Hair in the air, the air is still, the stillness of the bow, the bow rises, it all falls. An attempt on equilibrium. A nice afternoon in Porto. Four feet on the ground, and the sound begins. Some other sounds continue –ever so slightly, yet so profoundly, decidedly, honestly, clearly. And they go.
Both the cello and the violin are upside down. Now, for a cliché: maybe it’s us who are upside down. Sound, however, has no up and no down. As per the duo, rarely have I seen a performance so intricately fused, for since the beginning the listener feels as if one was confronting a single, if broken, instrument.
This is the end of a week-long residence for Marija Kovačević and Paula Sanchez at Sonoscopia, Porto, after a concert yesterday at Lisbon’s BOTA. The duo will continue for three more dates in Portugal: July 3 and 5 in Lisbon, and 4 in Beja, according to the forecast, once again in the midst of a heatwave.
The heat, trips, bodies, the troubles of the touring musician. Something I keep coming back to while writing about ruined instrument is the continuity in between the damaged instrument and the supposedly healthy and abled human bodies that play them. Maybe they –the instruments– just show their damage more easily.
Scratching against the wall. A lament. For what or for whom is something we don’t know. But we do listen, and we listen intently. Suddenly, a list emerges: the world as things. Pegs, glue, wood, resin, anguish, a plane ticket, a shirt, TRS cables, feedback. A bow.
So, what’s the limit? It’s always a matter of thresholds, this living and dying thing. A little too much of this and you’re done, a little too short on that and away you go. Trespass and you’re in trouble, big boy. Play with the volume knob and bye, bye.
Even this performance has a lot of interesting, unintended thresholds –a cable slide, feedback comes in, a bow falls. But the drone. The drone. A hand goes up and down. A violin takes a break. The instruments get interrogated, and they do tell a lot of things. Lying as a gigantic corpse, the bass.
Here, indeed, we are witnessing what “controlling chaos” really means. It’s not a question of the masculinist dual choice between eliminating chaos through domination or through its uncontrolled amplification, but rather a genuine mastery of its course, achieved with a serenity that is truly impressive.
Equally impressive is the narrative development of the whole performance: neither does the pair’s great technical mastery lead them into any sort of technical “repertoire-isation”, nor do they ever fall into any sort of “illustrative music”. This is truly improvised music, whilst nonetheless constituting a genuine repertoire and a display of technical and physical mastery, musical intuition, a keen ear, dynamic control and a real sense of intensity. As an audience, we are fortunate that their outstanding technical skills are put at the service of their excellent taste, and all to the greater glory of improvisation.
We can hear a lot of references, of course –maybe because they are just in our head, in the same way as their ruins, as any other ruin, can remind you of your own little ruins. It is thus that I listen to Marija and Paula and I listen to Webern at his most dissonant. I listen to Teenage Jesus and The Jerks. I listen to my own doubts. I listen to La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela. I listen to the sound of violins on old 78s.
But then again, those are just my ruins. Be that as it may, being able to place such a mirror in which the public can so clearly see –or listen– to the rubble is a powerful thing not that many artists can say.
Today’s was a show of sensibility, serenity, and mastery full of the whole intensity, vibrancy, and aliveness of improvised music. A victory of life made out of broken instruments.