Blackbird Ensemble Performs Björk: All Is Full Of Love – Review

Black­bird Ensemble are “NZ’s most excit­ing cham­ber orches­tra”, and Thursday’s homage to Björk sup­por­ted that claim more than com­pet­ently.  A col­lec­tion of strings, horns, per­cus­sion­ists, and Claire Cow­an’s multi-instru­ment­al­ism brought dir­ect­or Cow­an’s arrange­ments to vibrant and emo­tion­al life.  The musi­cians were more than just that; in their glow­ing boil­er suits they became part of a sens­ory exper­i­ence for the per­formers as well as the audi­ence.  With every­one in white, and shards of crys­tal grow­ing from the stage, it felt like we were blessed wit­nesses to some secret and ancient cel­eb­ra­tion.

Cow­an’s vis­ion was com­pre­hens­ive.  I ima­gine this show has been brew­ing inside her for years.  She’s an excit­ing com­poser whose music­al jour­ney so far has spanned many genres, and it’s no sur­prise that Björk was one of her earli­est influ­ences; she notes in one inter­view that it’s what her older sib­lings listened to.  The arrange­ments were gor­geous, layered, and thought­ful.  Some of the arrange­ments felt like whole new songs, without ever stray­ing from the feel and integ­rity of the ori­gin­als.  Cow­an treated the source mater­i­al with love as well as with respect, and her belief in this pro­ject shone through.

I’ve listened to Björk  pass­ively, rather than act­ively, over the last 25 years.  I was aware of her, very famil­i­ar with the hits, not at all with the less­er known mater­i­al.  I loved her fear­less­ness and fierce indi­vidu­al­ity as a teen­ager, but it was nev­er easy to identi­fy with.  Her unique syn­tax and deliv­ery can be dis­tract­ing, and her refus­al to com­ply with melod­ic or met­ric for­mula was def­in­itely chal­len­ging to my young­er taste.  But her knack for describ­ing joy or love or defi­ance in pure unapo­lo­get­ic music­al terms has always been the thing that made me love her music, even if I did­n’t thrash it for hours like friends of mine.

The Black­bird Ensemble, and Cow­an’s deli­cious arrange­ments, delivered some of Björk’s love songs beau­ti­fully, and it was cap­tiv­at­ing.

Three bril­liant vocal­ists joined the party, sup­por­ted by a sens­it­ive sound design (although occa­sion­ally a little heavy on the reverb).  Anna Cod­ding­ton is an extraordin­ary per­former, as well as a spec­tac­u­lar sing­er, and she seemed to have been cus­tom-ordered just for this occa­sion.  Like a child dressed up in her big sis­ter­’s first Com­mu­nion dress, she scampered and swayed around the stage, while her enorm­ously flex­ible voice soared and belted with per­fect con­trol and immense emo­tion.  Incred­ible.

Priya Sami has a beau­ti­ful voice, and her deliv­ery of A Hid­den Place was espe­cially lovely.  It would have been nice if she’d had more room to stretch dynam­ic­ally, but her num­bers were all of the more sub­dued and tri­phoppy type.  She became more a part of the orches­tra, anoth­er instru­ment, than a soloist.

Mara TK is a huge tal­ent in this coun­try, but I’m not sure if he was in the right place.  I’m not sure he knew, either – his phys­ic­al­ity was more awk­ward than I’ve ever seen him and the songs he per­formed barely used his sweet tone and wicked range.  His most nat­ur­al and engaged moment was when he bantered a bit with the audi­ence, mock­ing Trump and teas­ing us about Wel­ling­ton need­ing to up our Te Reo game.  Then, start­ing his rendi­tion of Vir­us, he seemed a little more relaxed and happy for a bit.

There were a couple of oth­er moments when the audi­ence was drawn closer…  but for the most part it was con­cert, rather than gig.  The per­formers inter­ac­ted a little with each oth­er, barely with us; the music was the point and that was their focus.  That may have been the intent, and Cow­an’s dir­ec­tion.  As we were reminded early on, “She’s the boss”.

It was a truly excel­lent, enjoy­able show, and while there was a focus on more atmo­spher­ic songs, there were abso­lutely a few moments of fun and joy.  Still, in an intim­ate theatre space like Shed 6, with an audi­ence who clearly were there out of love, it could have built to an exhil­ar­at­ing music­al bac­chanal.  Instead, the per­form­ance and its deserved encore left us feel­ing com­fort­ably mel­low.