Presented as part of the Melbourne Fringe, the world premiere performance of Electric Cathedral is a multi-media, immersive experience combining live vocals with projected digital artwork. While now relatively common in other arts forms, this mode of presentation still feels novel for “straight” choral music, and indeed the performers, the talented sextet of singers of The Consort of Melbourne, rendered their part in a traditional way: in concert blacks and standing in a static row. The music is by the Melbourne-based, US-trained composer Kevin March, setting texts by Kylie Supski and ReVerse Butcher, the latter also contributing the digital “environments”.
Was it successful? Mostly. And that was through no fault of any of the participants, but merely a result of the particular combination of venue, repertoire and stage effects. Each element was fascinating, extremely well executed with obvious skill and dedication to the task, but the whole did not quite add up to more than the sum of the individual parts.
The event was billed as “vocal harmony” rather than a concert of choral music, and March’s finely crafted compositions live up to that description. The six movements of Electric Cathedral explore complex, existential questions of being – our very existence, love, death, language and our future. The music matches this complexity, avoiding stable, tonal harmonies to produce elongated, sinuous soundscapes that evoke longing, heartache, peace and joy. This is highly difficult music to perform; there is often nowhere to breathe or rest, and no time to think before being plunged into the next difficult interval or clash with another voice. The effect is mesmerising because the members of the Consort not only cope, but excel in singing their interweaving lines with confidence and ease.
Yet there was, perhaps, too much of a good thing. While each of the movements was differentiated from its neighbours by its text, vocal colours and mood, the overall texture, the unrelieved avoidance of points of rest and harmonic resolution for an hour, did not rivet the attention as it ought. Greater contrast in harmonic motion and rhythmic variety between movements might create a work that feels tighter and more directly illustrative of the very poignant and thought-provoking texts. Moments of faster or more spiky movement were few, but perhaps more memorable for that.
The listeners’ concentration was not helped, unfortunately, by the projections, beautiful as they were, which were described as “luminous human bodies rendered in virtual stained glass”. Multi-coloured images of sculpted bodies roamed aimlessly across the walls surrounding the singers. The colour panels that made up the bodies could, perhaps, be likened to stained glass, but the constant motion and zooming dulled the effect to the point of exhaustion (sometimes I felt distracted, forgetting to listen to the music while I tried to figure out what the image was about). The concept was, I think, valid and might actually re-enforce the atmospheric soundscape being created by the voices if the images were more like their medieval models and remained stationary, for at least some time, to allow the viewer to admire their beauty, be dazzled by their luminous colour, and interpret the story they are telling.
While I understand that the underlying themes of the work explored the “desire to remain deeply human” in a digital age, I do not necessarily see this as limited to the physical body so, with my eyes closed, I was picturing vast landscapes, the deep voids of outer space, the beauties of nature and the glorious, soaring architecture and acoustics of an ancient cathedral. The concert venue, a former Wesleyan church with a high wooden ceiling, gave a hint of this last image, and its acoustic was well suited to the scale and style of the presentation, but the experience would have gained immeasurably from a loftier space with a more generous ambiance, sitting there in bulky immovability for us to ponder and admire as the light slowly and subtly changes before us, mediated through the glass.
The opening movement, “Metaself”, begins strongly, after which clashing chords are broken up by whispered and scattered speech, creating beautiful effects. “Love” then brought forth some of the few lyrical, melodic lines of the work, as well as sumptuous harmonies and real variety of tempo and dynamic, making this perhaps the most successful of the movements. Befitting its subject, there was less-approachable harmony in “Death”, though it was not unpleasant, while “Artificial Intelligence” explored the faster pace of modern life and a contemporary conception of spirituality. “Rebirth” brought us back through the endless loops of existence, though it was the final movement, “Language” – ironically entirely of wordless humming – that was actually the reprise, bringing us full circle back to the creation of our lives out of nothingness.
Taking on twin roles as both director and bass singer, Steven Hodgson led the performance decisively yet unobtrusively through the difficulties of synchronisation at major points in the projections, and the six voices were superbly matched in tone and quality, again giving the music the greatest opportunity to shine through (if only there had been real stained glass!). The individual movements of Marsh’s extended and beautiful work, taken separately, were outstanding in conception and execution, though when taken together formed too long a sit for the audience. (The over-stretched, late- and post-Romantic efforts of Wagner, Bruckner and Mahler perhaps face the same problem, particularly with younger audiences today.) Had I been sitting in an IMAX theatre, looking at a slow-TV epic, I would have been content.
That being said, Electric Cathedral is still an experience that is worth taking the time to hear. This is a major new choral work, and with time we will gradually become accustomed to the interplay of technologies with our bodies, and with our music.
Photo supplied.
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Peter Campbell reviewed “Electric Cathedral”, presented by The Consort of Melbourne at Bluestone Church Arts Space, Footscray, on 3 October 3, 2024.
Peter Campbell is a music historian, singer and composer. He studied in Canberra before moving to Melbourne in 1999 to undertake a PhD. He has written extensively on Australian music, and his history of Trinity College Melbourne was published by MUP in 2022.
