Collaboration is an artform in itself, as Southbank Centre’s Multitudes festival has demonstrated over two weeks of sometimes divisive but never-less-than stimulating creative cross-fertilisation. This final concert, fusing wildly contrasting disciplines, was among the most nourishing, a performance in which each partner had immersed themselves in the working practices of the others. The palpable sense of collegiality and mutual respect was as heartwarming as the music-making.
The subject was butterflies, nature’s metamorphic miracles, whose complex physiological processes and unerring sense of purpose culminate in an eruption of kaleidoscopic colours. The multifaceted theatrical melange was the brainchild of experimental music pioneers Manchester Collective, cellist Laura van der Heijden, composer Chaines (Cee Haines), dance theatre company Thick & Tight the Camberwell Incredibles, an arts collective of adults with learning disabilities. The three musical works, each one introduced for the visually or aurally impaired, couldn’t have been more different – Kaija Saariaho’s coruscating Sept Papillons, Imogen Holst’s delicate The Fall of the Leaf and a new multimedia work by Chaines entitled oysters sing of silkworms – yet the whole was invariably more than the sum of its parts.
At its heart sat the valiantVan der Heijden, put through her paces by Saariaho’s fiendish technical demands. Across seven brief movements, she tossed off stratospheric trills and rasping tremolos while negotiating spectral harmonics and finger-dislocating intervals. Thick & Tight’s gracefully integrated movement, focused on the instrumentalist, merged seamlessly with the music. The Holst – a beguiling discovery – was accompanied by film of the Incredibles explaining how the music made them feel while grooving along to the cello’s pizzicato patterns. Later, we watched them painting with brushes, chalk and fingers to the beat of Ed Thompson’s quirky poetry.
Chaines’ three-movement work was threaded through the evening, ranging from melodic balladry to elaborate soundscapes with the composer manipulating live electronics. There was eerie audio processing via a vocoder, light rods that changed colour according to the frequency of the cello sound, and an onscreen spectrogram that looked like a cross between a Rorschach test and a bewildered octopus. Though occasionally verging on the verbose, as connective experiences go it ticked all the Multitudes’ boxes.
• Touring Birmingham (3 May), Nottingham (6 May) and Manchester (9 May).
