a.rawlings and Isabeella Beumer at Logos (2nd April)

It was a fantastic concert. I'm still not really up for reviewing - conversations with angela, Jelle, Maja, Claire make more sense to me - but here are some pictures etc.

a.rawlings
angela's performance began with a short reading from Wide Slumber, which she dedicated to Claire. High up at the back, behind the camera, Claire's jaw dropped so far I thought I might have to crawl under the seats to retrieve it.


She followed it with her new Cochlea manuscript - with the line 'Robots in Ghent' there could be no better place to perform it - and an excerpt from Environment Canada. I want to hear them again, especially the permutating, perhaps spiralling, sound patterns in Cochlea.

I already posted a short clip of her improvisation with Maja a while ago, but here it is again to save you having to look for the older post:



Looking at it now, it is spooky how closely matched they were (that's angela on the left there and Maja on the right, for anyone getting confused). I hope the film gives an idea of how awesome it was. The performance was based on a tarot reading: a three-card spread (i.e. past, present, future) using only the major arcana. And they did shuffle the pack; it was a genuine improvisation. The film shows the first two cards, can you guess them? Go on. Maja told me the answers afterwards; I guessed the second one but not the first.

Isabeella Beumer's performance made an impressive contrast: the generation difference and a solo, virtuoso performance of relatively fixed pieces rather than a collaborative improvisation. Beumer reminded me of Meredith Monk in certain ways: her incredible range and virtuosity, and her fascination with voice techniques from other parts of the world. There were moments when she had me completely mesmerised, and predictably enough those were the parts where I lacked the wherewithal to press down the camera button. So the films aren't the best bits of the performance, but I have two excerpts from near the beginning:





... and a little piece of the encore. The entire performance was unaccompanied voice: there's no backing tape or instrumental accompaniment apart from the little percussion instrument you can see in the second clip.

Logos robot orchestra: Jokes

If you can't come to Belgium and see the Robot Orchestra for yourself, click here and scroll down to the little video of Godfried explaining how they work. No, seriously, click on this. If you don't watch any other internet films all month, watch this one. There's nothing like it anywhere else on the planet.

Besides infusoria, Krikri helped to organise two concerts at Logos during the Literaire Lente: the robot orchestra 'Jokes' concert on April 1st and performances by angela rawlings and Isabeella Beumer on April 2nd. I've been thinking all week about whether or not to review them for the blog; since most of you are outside Belgium and don't have any way of comparing my opinions with anything else, I've decided not to. But if anyone who was at the concerts wants to blog or comment about them on here, go for it, I'm all for multiple voices. Send me a mail and I'll publish it.

I still plan to tell you a bit about the concerts though, if for no other reason than Logos' eye- and ear-popping wierdness. There is an <M&M> or mens en machine - human and machine - concert every month in the Logos Tetraeder, with music composed by the in-house composers at Logos as well as outsiders and played by various combinations of humans and electronic/mechanical instruments. Claire and Svend were filming, so at some point I may be able to post snippets of video. In the meantime, you'll have to imagine Scott Joplin's Entertainer played first by one of Moniek Darge's music boxes and then by a boisterous full orchestra (arr. Sebastian Bradt):

Twenty-four well-tempered fire alarms dolefully wailing a Bach chorale (arr. Godfried-Willem Raes). Each set at a different pitch, they crooned and faltered their way through while angela and and I tried to bite back our guffaws...

A "hello angela" composition by Kristof Lauwers, based on recordings by bp nichol. (I never did get that photo of angela, Maja, Claire and myself standing together with our hair up. Roll over bp, Steve & co, we're the Four Ponytails ...)

This is Moniek's piece for electronic violin and robots...

And here is Godfried trying to trigger the robots' infrared sensors with popcorn. Normally he uses the sensors to react to human movement, which means that the robots produce sounds in response to dance, but here the popping corn is making the robots whistle and clatter...

After the interval (with fresh popcorn), French-Belgian poet Vincent Tholomé and Logos composer Yvan Vander Sanden premiered a voice/robot collaboration. Vincent had never worked with the robots before, but it was fantastic. His poems are usually anecdotes or inner monologues in prose, featuring all kinds of quirky characters and usually with a certain degree of improvisation.

Unusually for Logos, the piece also had a light show, with whirling lights on several of the robots accompanying Vincent's tantalizingly slow-paced, looping text and Yvan's spooky soundscape.


As far as I know, none of Vincent's work has been translated into English (time to start shaking your translator thing at it, Helen,) but he has two books in French out from Maelstrom - People and no entry - for anyone who needs an evening full of belly laughs at three euros apiece.

a.rawlings and Maja Jantar improvising at Logos

Yesterday was the first time I tried using my camera to make films. So this post was just an experiment to see what happened and whether any trace of a stunning performance would still be audible/visible in a 2x3 inch moving picture.

Svend and Claire did make proper films again of the whole evening, but it will take them much longer to do editing and get them online.

I have more.... you are going to be so excited when you see my more .... but I'm going to try and keep the posts as chronological as I can.