Top left Christie Reside, Vern Griffiths, bottom, Peggy Lee, Allen Stiles, AK Coope, Rebecca Whitling & Michael Jarrett

Last night my graphic designer friend Graham Walker and I attended a Standing Wave concert at Christ Church Cathedral that was part of this year's VSO New Music Festival.

I know I photographed Standing Wave before 2002 (the only pictures in my files). I was struck as I listened to music that I had never heard before that there was here an obvious dialectic of two words at odds. And yet I can state that it is not the case. I can remember memorable occasions of having heard each member (in separate concerts in other solos and orchestras) of Standing Wave:

Christie Reside – flute

Anne- Katherine Coope (a.k.a. Ak Coope) clarinets

Rebecca Whitling – violin

Peggy Lee – cello

Allen Stiles – Piano

Vern Griffiths – percussion

Standing Wave and Safeway Carboard Bread 
Making Waves in my Head with Standing Wave

Perhaps the most memorable of all was a performance of Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time with Peggy Lee playing her cello.

I may have to diverge a bit here in an attempt to explain the magic and exhilaration of listening to a work of music for the first time that statistically I will probably never ever listen to again. The same happens in Vancouver with modern dance. You see a performance and as soon as it is over all that remains is a flicker of memory embedded in my brain that in years passing fades like some of my badly fixed photographs. I believe this is a thrill that may explain why I never ever want to listen to another recording of Bach’s Double Violin Concerto.

Bachian Proportions

Perhaps as a musical amateur I may no longer appreciate the brilliance or nuances of that double violin concerto. But this musical amateur does find the surprise of the unexpected (any concert of Standing Wave or new music) a reward.  I listen to less recorded music at home (it is in my memory banks with around 11 versions of Gerry Mulligan playing My Funny Valentine).

And last night’s Standing Wave concert was a surprise (a smooth predictable one!) of listening to 6 works by living composers (two were present, Jocelyn Morlock and Marcus Goddard). They had a little of dissonance, a little of lyrical smoothness and jarring noises (particularly the most interesting ones by Rebecca Whitling who switched to a viola in Steven Macky’s Indigenous Insruments. The 6 pieces were not long so time passed quickly and when the concert ended I was satisfied and felt no signs of overindulgence in my stomach.

Jocelyn Morlock’s Stone’s Throw was a piece that I wish I could hear again. I wonder when I watch the 6 Standing Wave musicians use their instruments in some unusual way if Morlock has an intimate knowledge on how instruments work and what the are capable of. When I listen to Morlock’s music I have in my mind a photograph of Shostakovich with his glasses which alienated me from listening to his music until a friend plunked on my turntable the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony and told me, “Now listen to a piano played like the percussion instrument it is.” Listening to her music after listening to her laugh off her obvious talent, rewards you with the idea that here is a new music composer who happily does not need glasses and will not scare your guests at a dinner party if you happen to play her Juno Award music.

As for that Shostakovich piano there was a good measure of it by Allen Stiles in Steven Mackey’s Indigenous Instruments and some fine cello plucking by Lee.

Watching Standing Wave always brings the pleasure of surprise as to what strange instruments will come into the mix. Christie Reside in one number played a flute the size of a Parker Pen while Anne Katherine Coope played on a slide whistle. And Rebecca Whitling's (battered looking viola) was a surprise, too. At one point Vern Griffiths, sitting (uncharacteristically at a drum kit waved what looked like a Technicolor beaver tail that made a whistling sound.

Perhaps the sounds that invited more of the audience to ask Vern Griffiths to demonstrate, were whale-like sounds (although in the upper register they nicely imitated the below human hearing low sounds of Blue Waves in Jared Miller’s Leviathan.) in which he used what looked like a cello bow on tiny cymbals placed on the side of his tympani.

American composer Marcus Goddard’s Pool of Lost Grooves (a World Premier it was) had everything. It was edgy, lyrical and obsessive. The latter makes this work what I call “Bridge Crossing Music in a High Speed Car.” Once many years ago I was driving my Maserati Biturbo ( a terrible car that only a bassoonist would own) at night through the covered Seattle freeway while listening to London Calling by the Clash. A little of the edginess was removed by the presence of young Atlantan Michael Jarrett who relieved Griffiths in percussion who seemed to be having a very good and easy time. My companion Walker marvelled at how he held his mallets when he played on the vibraphone.

So Standing Wave is cutting edge music that has been happening in our city much longer than anyone would have predicted. It seems that they will be touring Europe soon. It is about time that Vancouver’s cutting edge and venerable new music group show the world how good we are.