This review is well over due. So long overdue that it's gone right off the Listen again radar.
Excuses - it was a Late night one so I didn't get home until one, then the next day I ended up doing stuff. Just stuff, you know.
And I seem to have lost the ability to write.
It was bloody good! Is that a review?
Earlier in the evening I met up with Carla and Caro in Carluccio's Cafe at South Ken (try saying that pissed, fortunately I wasn't, for a very enjoyable meal and natter. That's what the internet does, brings together people who are wondering how to pass the time before the Late Night Prom.
There's a special atmosphere in a LNP quite quite different from the mainstream ones. Some of the best Proms I have been to rival football matches for fevered atmosphere. The very few LNP I have attended are mellow and chilled. Perhaps the music is deliberately chosen that way.
The programme was:
Clapping Music (5 mins)
Nagoya Marimbas (5 mins)
Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices, and Organ (19 mins)
Drumming (45 mins)
Actually Caro and I arrived moments late and were not allowed in. I was about to protest that we ought to be allowed on while the audience is still applauding, then I realised it was 'Clapping Music'.
I find Steve Reich mesmerising and fascinating. I was first introduced to his music back in my school days, by my percussion teacher, and instantly fell in love with it. This programme was very dominated by percussion; even when voices and a piccolo joined in, they weren't there to provide pretty melodies. I can't imagine Steve Reich getting much airplay on Classic FM with its safe, smug middle-England agenda. I explained it to somebody the next day as Classical meets Rock meets World, but that is an oversimplification of the fusion. On the Tube, Chemical Brothers' Hey Boy Hey Girl came up on shuffle and I developed a goofy grin as I recognised the musical links. I dont know very much about the Chemical Brothers, except for liking their music, despite its genre, so I wouldn't know if they are Reich influenced. They must be, I reckon.
His music isn't for everybody. I'm afraid I can't sit here writing deep intellectual twaddle about the psychological effect of the music, because I actually don't think there is any. It's about how rhythm is constructed, how rhythm dominates, and how a tune emerges out of the seeming lack of linear melody. And it draws you in relentlessly. No room for sloppiness from the players, it is very structured. You kind of want to dance, indeed some of the players were following the urge to dance, or at least to bop rhythmically.
Good fun. but thankfully, not fun that was headlined with great big banners saying "Recommended by Classic FM" or "I'm Titchmarsh and I'm going to assume you know nothing about music and talk down making irrelevant unfunny quips". It was about the fun being in the music and in the listener.
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