Sydney City Recital Hall performance – 31st March, 2010:
Salutations on a magnificent performance tonight! I LOVED the work- it was mysterious, uniquely haunting and rivetting throughout.
Christina! I loved the sensitivity you brought to your role from the melismatic dialogue with the voices to the intense peaks of rapture and rupture AND you didn’t tell me you also played conch shell – you ARE a remarkable woman!
Clive – wow! – loved his enactment of the story, dramatic rhythm was perfection and Martin’s work is SO idiosyncratic in the way he takes particular phrases and weaves his body into an entire evolution of gesture and meaning. His solo was mesmeric and transcendental – my consciousness melted into the sublime horizon.
Thank you, thank you! The performance was totally rewarding and deep. I am so thankful I was there.
Rosalind
Newcastle show – 25th March, 2010:
Dear Song Company
As we spoke in the foyer after tonight¹s Newcastle performance of Gethsemane I found it difficult to make a sensible response. I found myself tongue tied because I could not decide what I thought about the piece, and what was fair to say to the performers. Now in the quiet of my office I’ll try to say a little more as I know that after all of the effort of composition, rehearsal and performance you¹d probably like some feedback. I’m one of those who are attracted to the idea of exploration in the arts but ultimately respond more positively to familiar material.
I’ll make a few dot point comments, because a comprehensive critique is beyond me:
· Everybody recognised the amount of effort and skill in the performance but this backhanded compliment carries the implication that the event was not enjoyed as an aesthetic experience.
· The narration was superbly done and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it because I could understand its literal meaning and because Clive’s reading of it was eloquent (others in the audience agree here).
· The dark character of the story invited expressive responses of a complementary kind. Your responses seemed apt.
· I enjoyed the solo dancer, but found some sections of this too long for me to perceive coherent growth (some friends did not enjoy this modern style of dancing).
· Like our friends, I enjoyed the saxophone probably because its tone is familiar, yet novel in this context, Christina is a first class player and because the melodic lines were, well, melodic. Everybody likes percussion work and this was true in Gethsemane, especial in various percussive sections rather than across the whole. (The enjoyment of novel instruments is an easy response).
· The sometimes-intricate polyphonic vocal lines were difficult to Œunderstand¹ both literally and expressively.
· The work was enormously challenging: the concept was strange and the expressive idioms were strange. Thus people in the foyer – and I myself -tended to make comments about fragments and sections and elements but few were able to make a sensible comment about the piece as a complete artistic creation. It takes a person a lifetime to internalise great works, and so it is a big ask for them to get on the inside of a work as new, strange and demanding as this.
So, what would I change? Nothing! The Song Company has done its bit, and now audiences must make an effort to get beyond the warm bath approach to music and the other arts.
Thanks for the challenge.
Regards
Roland B.
