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Victoria Foundation Courtyard, St. Anne's Academy
July 25, 2021
"The possibilities of percussion sounds, I believe, have never been fully realized."
One cannot help but wonder exactly when Charles Ives uttered these words, given that he died in 1954, by which time John Cage had already begun to expand the boundaries of music for percussion (his First Construction in Metal dates from 1939).
All of the music in Sunday's concert by the Vancouver Island Percussion Collective dates from after Ives's death and again one wonders whether or not he would have reconsidered, given the vast amount of often spectacular music composed for percussion in the last few decades.
As far as I can ascertain, the programme was performed in almost chronological order — which doesn't always work, but in this case definitely did — and the earliest piece was Steve Reich's Music for Pieces of Wood, dating from 1973.
While this is not quite Reich's most elementary percussion piece — that would be Clapping Music, which employs no instruments at all — its requirement are nonetheless extremely simple: five players each equipped with a clave, which is essentially (as suggested by the title) a piece of wood, except one which has a distinct pitch.
The music dates from just after Reich's "phase shifting" period and sees him employing an "additive" method: each player has a rhythmic pattern to play, but begins by playing just one note of it, then adding another and so on.
A number of things struck me during the performances: the total fascination which multiple cross-rhythms can produce, when played as accurately as on this occasion; the remarkable volume of sound produced by five people hitting a piece of wood with a stick; and how irresistibly infectious the whole enterprise was. Looking around I could see that mine were far from the only toes tapping along, although some in the audience preferred to nod their heads or even rock gently back and forth.
Bob Becker was a founder member of the percussion ensemble Nexus and has also been a long-serving member of Steve Reich's ensemble.
Becker's Mudra dates from 1990 an is inspired by Indian ragas, the rhythmic patterns on which all Indian classical music is based. Directed ("coordinated" is too feeble a term, "conducted" too strong) by Aaron Mattack, the piece is scored mainly for what Percy Grainger called "tuneful" percussion, with the exception of the side drum, initially dampened by draping a towel over it, played by Mattack himself.
The music put me in mind (very slightly) of John Cage's music for prepared piano and proved both rhythmically and texturally engrossing.
Minouru Miki's Marimba Spiritual is clearly a piece of which Masako Hockey is extremely fond: I have distinct memories of her playing it at a cathedral festival concert almost exactly seventeen years ago (on July 24, 2004, to be precise).
Hockey was clearly enjoying herself immensely on this occasion and I can see no reason not to repeat some of what I wrote about that earlier performance: the slow first half was hypnotic; the rapid second half, with three percussionists accompanying the marimba, was quite extraordinary, particularly the way in which Hockey had literally to leap from one end of her instrument to the other; just watching her was exhausting. Spectacular.
Finally Brett William Dietz's Sharpened Stick, which is as recent as 1999.
The music is inspired by a traditional Iroquois dance, the "Fish-step" (which is also said to be the dance from which the Charleston was derived). Whether it is eclectic or simply irreverent of me to wonder if there is a connection to Monty Python's Fish-slapping Dance, I leave the reader to decide.
The music was brief, complex — replete with hockets, the device whereby different players share alternate notes of a melody, or in this case rhythmic pattern — and brought the programme to a resounding, nay tumultuous close.
This was, insofar as I am aware, the first outing for the Vancouver Island Percussion Collective.
I trust it will not be their last.
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