(Limelight Magazine)
Review: The Horror of the Avant-Garde(s)
Published – 21.08.2023
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen something that defies expectation and definition in the way that Joseph Franklin’s new work The Horror of the Avant-Garde(s)did in its one-off performance at Chapter House’s Alpha 60.
The piece, a collaboration between Franklin and creatives including Conductor Elliott Gyger and Art Director Tina Stefanou, worked tirelessly and viscerally to take the audience out of themselves and into something sometimes borrowed, sometimes new – a gutsy, complicated, and occasionally overwrought experience that engaged all the senses.
It was a little more, I think, like walking into a contemporary art exhibition, or some experimental musical theatre, than the usual concert-going experience. For that alone, for that commitment to creating something new, the large team of creators should be deeply commended.
From a structural perspective, the evening could be split into three sections: the world-building of entering into the space, which featured refreshments (“spooky tea” in champagne flutes) and snacks (pies, savoury or sweet!) by Long Prawn, a projection of a huge beating heart conducting from the wall, and a cohort of excellent Melbourne musicians dressed in new season Alpha 60; followed by the two large-scale musical experiments.
First, the talents of the Young Voices of Melbourne singing gorgeous, melodic musings on popular culture and youthfulness, interspersed with the strange and mercurial poetry of Diego Ramírez, spoken from the balcony above. Ramírez’ work, new to me, was humorous and accessible, while still biting back rigorously at day-to-day stereotypes. The poetry, paired with the YVOM and outstanding accompaniment on cimbolam and frame drum, felt both anchored in the everyday and somehow otherworldly – melding the ethereal and the grungy. The work was unique to Melbourne/Naarm too: the place names and language bolstering us at home, despite the fact that the larger work could have felt at home in any major creative city.
The double concerto itself – the reason for gathering in the space – was exciting, and aurally overwhelming, mostly in the best way. Written for percussion and piano legends Satoshi Takeishi and Marc Hannaford, and expertly scored for large ensemble featuring some truly excellent brass and woodwind performances, Franklin’s compositional style swung from Keith Jarrett-esque jazz idioms to Darmstadt-ian improvised chaos and back again.
The Horror of the Avant-Garde(s)was texturally fascinating if at times overwhelming and somewhat incomprehensible. The piece, which billed itself as a “radical alteration of the traditional concerto”, explored and deconstructed the pervasive binaries present within classical music, experimenting sonically with ideas of structure and decay. The fanfare outside of the music – the dancing (by Butoh performer Yumi Umiumare), the lighting design, the costuming and additional art – however, often detracted from the success of the piece, rather than grounding the overall work.
It is worth noting some of the difficulties posed by the space: the musicians, stretched across the long right wall, with the audience standing anywhere space could be found, led to some reasonably disparate listening experiences. Too close to the speaker, you were forced to shield your ears from the amplified mix. Too far away, and you missed the nuance of the text.
The fever dream of the evening was worth the creative misalignments and missteps, and the commitment to experimentation should be lauded for (hopefully) swinging open a door to more and more multi-genre, multi-modal performance art in Melbourne.
I was certainly not the only audience member hungry to try it all again, and will be in line for a ticket to hear a slightly cut-back version of Franklin’s innovative work when it next appears.
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