Adelaide Festival of Arts. Adelaide Festival Theatre. 2 February.
I’m infrequently stuck for words, but writing this review has been one such occasion. And what I write won’t influence your decision about whether to see the performance or not, because it was a once-off in the festival. However, if you ever get the chance to see Kronos performing live, or Laurie Anderson, or better still both, do not pass up the opportunity. The experience is quite remarkable.
The Kronos Quartet and Laurie Anderson are, according to Festival Director David Sefton, “two groupings of artists absolutely at the top of their game who have been there for a very long time - revolutionary artists.” I have loved and admired the musicality and adventurousness of Kronos for many years – but I had only every heard them on CD or DVD. I confess to being a Laurie Anderson ‘newbie’.
The concert was a sublime experience. It comprised an extended composition by Anderson – especially written for Kronos – consisting of musical vignettes played by the quartet and accompanied by Anderson herself, with either electric violin, a digital data bank of musical samples, or her own voice. Each vignette seemed to naturally connect with the next one, even though there was no thematic link.
What was seen was just as important as what was heard.
The artists were dwarfed by the gigantic projections on the screen behind them. Sometimes it was bathed in a gentle monochromatic wash punctuated by well-defined beams cutting through the hazy atmosphere above and around them. At other times text was projected onto it, which underpinned Anderson's witty and sometimes quite profound observations about humanity and man's place in the natural world.
The text was sometimes in hieroglyphs and sometimes it was computer generated by sophisticated technology that responded to the sounds being created by the musicians. In one vignette, violinist John Sherba took centre stage and his pizzicato and bowing triggered the text on the screen. At times it was lightning fast in sympathy with his playing. One could feel one's pulse accelerating and it was a personal turmoil to decide whether to watch the screen or the violinist.
Anderson has a mellifluous and seductive voice that demands attention, and her miniature stories were compelling, not so much because of the content, but because of the telling and the haunting restless music that underscored them. Anderson was at her most inventive when a processor distorted her voice so that she sounded like a dispassionate deep-voiced intergalactic observer who was commenting on the dramatic disappearance of species on planet Earth. One almost got the feeling that this might have been a distant look into the future and that the next species to be listed would be homosapiens.
The evening was full of humour and pathos, of lyrical melodies and dissonant phrases. It was just what one would expect in a world class festival of arts.
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Adelaide Festival Theatre
Bookings: Closed
