Record ARTS
March , 2008

Penderecki shines at QuartetFest
By Stephen Preece

What do you get when you cross a squirrel with a frog?

The results are uncertain — possibly interesting fusion, possibly mishmash.

In the music world, this is what the new music society NUMUS is all about —taking risks, challenging assumptions and pushing the boundaries of listening, music and sound.

Saturday night at the Starlight was a collision of two worlds: serious chamber music, ala local favourites of the longhair circuit, the Penderecki String Quartet and the ultra-hip electronic mixing and mayhem of DJ Spooky: That Subliminal Kid.

Both have international reputations in their respective fields.

Occasionally, the Penderecki String Quartet takes a breather from their international bookings and graces us with stellar classical music performances.

And DJ Spooky spans the international celebrity spectrum of innovative sound creation— film, books, music.
Preshow at the Starlight, DJ Spooky was already at it spinning a warm-up mix of cool electronica— sampled sounds over bass & drums, carefully spun and interestingly presented.

The quartet stepped onstage, with Spooky inviting the audience to imagine pillows scattered around the room in his New York apartment; friends gathered to share in a musical experiment.

The Penderecki String Quartet launched a segment of serious repertoire they could easily have presented in a more traditional venue — sans bright lights, and amplification.

The music included sustained chord clusters, with repeated motifs around a modal centre, allowing Spooky to take live samples and layer them over the top of the ongoing live performance.

The result was a rich layering of music progressing forward, with back-looping echoes, manipulations and interjected sounds interspersed.

The overall effect was mesmerizing.

This was a wholly new take on something familiar, remade into a fresh and different listening encounter.
The second segment had bite.

Vibrating and frenetic jabs with the strings punctuated with pizzicato, created an edgy and visceral attack.
This time the electronic undertones served to soften the assault, providing a smoothing effect, still peppered with trademark turntable smidges and smooches at unexpected intervals.

A perceptible pause, and the audience erupted, showing obvious and spontaneous pleasure for the performance.
Throughout the evening the musical sources were not always clear though there were contributions from composers Shostakovich, Penderecki and local resident Glen Buhr.

Most segments included minimalist repetition or repeated patterns enabling improvisational flexibility.

While his primary emphasis was on embellishing the quartet, Spooky periodically introduced wholly different sounds including a full drum kit, Indian vocals, harmonica, and a launching space ship.

On the whole, DJ Spooky showed staggering creative range both in his grasp of classical music forms as well as his ability to combine them with interesting and alternative soundscapes.

As a sound experiment, the evening was an unmitigated success. Will a new genre take root? Unlikely
For the DJ, the quartet paring was great material for awhile, but there was an underlying feeling of being held back (at the end he did in fact break loose of all connection, seeming to find his more-true self with an unlimited palate).

For the Penderecki String Quartet, their forte is relentless exploration of finely nuanced and refined musical expression—an approach which can never be truly content in the brazen world of electronic music.

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