Those who find pop music predictable or who are tired of the structure of verse-chorus-verse can immerse themselves annually in the Rewire festival in The Hague. For three days, the focus is on music outside the pop pattern. The more different, the better. Not that there is dilettantism. On the contrary, the performances on Friday, the first of the three evenings, excelled in dedicated precision. The fact that the result strokes pleasantly against the hair is precisely organised.
The arrangement of the musicians also deviates from an average concert. For example, the foreman of Jameszoo sat behind a table with equipment, with his back to the audience; the eleven members of Bang on a Can stood in a horseshoe-shaped arc, but most startling was the formation of Ryoji Ikeda. On the stage of the main hall of the new music building Amare, Ikeda, celebrated as an electronics artist, presented his collaboration with musicians from Les Percussions de Strasbourg. One hundred cymbals on stands stood in a matrix form: ten by ten cymbals. The cymbals were played by ten musicians. They hit the middle of the pelvis with their sticks, so that it did not rustle but tapped. The ten of them were as soft as watches, and as even. In the meantime, a minimal but admirable choreography was also performed: exactly at the same time two musicians moved to other cymbals. The eruptions at the end of this visual as well as musical spectacle were controlled: the cymbals were allowed to burn for a while before being muted with the hands.
Sophisticated question-answer game
The main guest of this Rewire edition was American avant-garde musician Meredith Monk. There were movies about her, and Monk performed every day, like Saturday with Bang on a Can. Both were seen separately on Friday. Bang on a Can together with the Ensemble Klang from The Hague sometimes sounded a bit queasy, but towards the end comforting in a refined question-answer game.
In Amare, 79-year-old Meredith Monk, together with four singers, celebrated the discipline. Her music, without instruments and largely without words, consists of stacked and pulsating voices, like a voice mosaic. Monk usually works with both men and women, she said, but with this choir she wants to counterbalance the “current patriarchal world”. The walking about, singing quintet in white clothes, making subtle movements and embracing each other, were surprisingly beautiful and, despite their impassive faces, loving. Monk sometimes said something simple that still sounded wise.
The discipline was crossed at the end of the evening by Alabaster DePlume, born Gus Fairbairn. The British saxophonist recently made the album gold, which was praised for its velvety sound combined with poetry. Here he played with a band but always interrupted the game for wisdoms about love and inner anger, pronounced with a possessed look. The ‘performance poet’ dominated the saxophonist.
Also read the review of the previous edition of avant-garde festival Rewire