The Sound of Heavan and Earth London TATE MODERN. UK.

By Clive Bell. THE WIRE. ISSUE 235. MARCH 2005

Seth Kim-Cohen has organised a multidisciplinary conference at Tate Modern titled Heaven and Earth. So tonight’s show is the Sound of Heaven and Earth, which Kim-Cohen calls a situational composition. A sextet of mainly heavyweight improvisers line up to pit their wits against six composers whose brief is to communicate a “sound score” to the players: no notes on paper, no waving of arms, all instructions must go in via the ears.

The audience fill up the comfy seats of the Tate’s Starr Auditorium. Every inch of this room is livid red, and while cosy enough as a cinema it’s not what you would call a music venue. An airless, high art atmosphere hangs heavy in here, which the performances struggle to dissipate.

California based Eric Roth opens proceedings with Secret Cheese. The performers receive their orders from a CD Walkman over headphones and start playing, soon wandering off into a New Music desert with no signposts. Eventually Tony Bevan’s lyrical bass saxophone lines are answered by John Edward’s double bass tremolo, and a rich group texture develops. Next Achim Wollscheid from Frankfurt produces a more transparent process. 30 seconds of live playing is followed by 30 seconds of freshly processed sound from Wollsceid’s laptop, as he throws back a version of what has just been heard. The musicians respond to the android serenade and on we go. As with Roth’s piece, once the expressionistic, gestural spattering is out of the way, the music settles to a rewarding group exploration.

Olias Nil,(aka Seth Kim-Cohen himself) wears a neat hat, structures his compostion by ringing a red bell, and periodically whispers in the performers’ ears( one whisper causing a fully engrossed Edwards to jump out of his skin). This modest theatricality spices up the party, and the music is a warm entangled undergrowth. David Grubbs and Kaffe Matthews both contrive to turn the ensemble into a rich harmonious organ. Matthews cancels out the venue’s stiffness by extinguishing the lights and surrounding listeners with players. David Toop’s quavering flute overtones and Rhodri Davies’s E-bowed harp transport us to a more mysterious place. Andrew W Morgan’s electronics and Neil Heyde’s wonderfully precise cello also work magic for an all too brief 15 minutes. Finally Luc Ferrari’s Tautologos 3 sets up a game where elements are rotated and their predictability played with. Ferrari himself structures the piece by photograhing the performers to the cue of his stopwatch.

With musicians this creative, a worry lurks that left to their own devices, the music might be even more surprising. Watching composers impose discipline on improvisers can be a mixed blessing. However, the moments of beauty, particularly from Grubbs and Matthews, made for a worthwhile evening.