Stroma – Where Sea Meets Sky
30th May 2019
Hannah Playhouse, Wellington, New Zealand.
Review & Photography by Tim Gruar.
Stepping well outside of my comfort zone I recently went along to see Stroma, a Wellington collective that specialise in pushing the boundaries of music and composition. Their goal was to create music that emulated real and imagined environments. They produced works that all were challenging listens – experimental music based on electronic compositions, reinterpreted for traditional instruments: violin, cello, harp, piano, horns, xylophone, glockenspiel. The selection came from several quarters – the bamboo gardens of Japan, Scandinavian winter plains, the crowded foggy European harbours, the bush, sky and sea of Aotearoa. Pieces evoked feeling of warmth, radiance, cold, ice, stone, wind, water, rain. This was chamber music, Jim. But not as we know it.
Stroma is a mixed chamber ensemble based in Wellington, New Zealand. It is New Zealand’s largest chamber ensemble, able to draw on over 20 players, many of whom are principal players with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. It focuses on music written in the last 100 years, and has been active since back in the year 2000.
Composers often try to capture the colours, movement and rhythms of the natural world, from Debussy’s sprightly sea-spray in La Mer to Berg’s fantastical Wozzeck. Like abstract painters, they are inspired by images, movement, feelings, and attempt to work these up into an aural interpretation, geared to inspired the senses or engender intense emotional responses. Usually we get that in the movie world – the dark cello chords of fear in Jaws or the rumbling timpani of an action film, or heavy rock for a car chase. – tractors, sheep, cowsThen there are the even more abstract pieces like Tristan Murail’s 13 couleurs du soleil couchant, performed tonight, which ensnares the path of the sky’s light as passes through a prism and splits to an infinite rainbow. A more ethereal approach.
Tonight’s show was created by chief conductor Hamish McKeich around the debut of Kiwi composer John Rimmer’s new piece Where Sea Meets Sky 2. In effect it’s an ‘acoustic’ sequel to the original, which was created in the early 70’s on an EMS Synthi AKS, one of the first in NZ (which he later sold to a member of The Headless Chickens), at Douglas Lilburn’s Electronic Workshop (Victoria University of Wellington). Remember, these were the days just prior to the popularisation of the Moog and other iconic analogue instruments that went on to pioneer electronica and EDM.
These were the truly experimental days, challenging the very soul of contemporary music. Alongside the late Messrs Douglas Lilburn and Jack Body, John Rimmer contracted his work from samples, in an attempt to build a composition that described the qualities of light and play of the deep blue haze he encountered whilst looking out of a plane window on a return journey from Sydney. He was also inspired by Ian Wedde’s poem Those Others that describes: “The sea does not meet the sky/ They kiss only in our minds.” A perfect approximation of that is Craig Potton’s photo Last Light At Farewell Spit (which I wish they’d chosen to accompany this performance but alas absent). Now celebrating his 80th birthday Rimmer was here tonight to see his ‘version 2’ played by a live ensemble as opposed to the original synthesiser version. That composition was to come at the end.
Before this we were treated to other pieces curated loosely around a natural world theme. The night began with the gloomy brass of Fog Tropes by Ingram Marshall, which featured in the soundtrack to Scorcese’s Shutter Island. Audio samples of San Francisco Bay competed with the low fog horns of six brass instruments, mainly trumpet and trombone. Droning away they sounded to me like ships in a crowded harbour blindly jostling for position amongst the thick pea soup.
Deirdre Gribbin’s dark and mesmerising string quartet, What the Whaleship Saw (played by violinists Anna van der Zee and Megan Molina, viola player Nicholas Hancox and cellist Robert Ball) began with the high pitched screeching of a whale in distress as it attempted to tell the gruesome story of survival and cannibalism amongst the crew of the Nantucket whaler, the Essex, after it was wrecked by the creature. I wanted this work to have some kind of cohesion but it never really seemed to gel. There’s a fine line between mimicking whale song and the irritation of a wheel needing more grease.
One of the most mesmerising performances was the elongated notes of Bridget Douglas’ bass flute in Eve de Castro-Robinson’s Pearls Of The Sea. Her breath on some was so long and slow I wondered if she’d pass out. So controlled and delicately tense. It came from a poem by sculpture artist Len Lye, well known in Taranaki and abroad, and was commissioned especially for Douglas and her colleague/Harpist Carolyn Mills. In there I heard touches of a foghorn, a trombone but mainly the delicate autumn leaves of a Japanese garden, as interpreted by the shakuhachi.
I mentioned earlier13 Couleurs du Soleil Couchant (13 Colours of the Setting Sun) by Tristan Murail, intended to be warm and luminous, like the sunlight through haze. The idea was to create in music a series of subtle colour changes, as the diffracted like moves from one stripe in the rainbow to the next. However, the lack of any visuals, like projected images, and the moans of a savage wind rattling around the theatre rafters on this particularly blustery autumn evening somewhat destroyed the intended ambience. A volley of sirens from outside didn’t help either.
There was, indeed, the promised hypnotic minimalism of Reflections by young Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir, performed as advertised by Anna van der Zee, Nicholas Hancox (viola) and Robert Hall on a long, droning cello. The soundscape they produced is a series of overlapping ‘waves’, minimalist in texture. As with much of the Scandinavian culture, clean, empty lines are important, as is space and a complete lack of colour. However, sometimes it’s all to bland, as I found this. I wanted some contrast or punctuation. Perhaps, God forbid, melody!
Finally, we closed with Rimmer’s, Where Sea Meets Sky 2. The original was written in 1975. However, unlike some of the works of that time, you really can’t tell. Douglas’ flute sounded the brightest, mimicking the sparse keyboards on the original electronic version. I enjoyed watching Kirsten Robertson plucking the strings of her baby grand, in contrast to the intermittent flights of fancy she dribbled across the ivories. Patrick Barry added a bit of colour to the blue hues with his clarinet and Megan Molina offer a few squeaks on the violin. Thomas Guldborg had the most to do with a xylophone, gong and glockenspiel. However, despite this great armoury we heard barely a sound from his corner. I felt a bit cheated.
It’s hard to really pigeonhole this reinterpretation. Did Stroma successfully reinterpret the sounds of flying weightless through an endless blue where the horizon is undefined, where land and sea kiss? I can not say. I felt a little underwhelmed and I really can’t tell you why. Perhaps I wanted a bit more drama. Throughout the night Hamish McKeich conductor led his team with enthusiasm and passion, and as a leader he performed well. What lacked was evident when the projector operator started a slide show during the last piece, which appeared to crash out. I wanted the promised images from famed New Zealand photographer Craig Potton. Sadly there were none. That was the missing component, that would have really brought all this music to life.
A few years go I saw DJ Shadow mix a live quartet, creating an aural sculpture to mimic the groaning of icebergs in Antarctica. He was surrounded by slow moving photos of a bleak landscape that complimented what he was doing. It was both surreal and real and I even shuddered at time, feeling cold, even though it was mid summer in Melbourne. I wanted something like that tonight. Perhaps the lighting, mostly blood red strips contrasted by white ribbons that creeped up the pockmarked raw concrete walls of the undressed stage was intended to created an evocative mood. Instead, it felt a bit ‘vampirish’. Odd given the programme was meant to be about the natural elements – water, air, rock, rain, sky. Not blood. As I said at the start, this was a challenging night’s listen. Those looking for a tune or melody would still be searching. Yet there was a certain appeal in some of these performances. I just felt the inclusion of some vibrant imagery would have really lifted the whole thing to another level.
Were you there at the Hannah Playhouse to witness this Chamber Ensemble perform Ambient Works? Or have you seen Stroma perform somewhere else before? Tell us about it in the comments below!
Setlist:
- Fog Tropes 1981 (by Ingram Marshall) – Mark Carter, Matthew Stein (Trumpets), Samuel Jacobs Justin Leslie (horn), David Bremner, Shannon Pittaway (trombone)
- What the Whaleship Saw 2004 (by Deidre Gribbin) – Anna van der Zee, Megan Molina (violins), Nicholas Hancox (viola), Robert Ibell (cello)
- Pearls of the Sea 2005 (by Eve de Castro-Robinson) – Bridget Douglas (bass horn) and Carolyn Mills (harp)
- Treize couleurs du soleil couchant 1978 (by Tristan Murail) – Bridget Douglas (flutes), Patrick Barry (clarinet), Anna van der Zee (violin), Robert Ibell (cello), Kirsten Robertson (piano)
- Reflections 2016 (by Anna Thorvaldsdottir) – Anna van der Zee (violin), Nicholas Hancox (viola), Robert Ibell (cello)
- Where sea Meets Sky 2 1975 (by John Rimmer) – Bridget Douglas (flute), Patrick Barry (clarinet), Megan Molina (violin), Robert Ibell (cello), Kirsten Robertson (piano), Thomas Gulborg (percussion)
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