My first trip to the new Shed 6 was a few weeks ago to see con­tem­por­ary music out­fit Stroma. They were play­ing a sampler of mod­ern art music, stretch­ing from Ravel and Schoen­berg, through Boulez and Berio, to more recent work by Gil­lian White­head and Dav­id Lang. Music writer Alex Ross was our tour guide, describ­ing and giv­ing con­text to a full range of mod­ern, avant-garde and exper­i­ment­al music that could have been twice as baff­ling without.

The con­ven­tion­al lay­out for that show had con­cert seat­ing facing down the long room to a flatly lit stage and obtrus­ive ban­ner stands. Tak­ing over the same ven­ue and for a sim­il­ar music­al pro­ject, the NZSO and con­duct­or Ham­ish McK­eich (also con­duct­or and co-dir­ect­or of Stroma) trans­formed the space into a vast dra­mat­ic­ally lit theatre/gallery/cabaret hybrid, with an unstaged orches­tra placed side­ways, some of the audi­ence sit­ting at tables, benches or on the floor, and some stand­ing.

I had little idea what we were in for, aside from the draw­card of Jonny Greenwood’s name. (Con­trary to earli­er Wel­ling­tonista reports, Green­wood was not in attend­ance.) McK­eich’s laid-back intro­duc­tions to each piece replaced any need for a prin­ted pro­gramme.

The first few high viol­in notes of Arvö Pärt’s “Fratres” revealed a sur­pris­ingly dead room acous­tic. But as the crys­tal­line struc­ture of the piece rotates and des­cends the scale, the double basses enter­ing was like someone just remembered to turn on the sub­woof­er.

Alex Ross, in his intro­duc­tion to the Stroma con­cert, made a point about jazz pick­ing up the avant-garde bat­on in the late 50s and co-evolving with the explo­sion of new and increas­ingly icon­o­clast­ic styles in con­tem­por­ary music. Wel­ling­ton com­poser (and Stroma’s oth­er co-dir­ect­or) Michael Norris’s “Heart Across Night” is an intric­ate and slightly wag­gish piece, played in a suit­ably inform­al space at the end of the room, and while present­ing in a jazz mode – it’s scored for trom­bone, drum kit and double bass – the cut-up, stop-start rhythms poin­ted to a dif­fer­ent tra­di­tion.

Back with the NZSO, John Zorn’s “Kol nidre”, a word­less rework­ing of frag­ments of the Jew­ish rite, car­ried echoes of “Fratres”; both pieces devo­tion­al and con­tem­plat­ive, and sur­pris­ingly con­son­ant, using the yearn­ing “Jew­ish” scale also com­mon to Middle East­ern, Balkan and fla­menco music. It turned out this was a teas­er for a lar­ger focus on Zorn in the next Shed Series show.

Haydn’s Sym­phony no. 60, “Il dis­tratto”, was derived from his incid­ent­al music for a French stage com­edy. This piece is almost post-mod­ern, with Haydn play­ing mul­tiple music­al jokes, includ­ing imit­a­tions of a street band, an ama­teur wed­ding orches­tra who need to stop play­ing to tune their instru­ments, and the hero’s absent-minded­ness as he for­gets his own wed­ding. Its play­ful­ness was a great con­trast to the more sober pieces in the rest of the show.

As McK­eich poin­ted out, late Roman­ti­cism has become the dom­in­ant form adop­ted by fea­ture film com­posers, except that the utterly con­trast­ing thick micro­ton­al­ity and glis­sandi famil­i­ar in orches­tral works by Pen­d­erecki and Ligeti is now a com­mon short­hand for indic­at­ing chaos and ter­ror on screen. Alex Ross, in his Stroma intro­duc­tion, saw cause to cel­eb­rate this as a main­stream accept­ance of new forms of music emer­ging in the 50s and 60s, but I’m not so sure. Jonny Greenwood’s film scores, which tend not to hew as closely to the emo­tion­al or action beats as most nar­rat­ive scores do, are an excep­tion. They are also eas­ily expor­ted as stan­dalone orches­tral suites, heard here in a selec­tion of six cues from “There Will Be Blood”, one of which even had as its ori­gin an item from his “Pop­corn Super­het Receiv­er” con­cert piece. It moves through Pen­d­erecki­an swarm­ing micro­ton­al­ity, per­cuss­ive effects remin­is­cent of Radiohead’s “Burn the Witch”, Bern­ard Her­rmann-esque frenzy, and calm lyr­i­cism. A ter­rif­ic end to the night.

The concert’s sub­title “Jux­ta­pos­i­tion” reflects the plur­al his­tor­ies of each piece. “Fratres” exists in many arrange­ments. “There Will Be Blood” is for a film but also re-uses exist­ing con­cert mater­i­al. The Zorn is sourced and refrac­ted from a medi­ev­al rite, and the Haydn moved from the theatre stage to the con­cert hall.

This is a well-designed and thought­ful series, a great new way of exper­i­en­cing mod­ern music and far bet­ter than the form­al sit-down Stroma present­a­tion. I can’t wait for the next and final show, called “Pro­jec­tion” and fea­tur­ing Zorn and Moz­art, at Shed 6 on 19th Octo­ber. If you want a seat, get there early.

Sid­e­notes:
– Shed 6 is also con­fus­ingly called the TSB Bank Aud­it­or­i­um. There is also the TSB Bank Arena and TSB Bank Arcade. Sort it out, Ven­ues Wel­ling­ton!
– My iPhone remind­er tone is in the same key as “Kol nidre”, which was just as well.
– Crack­ing cans of Gar­age Pro­ject in between move­ments is the new cough­ing.