Welcome to our review blog for the Icebreaker IV festival. Read our patron reviews, click on the Comments button to read the comments of others and post your own thoughts.
I enjoyed this performance very much. But in order to make myself blogworthy beyond the previous sentence, I've latched onto a thesis.
So, allow me to bleat this sweeping generalization in reference to five of the six pieces performed in Saturday night's Icebreaker IV: The American Future (Classics of Downtown): The Music of the Future inherently features an interface between instruments of acoustic design and those of electrically based technology.
What an amazing array of talent was on stage Saturday night at On the Boards, and what a great variety of music composition they presented.
The first thing that has to be praised is the talent and energy of the Seattle Chamber Players. They played their butts off, and did it with such precision and such verve, through one complicated piece after another. And this was the team's second such night in a row!
Check out this short video on YouTube of Societas Raffaello Sanzio schooling us in gnocchi-making. Be sure to come see their other talents at the performance of Hey girl! this week at OtB.
Posted by Tania
As the opening to her program message, Elena Dubinets writes, "SCP is committed to supporting the composition and performance of music that elucidates and celebrates, shouts and protests, meditates and contemplates, music written by composers seeking a way to reflect articulately upon these complicated times."
The Alex Ross curated program of "Icebreaker IV" certainly meditates and contemplates.
I miss the days of new music festivals in Seattle. In the early 1990s, composer Robert Priest produced Marzena, a Festival of Contemporary Music that brought composers such as Toru Takemitsu and R. Murray Schafer to the Northwest. Performances took place in venues that ranged from traditional concert halls to unique places where the audience was encouraged to bring sleeping bags and pillows to listen to music while in repose.
Check out this SLOG post about Obama, Alex Ross, and a critique of the upcoming Icebreaker Festival here at OtB.
Barack Obama and Alex Ross. When Worlds Collide. In Seattle.
Chamber-music festivals break the winter ice in the Seattle Times
Here are a few press reviews of Radiohole's Fluke show:
"Get Out: Radiohole's Fluke @ On the Boards" on Seattlest
"Not the Melville of English Lit" in the Seattle Times
"'Fluke's' wild abandon is mildly funny" in the Seattle P-I
Welcome to our review blog for Fluke. Read our patron reviews, click on the Comments button to read the comments of others and post your own thoughts.
So what the hell happens in *Fluke*? I'm not sure. And I was there for 60 plus minutes. Three people are on stage and one person "phones" it in via video. A pregnant woman served beer and grog before the show but disappeared once the show started. I haven't read the book but I think in the book they find the whale. Is it giving it away if I say there's no whale location in *Fluke*? When I start losing interest in the performance, I thought: Where is the f’ing whale?
Before the show, I read some reviews and previews as well as Radiohole's history on their website.
Radiohole's Fluke was created from an improvisation activity the cast called Bible-Ear, in which a performer is expected to simultaneously listen to and recite back the recorded book playing in his headphones while holding a conversation with a person who is unable to hear the recording. The result in this case is the wild, physically rigorous and darkly hilarious riff on Herman Melville's Moby Dick.
How do you tell the epic story of that white whale in under an hour and a half with three people and a naked bearded guy on a television? You don't.
If Guy Maddin were to become obsessed with Moby Dick and create a live theater piece, it might look something like Fluke, now showing at On the Boards.
This is one show you will WISH you sat in the front row for, as total immersion is the only way to go. Get ready for a weather report whispering figurehead, a bearded fellow screaming intermittently from a live video feed, a man fishing with a very long rod, enchanting little row boats and general mayhem on the theme of the sperm whale.
For sheer spectacle, Fluke is the best show I've seen in a long time, at On the Boards or anywhere. Don't expect it to have much to do with Moby Dick -- it's just 75 minutes of inventive theatrics. If they're related to the novel, I doubt Melville would recognize his work. But enjoying the show requires no literary notes; it's all about ping-pong balls, Electric Light Orchestra, dollar bills, seafaring lingo, Chairman Mao, springboards, gale warnings, terrible puns, eyes upon eyes, and much, much more.
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