http://www.jazzwisemagazine.com/index.php/Magazine-Write-Stuff/Write-Stuff/Kammer-Klang-at-Charlie-Wright-s.html

10/02/09
Kammer Klang’s objective, to explore the “ever blurring boundaries at the edge of contemporary classical music” seeks to challenge existing musical forms with a progressive intention. Their success lay in the delivery as much as the product.

Scott Lygate’s performance of Harald Genzmer’s bass clarinet solo sonata communicated the vitality and inexhaustible imagination of its composer. Lygate expressed Genzmer’s distinctive representation of elegance touched by an illustrative compassion.

Steve Riech’s Grammy Award winning composition, Different Trains, received a penetrating recital by the Kammer Klang string quartet. Reich’s distinctive looped tape recording bore hypnotically into the audience’s consciousness as train whistles, pistons, screaming breaks and human dialogue combined to intense and harrowing effect. The melodic lines, though sharp, tangential and leaden with harmonic tension, were executed with sensitivity to the emotional undercurrents woven into the composition.

An animated score designed by the enigmatic Leafcutter John, projected onto a blank canvas, provided the structural platform for in-performance composition by the Kammer Klang quartet. Four lines colour coded to each musician respectively, warped over time in size, shape and position, which the musicians interpreted by variations in volume, pitch, attack and decay. The absence of rhythmic, harmonic and melodic structure entailed that the music emanated directly from each musician’s emotional centre. Despite the freedom afforded by this method of musical expression there was an evident coherence to the group’s performance.

An arresting improvised solo set by Leafcutter John of his pioneering ‘folktronica’ concluded the evening. A multi-layered, multi-textured electronic soundscape instantaneously engaged the audience. The acoustic fabrics of guitar, accordion and voice interacted with electronic sound swarms and distortions as each effect seemingly consumed its predecessor.

The musical and intellectual density of the evening matched its engaging and accessible nature: a fine combination for such progressive music.

Review: Joseph Kassman-Tod