Flirting with extremes, ensemblebash at Kings Place
The percussion quartet ensemblebash celebrate their twenty years of musical success with a series of three concerts at Kings Place, London. ‘Minimum Maximum’ – the first concert in the series – programmed significant works from the ensemble’s extensive repertoire from the past two decades that offers ‘rhythmic muscularity and technical dexterity’. The performance opened with the quartet spatially seperate, their arrangement of traditional Siwe bell music being heard around the hall as they slowly came together in front of the stage performing patterns that gradually increased in complexity. The music took a sudden turn to a faster tempo and one was struck by not only the super-human rhythmic precision of the individual percussionists but the shared rhythmic feel of the group; amazing to hear such variety from the bells. Stephen Hiscock, a member of ensemblebash, described the second piece in their programme as ’carrier bag music’; works that could be performed by percussion instruments that could be ‘carried on a bus’. Howard Skempton’s (b. 1947) ‘Shiftwork’ was just that, with everything the quartet needing for the work fitting on one trap tray. Subtle sonorities came from maracas and the ramekins filled with baking beads. The work grew in complexity and featured passages that contrasted different pairings of instruments such as the small bells, and maracas. One’s ears grew to appreciate the quieter sounds of this work and how virtuosic the players were at creating not only a range of dynamics but a range of varied attacks.
ensemblebash
