Reviewed by Ray Smith, Friday 10th December 2021.
It was my first visit to The Lab at Adelaide's Light Square, to see Kiah Gossner's
CONTACT, and it's not the easiest venue to find. Although there are doors on the Square itself, clearly marked 'The Lab', that was not the way into the venue. Rather, access is gained via an adjacent beer garden, through a simple door set into a plain brick wall. "Down the corridor, first door on the left", I was told. It felt quite dingy and potentially illegal, like walking into a very private club, or a gambling den, but the first door on the left revealed a beautifully receptive and informal venue, with state-of-the-art everything and its own bar. Multiple video projectors were splashing images and text over every available surface, and I chose a seat at the front, barely three metres from the stage.
As the musicians took to the stage, it was instantly apparent that this was not going to be an ordinary performance, as Gossner had surrounded himself with some of the finest contemporary musicians that the state, indeed, the country, has to offer.
An audioscape began, as the musicians sat motionlessly waiting, that reminded me strongly of Thom Willems's dance scores in his numerous collaborations with the
William Forsythe Company, and text began to flick onto the walls, as if it was typed into a search engine text box in real-time. Beach scenes, rural scenes, and urban scenes slid over the walls as the musicians began to take over the soundscape, the text box spelling out, letter by letter, the words of the first poem in this first of seven movements.
There's a flurry of sound in an instant crescendo from the stage, the walls explode in images as if the 'Enter' key had suddenly been pressed, and the words in the text box were fed into the greedy search engine, yielding link upon link in a hundred overlapping open tabs, flashing over the walls at breathtaking speed.
The audio levels subside and a soft tenor saxophone solo drifts over, and calm is temporarily restored.
In the first movement, the music itself moved from cacophonous to pastoral, and yet that massive dynamic range seemed effortless to the players, as they exchanged quiet smiles as a new theme started to form, impenetrable in its layered complexity, as the words on the wall were typed, corrected, deleted, rewritten, and then searched.
Musicianship at this level is an extraordinary thing to witness, but a work of this complexity demands it.
The composer, Kiah Gossner, who also took out the Best Producer & Audio Engineer gong at this year's South Australian Music Awards, played electric bass in this production. The others were: Matt Morison on synthesiser, Theremin, and vocals, Dave MacAvoy, electric piano, Django Rowe electric guitar, Adam Page, saxophones and flute,
Kyrie Anderson, drums, and Julian Ferraretto, strings.
Had this been a normal musical performance, I might have focussed on a soloist or a vocalist as I enjoyed the show but this was like watching a chamber orchestra as each member adds a piece of the overall harmony, but this was no chamber orchestra and harmony was not always the aim. Music as dense and rhythmically and harmonically unexpected as this always leaves me scanning the stage for clues, as short melodic riffs start to morph into anthemic themes, and polyrhythms start to form. My solution was to watch the drummer.
Anderson is a superb musician. Her eyes closed in intense concentration as she silently mouthed the sections of the score, driving with her sticks before hiding in brushes and then subtly punctuating with mallets. Fabulous playing, and a way for me to try to predict the next section.
Each movement in this work was distinct and unique, but was wedded to each following movement like one page of a book leads to the next. This is storytelling, narration without words, telling a tale by moving the emotional state of the audience in a direction offered by the composer and described by the musicians.
Gossner, and his remarkably skilled players, led us through seven movements during this one hour work. Seven carefully written sections that musically and emotionally flowed from one to the next. Seven different, but linked, emotional states, or perhaps seven different, but linked, emotional stages. My take on the work was the seven emotional stages of grief, which are usually understood to be shock or disbelief, denial, bargaining, guilt, anger, depression, and acceptance/hope.
As Gossner himself wrote, "I offer a way in through the form I know best. I hope that it speaks to you, I hope that you speak to each other."
This is a stunning piece of work that demands a season during the Adelaide Festival at the very least, but deserves a national and international tour.
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