets about Lady Macbeth (2016) (stalled / incomplete review)



Those born in Russia (or the former USSR) – or who were not, but who study Russian literature – may be in a different relation to Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District and, because considering it in, its literary and social context – if we are interested in music, we will all know that (so the story goes) Dmitri Shostakovich, looking at an edition of Pravda, found himself there condemned*, and having [to appear] ‘to change his ways’ (again, as the story goes).

One question, amongst many, that the film may pose (not necessarily a bad thing in a film that we should wish to enquire) is whether it commends to us Shostakovich’s opera / libretto, and / or Nikolai Leskov’s original novella (from 1865)…




In modern Russia, the town of Mtsensk lies in Oryol Oblast (a federal subject of Russia)




Film and other references :

* Effi Briest ~ Theodor Fontane




* Lady Chatterley (2006) [adapting** John Thomas and Lady Jane ~ D. H. Lawrence]

* Sunset Song (2015)

* The Tenant of Wildfell Hall ~ Anne Brontë


End-notes :

* Not straightaway, when the work was first performed in Leningrad and Moscow (within days) in January 1934, but around two years later.

** Not 'Based on one of the most scandalous novels of our time', as IMDb asserts (@IMDb), with regard to Lawrence...




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Saturday 13 May 2017

Joy Lisney's 'Thread of the Infinite'

Thomas Gould directed Joy Lisney’s ‘Thread of the Infinite’

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

13 May

An account of the world-premiere performance of Joy Lisney’s ‘Thread of the Infinite’, by Cambridge University Chamber Orchestra and directed by Thomas Gould, at West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, on Saturday 13 May at 7.30 p.m.





Thomas Gould, associate leader of Britten Sinfonia (at #UCFF, both much blogged about)


An intriguingly plaintive, repeated motif on solo oboe¹ is the genesis of this attractive and engaging short work (running, Joy Lisney said in advance last night, to around ten minutes²) : in attempting to write review-notes for new music, one knows that a piece is attractive and engaging, because one then wishes that one had a better memory for musical detail, and could instead dispense with almost all notes and listen whole-heartedly, but just write something straight off afterwards (which must be a blessing to those who can do it).


And God made him die during the course of a hundred years and then He revived him and said :

 ‘How long have you been here ?’

 ‘A day, or part of a day,’ he replied.
The Koran, II 261

[Quoted, by Jorge Luis Borges, in the guise of a motto to head his story The Secret Miracle' ('El milagro secreto’ : the link is to a PDF version in English). All of Borges' stories are short stories, some very much so]


With timpani, and employing tremolo, a small group of strings joins in, before we revert to an iteration of this opening from principal oboe, then strings. From here, and in tonal uncertainty, further material begins to emerge, now with pairs of clarinets, bassoons, flutes and both oboists, to which are added two horns and two trumpets (con sordini). At this point, the full realm of the percussionist is evoked, with snare-drum plus marimba (sans vibrating mechanism, so as more to resemble a xylophone³ ?), and then within the musically and emotionally resonant lower range of the marimba (now, with resonator engaged).

As the development section continues, accented pulses establish themselves between and within the full orchestra, but the contrasts between the sizes of forces being brought into being continue in tandem, and so we drop down to a few woodwind instruments, just before - with a different tone to it - the oboe motif recurs, and Joy uses the effect of flutter-notes from the flautists. Again, the sound of the ensemble swells into a tutti, with a very vigorous texture to it.


Sounding as if his role had moved into that of playing an obbligato instrument⁴, Thomas Gould – who had, when not needing them to play, been directing with his hand (or bow) – passed the directorship to a fellow violinist for the moment. Joy brought viola and marimba (qua xylophone ?) into prominence, with chimes (or struck crotales ?) straight afterwards. Even if this violinistic feature were no conscious nod to Tippett (and to his own to composers of other climes), we could enjoy the gracious, sweet tones of Gould, as this section reached another crescendo.


With, if cinematic images are evoked for a brief while, ones that are of a rainy and darkish scene, we entered what sounded like a moody coda, in which Joy sets woodwind (principally clarinet and flute) against soft pizzicato. Next, a horn is added, and both trumpets, in the sort of accretive layering that we have encountered earlier. Yet the work closed quietly - with Gould on violin, and with principal oboe.




To the musicianship in hearing Joy play (at Kings Place (@KingsPlace), as a duo with her pianist father, James Lisney - as above on 28 February 2017, on a leg of their Cello Song Tour, at West Road (@West RoadCH)), and also direct in her own right [from the cello] (with Seraphin Chamber Orchestra (@SeraphinCO) - please see below), could now be added the musicality of an adept composer, writing a work that transcends its physical length and scale, and making, once more, that connection with cinema : where a strong short film can say far more, in such a timescale, than in the scope of some very average feature-length ones.



At the time of posting, but now reviewed here, what was another forthcoming⁵ date for your diary... :





End-notes :

¹ It resembled and reminded of something in nature, or in music – perhaps it was not birdsong notation à la Messiaen, but did it, say, remind of the theme for one of the characters in Peter and The Wolf (Prokofiev’s Opus 67) ? (It may actually have been, as this review suggests, on a lower-sounding instrument, the cor anglais...)

On checking, there proves to be a tenuous reason to mention Franz Kafka (whose surname is Czech for 'crow'), because the title of the work derives from Victor Hugo in Les Misérables, which is seemingly (because finding a verifiable citation for quotations can be arduous) :

À la jambe de chaque oiseau qui vole est attaché le fil de l'infini


² As with the best of film, where screen-time – if one but desists from looking at how many minutes have elapsed / are to run – shows how illusory our notion can be of duration, and of over what period what we have seen happen took place.

³ During the performance, one could not quite see the instruments being played, at all times, because the percussion was behind the trumpeters and the rostrum on which, behind a group of string-players, they were standing.





⁴ Though Joy, speaking momentarily afterwards, said that this had not been a nod to Sir Michael Tippett, and his Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli (which was the other item in the first half), because she did not know the programme at the time.


⁵ If, without thinking about it, you now say 'upcoming', when you used to say 'forthcoming', you might wonder whether that is such a good thing... ?




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Thursday 11 May 2017

Even working for a branch of Mind¹, is it safe for one's colleagues to know much about one's mental-health issues (let alone brushes with suicide) ?

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

11 May

Feeling like a burden : in the world of employment, what might follow from others' difficult feelings 'as a result of telling them about your suicidal feelings' ?

The charity SANE (@CharitySANE) no doubt means well by urging such messages on us - as if talking is just talking, and without risks, and a disclosure can be 'unknown' afterwards by those who hear or read it :



Sadly, knowledge always has the potential to be power, and - whether or not they consciously intend to view you, and what they are now aware of about you, as weakness - colleagues can subtly start treating you as other [the writer talks from the perspective of having had this exact experience in employment by an LMA*] :



As if they are different from you, as if they need to wonder about you, what you are doing and The S Question, when you are unavoidably and / or unexpectedly out of sight...



As if, frankly, you have become a liability, irrespective of your previous years of service (when they did not know) !





Being employed by a charity, not even a mental-health charity*, is any protection against the effects of what they now know - and never [let you] forget !






End-notes :

 ¹ Usually set up as companies limited by guarantee, regional mental-health charities affiliate to Mind (and become Local Mind Associations, or LMAs), and, although they largely 'run their own show', they are allowed to use the Mind name².




 ² There is, in fact, no such thing as the national Mind charity per se (@MindCharity), and the name 'Mind' (not an acronym, so it should not be rendered MIND) is just a trading-name : The National Association for Mental Health, which is what Mind is really called, just started using it decades ago, and, when it caught on, never looked back.

 Question : Nothing is for ever, not even trademarks, or trading-names, so have we reached the point in time when anyone could start using the name Mind... ?


Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Adventures with Art (work in progress)

This will review Art Themen's New Directions Quintet at Cambridge Modern Jazz

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

11 May

This is a brief (accreting) account of Art Themen's gig at Cambridge Modern Jazz (in Hidden Rooms, Cambridge) with his New Directions Quintet on Thursday 11 May at 8.00 p.m.





Personnel :

 * Winston Clifford ~ drums (and voice)
* Steve Fishwick ~ trumpet
* Matt Gorman (deputizing for Gareth Williams) ~ piano
* Arnie Somogyi ~ double-bass
* Art Themen ~ saxes (tenor and alto)


Set-lists :

 First set :

 1. Why don’t I ~ Sonny Rollins (arr. Somogyi)
2. Ecaroh ~ Horace Silver
3. 26-2 ~ John Coltrane
4. Joe’s Blow ~ Arnie Somogyi
5. Dizzy words ~ Don Weller



Second set :

 6. Peri’s scope ~ Bill Evans
7. Midnight voyage ~ Joe C.
8. Ballad medley, beginning with Thelonius Monk’s ‘Ask me now’
9. Notville ~ Horace Silver

Encores :

 10. Unnannounced composition ~ Winston Clifford
11. Four in One ~ Thelonius Monk


Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Wednesday 10 May 2017

Tweets about #Hockney at Tate Britain

Tweets about #Hockney at Tate Britain (on 9 May)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

10 May

Tweets about #Hockney at Tate Britain (on 9 May)










Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Tuesday 9 May 2017

Stonk and rock from Gabby Young and her band (work in progress)

This is a brief review of Gabby Young and her new band at Rich Mix, Shoreditch

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

9 May

This is a brief review of Gabby Young and her new band at Rich Mix, Shoreditch, on Tuesday 9 May 2017

The attendant costs of a weekday day-trip to London (even with a Network Card) can quickly mount, but, with the #Hockney show at Tate Britain (@Tate) ending within the month (Monday 29 May), and weekend opportunities to get there (and Tate Modern) thus diminishing, combining seeing sixty years of one British artist’s work with attending an important night in the career of another seemed like the right thing to do. So it was !



Gabby Young had been heard last time at Bristol Harbour Festival (with the former line-up of Gabby Young and Other Animals), and, before that, it had been free tickets at Cheltenham Jazz Festival [won in a competition, plus, agreeably, some complementary bottles of cider from a Festival sponsor (no clue in the video that is linked to)] – so it was about time to stump up and support Gabby’s London come-back by paying for entry to Rich Mix (@RichMixLondon), on Bethnal Green Road (in Shoreditch).



First, however, a few Tweets about the support band of LAUCAN (of London / Lewes)…





[...]


Set-list [new songs in italic]

 1. Here we go again
2. Pull the wires ~ new
3. You’re like the male version of me
4. Home
5. Mole
6. Neither the beginning, nor the end
7. As yet unidentified (‘When you hold my hand / I feel like I’m saved’) – dedicated to Milly
8. Steal or borrow
9. Time
10. Honey
11. Fear of flying
12. One foot in front of the other
13. Bookoo
14. As yet unidentified (‘The money’s driven you evil’)
15. Segment






[...]


Other than lead vocals from Gabby (as well as, occasionally, guitar – and percussion), and some backing vocals from the rest of the band, we principally heard electric bass (the player doubled on guitar), keyboards (and related electronica), drums, and rhythm and electric guitars, but also melodica and accordion. Some fairly good-natured jokes were exchanged about readiness (or otherwise) for the next number in a couple of places, but this was very good and fluent musicianship – and, where the firmer beat and louder tones kicked in, Gabby Young and her band (@gabbyyoung) tore the place up, to great excitement.



 Encores :

 16. All you need is love ~ Lennon and McCartney arr. Stephen Revere
17. We’re all in this together


A pair of encores began with (16) ‘All you need is love’ – sounding, as Gabby rightly said, as we had never quite heard it before – in Stephen’s calypso reworking of the melody. When, after a stretched-out intro (and even more unlike The Beatles’ original), the band let the throttle go, it was even more lusciously Caribbean, and full, indeed, of love – including, of course, ours for Gabby and her crew :

 As a choice for the final closing number of the night, it was excellently twinned with one of her classics, from the days of Gabby Young and Other Animals. Since, earlier on (and without any persuasion), Gabby had got us singing refrains (or even repeated syllables, which marked out a melody-line), we were practised and ready to join her and the band with the signature song (17) 'We’re all in this together'*.



So effortlessly, the gig had built to this moment of celebration, and so we felt extremely pleased that we had all made it out on a Tuesday night to be there, at Rich Mix (in conjunction with The Nest Collective), both with Laucan [link to the band's page on Arsebook], and with Gabby and a band that had shown itself more than capable of great liveliness : as she declared, We’re back !, so, even if [you think that] you know her from previous performances, do go and see this rocked-up incarnation, and share the love !


End-notes :

 * A sentiment that she emphatically said that [ed. some self-important person called] Theresa May was not claiming (who is known to some, if they follow @THEAGENTAPSLEY, as #SeamyHater) !


Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Tweets about town and country in recent films

Tweets about Citizen Jane : Battle for the City (2016) and The Levelling (2016)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

8 May
Tweets about Citizen Jane : Battle for the City (2016) and The Levelling (2016)








Post-script - a maybe spoilery exchange with Neil 'Every Film' White :









 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Thursday 27 April 2017

Postcards to Outer Space : Sarah Gillespie Band at Cambridge Modern Jazz

A mini-review of Sarah Gillespie Band at Cambridge Modern Jazz

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

27 April

A mini-review of Sarah Gillespie Band at Cambridge Modern Jazz (at Hidden Rooms¹, Cambridge) on Thursday 27 April 2017 at 8.00 p.m.



This was a compelling evening of songs by Sarah Gillespie and her band (a quartet, in all), which had mainly been written by Sarah Gillespie herself (@Stalkingjuliet / sarahgillespie.com), and which she performed with energy and sincerity.

Often bluesy in style (she identified Bessie Smith as someone to whom she looks), her vocal-quality was always full and emotive, e.g. a heartfelt 'St James Infirmary', which, in introducing it, she located for us as partly her version (it is on the Glory Days album - please see below), partly Armstrong's.

She also does not choose to stick to one register within a song : it is clear that, if it fits better to place sections in her higher range, but contrast them with the effect of using the lower part of her voice, she will do so. (However, she does it so naturally and well that one may easily not realize, which is real thought and care.)



Although Sarah Gillespie has a new album, her third, the Glory Days was most representative of what we heard across two sets, songs relating to losing her mother (there were at least six numbers from it – sitting at the front meant that one could also read the set-list on the piano...).


Personnel :

 * Tom Cawley² ~ piano
* Sarah Gillespie ~ vocals and guitar
* Ruth Goller ~ double-bass
* James Maddren ~ drums





NB Regarding the poem (referred to in the Tweet above), this was in a comedic vein, and presented by Gillespie as inspired by surveying what people say about themselves to the world at large, but without seeming to realize what it tells others about them, her favourite being that 'a pink, round, bald man' was seeking the opposite of himself : in the songs generally, there is much that is observational and / or wry (as well as lyrical), but this was a chance to be openly amused by her words.


Maybe Gillespie's roots are really in country (?), but, although two numbers certainly started off in that idiom (and she readily employs its characteristic tremolos and extended vowel-sounds, or a drawled type delivery), jazz and country are, of course, broad terms – not inflexible categories.

Certainly, her fondness for the blues means that we do hear the jazz vibe and its tropes overlaid on the more open and uncomplicated sound-world of country (i.e. that often hallmarks it), and with a nice band of instrumentalists who can exploit that jazzy / bluesy territory and spin off very germane accompaniment and solos.



Another demonstration that (with the support of the regular team at Hidden Rooms¹ and John, as usual, on sound), Cambridge Modern Jazz (cambridgejazz.org / @camjazz) can be looked to for the programming of a variety of performers who will make an evening’s jazz as stimulating and of such quality as this one !



End-notes :

¹ The venue of Hidden Rooms is located on Jesus Lane in Cambridge, underneath Pizza Express (the stairs down to it are to the right of the stairs up to the pizzeria).

² The line-up originally included the Hammond supremo Kit Downes (on piano), but Cawley deputized to cover Downes’ injury to a tendon.




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Tuesday 25 April 2017

Two types of female emotion in Eon-hie Lee's Missing (Sarajin Yeoja) (2016) (stalled / incomplete review)

This is a review of Missing (2016) (London Korean Film Festival screening) (work in progress)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

24 April
This is a review of Missing (Sarajin Yeoja) (2016), as screened as the second ‘teaser’ for London Korean Film Festival, in conjunction with Cambridge Film Festival, at The Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge, at 6.30 on Monday 24 April 2017 (stalled / incomplete review)

Note : The Handmaiden (Ah-ga-ssi) (2016) is significantly mentioned in this review (as David Lynch's films will be), not because both are Korean films, but because, in Missing (2016), Eon-hie Lee has something to say to director Chan-wook Park (judged, as yet, by not having seen the director’s cut) : just as Prevenge (2016) and Free Fire (2016) were actually reviewed together, not just as having been seen within days of each other, but because their writer / directors Alice Lowe and Ben Wheatley, respectively, had made Sightseers (2012) together.



The distinct impression gained, when watching The Handmaiden (Ah-ga-ssi) (2016) during Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (@camfilmfest), was that more than an influence of Wilkie Collins’ novel The Woman in White could be detected – not unreasonably, as it turns out, since director Chan-wook Park is credited, in having written the film (with co-author Seo-kyeong Jeong), as having been ‘inspired by’ Sarah Waters’ novel Fingersmith, which is set in the latter half of the nineteenth century. (Collins published his novel in 1859, and The Moonstone in 1868.)


If we know nothing from The Moonstone itself, we will be aware that Collins is considered the father of detective fiction in the English language¹. However, whereas Missing knows that a crime-writer who challenges his or her reader, by saying Look, I led you up the garden path, and this is not the story that you thought, can only do so once, The Handmaiden fails to realize this fact – as if unaware that the viewer / reader is on notice not to be trusting of the film-maker / writer again – and so reveals flaws in the plotting², or makes evident what is meant to be a further surprise to us².

That said, when a film is called Missing³ (2016), one can hardly be creating a spoiler to say that it features a disappearance : whether a film is The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), or The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001), its essence is that, with the passing of time, it concerns what is [believed to be] known, and to whom, about what has disappeared – it will proceed by (some of) its characters considering what may have been concealed, and if so, why, and what that then suggests has also been done and / or concealed.

Hyo-jin Kong (as Han-mae)

When the morning came, your language and conduct showed that you were absolutely ignorant of what you had said and done overnight. At the same time, Miss Verinder’s language and conduct showed that she was resolved to say nothing (in mercy to you) on her side. If Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite chose to keep the Diamond, he might do so with perfect impunity. The Moonstone stood between him and ruin. He put the Moonstone into his pocket.
The Moonstone (Second Period, Sixth Narrative, Part IV, concluding paragraph)


Of course, in those films, the nature of the disappearance does not actually relate, per se, to someone's safety. With Blue Velvet (1986), where such concerns do come to be an issue, Lynch has it played so matter-of-factly that, although Jeffrey's father is seriously unwell, he naturally loses any sight - once he finds the severed ear - of his purpose for being back home (and we barely see him visit the hospital again). Instead, he does all that we see unfold – ruses, suspicions, and downright hunches – because he wants to know more (and not be put off by Sandy's policeman father)...


In this respect, Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) a little resembles the Pevensie children, needing adventure when evacuated from The Blitz to stay in their uncle’s forbidding house... except that C. S. Lewis does not create them with sexual needs and urges. With Jeffrey, although he has the flesh-and-blood Sandy (Laura Dern) in front of him, it is as if he already somehow scents Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), in all her dangerous allure, and it is clear that he uses Sandy to get access to her. Those hunches, and Jeffrey's resourcefulness, are also there - and with more explicit reason - as we understand the character of Ji-sun (Ji-won Uhm) in Missing...



We see, from the start, the familial and professional pressure that Ji-sun receives, but we likewise gather much about how the boss and her in-laws disparage / discredit her and her abilities (irrespective of its likelihood to impact even more negatively on them – no doubt, she is considered dispensable) : maybe we even believe (and so she surprises us the more) that they are not wholly wrong, when we hear her grovel (having - in the circumstances - to grovel), and execute formal bows to show her humility and contrition ? (A societal motif played with in A Quiet Dream (2016), the previous London Korean Film Festival ‘teaser’ - a film that is perhaps reminiscent of the meandering and droll way in which Jim Jarmusch has us follow an off-beat trio of men in Down By Law (1986) [Roberto Benigni, John Lurie, Tom Waits] ?)


Those elements in the initial presentation of Ji-sun’s character may make her feel stylized, and even a little too much to the fore, but she starts to show that she is a true force of nature – with her sixth sense and intuition, she becomes not some superhero figure, but a human tour de force (and one did wonder whether even Doona Bae could have risen to this challenge). The pace and frenetic extent of twenty-first century existence is located in often incessant calls to her mobile phone, and we sometimes almost want her to have respite from them so that we can have peace.

Yet, tool or nuisance, the phone is what informs and assists her quest, whether in the dubious recesses of an establishment called Heavenly Woman, or navigating her way out of town to where someone had been - ignoring all good feeling - cruelly treated (please see below). In addition, Ji-sun's hidden energy and intellect, her investigative ability to see back in time and to understand what must have happened (shown to us either as flashbacks, or as pure flashes of insight – as against the relatively flat-footed enquiries that, Wilkie Collins shows us, too, in Sergeant Cuff in The Moonstone) make her one sort of embodiment of female emotion.


She is not always rational (e.g. some of the accusations that she makes, or how she conducts herself, at one point, at Heavenly Woman), because of the choice to have the divorce / custody proceedings portray her as unstable (and, as a vicious spiral, such attacks can get to anyone, probably not least in her country’s culture), but we sense her courage, and we feel for her at moments of anxiety, tension, or sheer fear, in and through Ja wan Koo’s excellent score, which, for the other female lead**** - and her own trauma, as Ji-sun comes to appreciate - makes prominent use of the cello.

Hyo-jin Kong (as Han-mae)


Other than the sleuthing that - in common with Blue Velvet - Mulholland Drive (2001) shows (with Betty trying to find out who Rita is, and where Diane Selwyn fits in), what is more of interest is that there is a strong sense, as in Missing, of being able to see into other worlds (not for nothing do we have the word 'seer') : Ji-sun feels her way into the past, weaving through appearances and towards sensing what, in fact, did happen (perhaps one also thinks of the Earthsea novels and stories of Ursula Le Guin ?).






[...]






End-notes :

 ¹ South of the border with Scotland, at least, whereas, via Robert Louis Stevenson, a different tradition is claimed north of it : at least, Val McDiarmid did (when asked by #UCFF whether she considered herself primarily a writer, or a Scottish writer).

² For those who have not seen the film, the clues to what is adrift are, respectively, trees and opiates, and smoking. (And, as both Jin-woong Jo and Jung-woo Ha are not averse to causing others harm, why might they not have poisoned the closing moments... ?)

³ Whereas, on IMDb (@IMDb), perhaps the web-page for the film more accurately reflects the film’s title in Korean (but it causes difficulty in finding the film at all) ?

**** Another point of contact with The Handmaiden, as well as that there are again two female leads, is that one woman is an emigrée (and so under economic constraints).





 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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