Auckland has waited too long to hear California-based, expatriate violinist Mark Menzies. It finally happened on Sunday, thanks to composer Samuel Holloway and first-class local musicians, drawing a good, enthusiastic audience.
The evening opened playfully. Holloway's Management Decision-Making in Chinese Enterprises mixed the corporate and the surreal in its title. After a wacky launch (Holloway jumping up and down, Menzies blowing the dust off his instrument), a 10-minute improv was most effective when analogue synthesiser and violin teased that thin dividing line between electronic and acoustic.
Holloway's later solo Dualities showcased Menzies' masterly tonal gradation, slipping effortlessly from the blistering to murmuring.
James Gardner's 18-minute solo Queer Studies was a mite long, even if ears were wooed by the sighing strains of the first and the third's bristling energy.
Flautist Luca Manghi and clarinetist Andrew Uren joined Menzies in Bryn Harrison's Five Miniatures. With the material reshuffled and re-presented, in ever decreasing tempi, this was like a musical Rashomon; the players floated a diaphanous web, occasionally alerting us to individual threads in the mix.
