Igor Toronyi-Lalic

In Bermondsey I heard the future – at the Barbican I smelt death: new-music round-up

Reviews of Grain, Missy Mazzoli's Total Immersion day, CTM x ICA, Riot Ensemble and Rebecca Saunders at HCMF, plus the worst gig of my life

Composer Missy Mazzoli at the Barbican. Image: Mark Allan  
issue 02 March 2024

To Dalston to witness the worst gig of my life. The premise of the Random Gear Festival was simple and rather inspired: gather some arbitrary objects; get people to play them. In previous iterations, the offerings had included an ice skate, a wet baguette and an exercise bike. This time we had a trampoline, a microwave, a dead fish. I kept an open mind.

I was reminded that years ago at Cafe Oto I had seen the then chief conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra Ilan Volkov rub two blocks of polystyrene together with the subtle virtuosity of Martha Argerich at a Steinway. I was reminded too of what the composer Hector Berlioz had declared in his 1844 Treatise on Orchestration: ‘Every sounding object employed by the composer is a musical instrument.’

A nine-inch pizza was smeared on a keyboard. Top marks to the man playing an umbrella, however

In theory, then, there is nothing to stop a wet baguette becoming an instrument.

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