Blackbird Ensemble Perform Björk: All is Full of Love

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.